Chapter I: The Sailing Ship (2)

Soon after the accession of Charles I an attempt was made to establish the new type by building small vessels on the model of the largest, miniatures which it was hoped would prove good sailors and capable, although square-sailed, of sailing near a wind. The Ten Whelps were laid down: flush-decked three-masted vessels of 200 tons, 62 feet long on the keel and 25 feet in breadth. They were not a success. It was left for Dunkirk, “the smartest dockyard in Europe,” to found the new model. In imitation of a captured Dunkirk privateer our first frigate was built in 1646 by Peter, son of Phineas Pett, and her success was such that he had the achievement recorded on his tomb. The _Constant Warwick_ was 85 feet in keel-length, 26 feet 5 inches in breadth, of 315 tons burden and 32 guns. She was “an incomparable sailer.” Before the first Dutch war was over she had taken as much money from privateers as would have completely laden her.

It seems probable that the prestige of his name was sufficient to give Peter Pett a freedom from interference in his design which was not accorded less distinguished shipbuilders. In ’45 Andrews Burrell, in a remonstance addressed to Parliament, protested, “For the love of heaven let not the shipwrights that are to build them [three frigates for special service] be misled by those that would, but cannot, direct them, which error hath been very hurtful to the navy heretofore.” By the interference of Sir John Pennington, he asserted, the builders of the Ten Whelps were so misled that they proved sluggish and unserviceable. “Let no rules be given the shipwrights more than their tonnage, with the number and weight of their ordnance, and that the number and weight of their ordnance may be suitable to the burden of each frigate.”

King Charles, whose personal interest in the royal navy equalled that of his father, favoured the tendency to enlarge the tonnage and the individual power of his fighting ships. The _Prince Royal_ displayed the advantages of size. The Dutch people, jealous of the interference with their eastern trade, were known to be building large ships. Across the channel an ambitious and all-powerful minister was envisaging the possession of a navy in which an inferiority in numbers might be neutralized by the superiority of the unit. In France a vessel of 1400 tons had been laid down. Charles determined to take up the challenge, obtaining the money by hook or by crook wherewith to build a greater. In the year 1634 the decision was made. A model of a great three-decker mounting a hundred and four guns was presented to him by Phineas Pett, and shortly afterwards the master of the shipwrights received the royal command to build a ship, and to proceed in person to the forests of Durham to select the thickstuff, knee timber, and planking requisite for the task.

Opposition to the building of such a prodigious vessel appeared from different quarters. Great ships, in the opinion of Sir Walter Raleigh, were “of marvellous charge and fearful cumber.” The cost of so large a ship must needs be great, for not only the whole cost, but the cost per ton, increased with the size of the vessel; so wasteful a process was the building of a great ship, indeed, that it was not unusual to build a small ship simultaneously, out of the timber discarded: a practice known as “building a small ship out of a great one’s chips.” Ships of the greatest size, again, were “of little service, less nimble, less mainable, and very seldom employed.” Nor was it believed that so large a vessel as that projected could be built. Trinity House, when they heard of the design, uttered a formal protest. Such a ship, they argued, would be too big for service, and unsafe from her enormous size. To carry such a number of pieces she must be a three-decker, and to build a serviceable three-decker was beyond the art or wit of man; if the lower tier were too low they would be useless in a sea, if at 5 or 5½ feet above the water-line then the third tier would be so high as to endanger the ship. In spite of this protest the new ship was laid down, and nearly two years later, in the autumn of ’37, she was launched at Woolwich, “the pride and glory of the Caroline navy.”

