Trench

Trench, Richard Chenevix, 1807-86, Irish clergyman and author, b. Dublin. He was dean of Westminster, 1856-63, and Protestant archbishop of Dublin, 1863-84. His many theological writings were eclipsed by his works in philology and poetry, which include The Study of Words (1851), English, Past and Present (1855), and Collected Poems (1865).

trench: see ocean.

Warfare in which the opposing sides attack, counterattack, and defend from sets of trenches dug into the ground. It was developed by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban in the 17th century for laying siege to fortresses. Its defensive use was first institutionalized as a tactic during the American Civil War. It reached its highest development in World War I. Little used in World War II, it reappeared in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. A typical construction consisted of two to four parallel trenches, each dug in a zigzag, protected by sandbags, and floored with wooden planks. The parallel trenches were connected by a series of communication trenches dug roughly perpendicular to them. The first row was fronted by barbed wire and contained machine-gun emplacements; the rear trenches housed most of the troops. Increased use of tanks marked the end of trench warfare, since tanks were invulnerable to the machine-gun and rifle fire used by entrenched soldiers.

Learn more about trench warfare with a free trial on Britannica.com.

or oceanic trench

Any long, narrow, steep-sided depression in the ocean bottom in which maximum oceanic depths (24,000–36,000 ft, or 7,000–11,000 m) occur. The deepest known depression of this kind is the Mariana Trench. Most trenches occur at subduction zones, where one tectonic plate is thrust under another.

Learn more about deep-sea trench with a free trial on Britannica.com.

A trench is a type of excavation or depression in the ground. Trenches are generally defined by being deeper than they are wide (as opposed to a wider gully or ditch), and by being narrow compared to their length (as opposed to a simple hole).

Usage

A number of areas exist in which trenches play a significant role like a ditch

Agriculture

Trenches have long been used to carry water. Trenches can be used for draining purposes, leading water away from a swamp or wetland that is to be dried out. Likewise they can be used for irrigation purposes, directing water into dry areas. Both uses generally require a slope for the water to flow down.

Archeology

Archeologists may use the 'trench method', pioneered by Dame Kathleen Kenyon in Israel, for searching and excavating ancient ruins or to dig into strata of sedimented material to get a sideways (layered) view of the deposits - with a hope of being able to place found objects or materials in a chronological order. The advantage of this method is that it destroys only a small part of the site (those areas where the trenches, oftenarranged in a grid pattern, are located). However, this method also has the disadvantage of only revealing small slices of the whole volume, and modern archeological digs usually employ combination methods.

Geology

Trenches are a natural feature in many landscapes. Some are created by rivers in flow (which may have long since fallen dry), others are features created by geological movement, such as oceanic trenches. The later form is relatively deep, linear and narrow, and is formed by plate subduction.

Infrastructure

In the civil engineering field of construction or maintenance of infrastructure, trenches play a major role. They may be created to search for pipes and other infrastructure that is known to be underground in the general area, but whose exact location has been lost ('search trench' or 'search slit'). They are also used to underground easily damaged and obstructive infrastructure or utilities (such as gas mains, water mains or telephone lines). A similar use for higher bulk would be in pipeline transport. Finally, trenches may be created as the first step of creating a foundation wall.

Military usage

While trenches have often been dug as defensive measures, in the pre-firearm eras, they were mainly a type of hindrance for an attacker of a fortified location, such as the moat around a castle (this is technically called a ditch).

Only with the advent of accurate firearms, and the tactics that evolved in World War I and the Crimean War, did the use of trenches as positions for the defender of a fortification become common, though the Māori of New Zealand were known to have used it earlier in their Pā fortifications in the late 19th Century. The military usage evolved very quickly in the First World War, until whole systems of extensive main trenches, backup trenches (in case the first lines were overrun) and communication trenches had been developed, often stretching dozens of kilometres along a front without interruption, and some kilometres further back from the opponents' lines.

Other uses

• Trenches are often used for mass graves, sometimes even dug by prisoners about to be executed (see, for example, the Holocaust novel Night).
• Sunken trenches may be combined with a wall on one of their sides to form a ha-ha, a type of hidden fence.

See also

• Ditch
• Gully
• Trench coat
• Trench foot

References

External links

• Trenching and Excavation (a NIOSH Safety and Health Topic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• Trench Safety Awareness (a NIOSH Publication, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)