It was one of those relatively short periods when the world went in one end, and came out transformed on the other. WWI was like that, and even moreso WWII was like that.
Inventions and whatnot which might have caught on anyway tend to get a real kick in the pants in wartime, or due to contingencies. Henry VIII is really the father of the British Navy, having switched from bronze to iron cannons, then finding they made the ships top heavy, had the design of the ships altered.
"Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance." (from the movie version of Patton)
Roman trade, particularly seagoing trade, really blossomed after their conquest of Egypt (1st c BC) and the period of relative peace and quiet was going on in the Med basin, the Indian Ocean, India itself (Mauryan dynasty), points east, and Han China. For a couple hundred years (mid-1st BC to mid-2nd AD) everything was generally going great. The Antonine Plague hit Roman Europe (including places not ruled by Rome), the Parthians, and China, and India.
Roman shipbuilding pushed the practical limit of the use of wood, but they used them to move cargoes in the 100s of tons. Building ships of that size ran aground (so to s-speak) on the use of iron and steel, beginning in the mid-19th c, but moving large-ish cargoes in wood vessels didn't vanish in the Atlantic trade until about 1940. Turned out, iron/steel ships are also not foolproof. :^)
There's a topic around here about the last really big ship foundering sometime in the years prior to that, ship was built in New England.
SC you are just a history maniac - and epic FReeper.