The _Sovereign of the Seas_, the _Sovereign_, or the _Royal Sovereign_, as she was called by successive governments, was another great advance in size and solidity on all preceding construction, and was the masterpiece of Phineas Pett. Her length by the keel was 128 feet, her main breadth 48 feet, her overall length 232 feet. She had three flush decks and a forecastle, a half-deck, a quarter-deck, and a roundhouse. Her armament showed an approach to symmetry; the lower tier consisted of cannon and demi-cannon, the middle tier of culverins and demi-culverins. In one respect she was less advanced than Pett’s earlier effort, the _Prince Royal_, in that she had an old-fashioned beakhead, low hawses and a low and exposed forecastle. In general form she was extolled by all, and bore witness to the genius of her designer. No better form, said a later critic and constructor[14] after making an analysis of her lines--no better form could have been devised for a ship built (according to the prevailing customs of the times) so high out of water and so overloaded with ornaments. The king took a personal pride in her, and during her construction visited Woolwich and “seriously perused all the ship within board.” For him an elaborate description was written which, quoted at length by various writers, serves to show the extent to which mere decoration contributed to the cost of a royal ship. Two pictures of the vessel are reproduced by Charnock, of such obvious disparity that they serve to show (as the author observes) to what a degree artists may differ in the presentment of the same vessel. They confirm, besides, the profuseness of the ornamentation which was massed on her--the trophies, angels, emblems, mouldings--which made her the occasion of loud complaints against ship-money, and “a miracle of black and gold.”

The _Sovereign of the Seas_ had a distinguished career. When cut down a deck she proved to be an exceptionally serviceable unit, taking part in all the great actions of the Dutch wars and crowning her work at La Hogue, where she engaged, crippled, and forced to fly for shallow water the great _Soleil Royal_, 104, the French flagship. At length, when laid up at Chatham in 1696 in order to be rebuilt, she was set on fire by negligence and destroyed.

§

By the outbreak of the first Dutch war the modern ideas introduced by Phineas Pett had received a general embodiment in the navy. Blake found to his hand ships well suited to the intended warfare, nor was he much concerned to add either to their number or their magnitude. Only in one feature did the new vessels built show any difference from older construction: their depth in hold was reduced, probably to render them more suitable for work among the shallow waters of the coast of Holland.[15] In other important respects improvement had preceded the opening of hostilities.

The lofty stern with which it had been the custom to endow the sailing ship was a feature which had survived from ancient times. In the galley, whose armament was concentrated in the bows, the after part was not devoted to military fittings, but was appropriated chiefly to the accommodation of the officers. So it was in the galleon or sailing ship. With the desire and need for increased accommodation the extra space was obtained by prolonging aft the broad horizontal lines of the vessel and terminating them in a square frame. To give more space, quarter galleries were then added, outside the vessel. Then extra tiers of cabins were added, also with quarter galleries, each storey, as in the case of domestic architecture, projecting over that beneath it, and the whole forming, with its surmounting taffrails, lanterns and ornaments, an excessively weighty and top-heavy structure. Similarly, at the fore end of the ship there remained the survival of the ancient forecastle.

With the acceptance of artillery as the medium for battle, with the decay of boarding tactics and the decline in value of small man-killing firearms, close-fights and end-castles, the lofty forecastles and sterns ceased to possess much of their special value. The arguments of Sir Richard Hawkins’ day in favour of large cage-works no longer held; nor could the preference of some shipbuilders for high sterns, as allowing a quick sheer and thereby contributing to the girder strength of the hull, be considered sufficient to justify their retention. The stern galleries held a great deal of wind and tended to rot the decks in their vicinity; their weight put a strain upon the supporting keel; but, chiefly, the danger of their taking fire in action induced the authorities to cut them down. For similar reasons the forecastles were attacked. But there was strong opposition to their elimination, because of the cover which they afforded in a fight. In 1652 the _Phœnix_, one of the finest frigates in the service, was taken by a Dutch ship, “having no forecastle for her men to retire to.” In the second Dutch war experience confirmed their usefulness. “All the world,” wrote Mr. Secretary Pepys in his diary for the 4th July, 1666, “now sees the use of forecastles for the shelter of men.”

No general increase in the size of our ships took place till toward the end of the third Dutch war. Until that time the navy of France was a negligible quantity; in 1664, it is said, the only war-vessel at Brest was one old fireship. The Dutch, our only strong opponents, fought in ships not unlike our own, stout, buoyant vessels mounting from 24 to 60 guns, and of from 300 to 1200 tons burden. Geography had a curious influence on their construction. Owing to the shallowness of their coasts the Hollanders built their ships with less draught and flatter floors than those of other countries; from which policy they derived advantages of a greater carrying capacity and, in pursuit, an ability to retreat among the shallows; but on account of which they suffered a serious handicap in the hour of action, when, faced by English ships built of superior material and with finer bottoms which enabled them to hold a better wind, they were weathered and out-fought.[16]

There was no apparent advantage, therefore, in augmenting the size of our ships. Improvement was sought, rather, from a further unification of the calibres of the guns, and from an increase in the number carried. Their characteristics of shortness and large bore were such as to make them well-suited to the form of battle now favoured by English leaders--the close-quarter action.

In solidity of construction the English ships compared favourably with those of the Dutch. The thick scantlings introduced by Phineas Pett now proved of great value; the wood itself, tough English oak, was unequalled by any other timber. English oak was the best, as Fuller noted. Even the Dutch had built some of their ships of it; while other countries frequently built of inferior fir, the splinters of which killed more than were hit by hostile cannon balls. To what was the superiority of the English timber due? To the soil and climate of this favoured country. Under the influence of successions of warmth and cold, of rain and sunshine, frost and wind, all in a degree most favourable for alternate growth and consolidation, the English oak attained an unrivalled strength and durability. Trees planted in forests, where mutual protection was afforded from wind and cold, grew rapidly, but were inferior in quality to trees planted in small parcels or along the hedgerows; these latter, slow-growing and tough, felled “at the wane of the moon and in the deep of winter,” supplied the thickstuff, knees, and planking for generations of our royal ships. Their endurance was frequently remarkable. The bottom timbers would last for fifty or sixty years, but the upper works, which were subject to alternations of heat and cold, dryness and moisture, decayed in a much shorter space of time. The _Royal William_ is quoted by Charnock as a case in point. This first rate ship was launched in the year 1719, and never received any material repair until 1757. A few years later she was cut down to a third rate of 80 guns. Participating in all the sea wars of the time, she was surveyed in 1785 and converted into a guardship, which post she filled till early in the nineteenth century.[17]

Much attention, as we have noted, was given in this scientifically minded Stuart age to the form of body best suited to motion through water, but the efforts to improve design were largely misdirected. Many of our ships were unsatisfactory, not only from their slowness but because they were crank or tender-sided, and unable to bear out their lower guns or even to carry a stout sail. They were so clogged with timbers internally that they could not carry the victuals and stores necessary for long voyages; and vessels built by contract were often found to be carelessly put together, of green, unseasoned, and unsuitable timber.

After the Restoration the mantle of the Petts descended on a master shipwright of Portsmouth, who became an authoritative exponent of ship design, and to whose ability several improvements were due. “Another great step and improvement to our navy,” recorded Mr. Pepys in 1665, “put in practice by Sir Anthony Deane, was effected in the _Warspight_ and _Defiance_, which were to carry six months’ provisions, and their guns four and a half feet from the water.” In the same diary for 19th May of the following year occurs the following characteristic note: “Mr. Deane did discourse about his ship the _Rupert_, which succeeds so well, as he has got great honour by it; and I some, by recommending him. The king, duke, and every body, say it is the best ship that was ever built. And then he fell to explain to me the manner of casting the draught of water which a ship will draw, beforehand, which is a secret the king and all admire in him; and he is the first that hath come to any certainty beforehand of foretelling the draught of water of a ship, before she is launched.” The calculations used by Sir Anthony Deane to forecast the draught of a projected ship might win him applause among the philosophers; but the scoffer at theory was able to point to considerable achievements wrought by men who made no pretence of any knowledge of science. In 1668 the _Royal Charles_, 110, was launched at Deptford. “She was built,” wrote Evelyn, “by old Shish, a plain, honest carpenter, master builder of this dock, but one who can give little account of his art by discourse, and is hardly capable of reading.”

The interest of Charles II in naval architecture may be gathered from a letter written by him in 1673: “I am very glad that the _Charles_ does so well; a girdling this winter, when she comes in, will make her the best ship in England: the next summer, if you try the two sloops that were built at Woolwich that have my invention in them, they will outsail any of the French sloops. Sir Samuel Morland has now another fancy about weighing anchors; and the resident of Venice has made a model also to the same purpose.”

To girdle a ship, was to fasten planks along her sides some two or three strakes above and below the water-line; this had the effect of adding to her beam and thereby rendering her stiffer under sail. Incessant girdling seems to have been necessary at this period, to counter the defective conditions in which English ships were designed, built, and sent to sea. Ships were consistently restricted in beam, in compliance with the faulty “establishments,” and under a mistaken notion that narrowness, in itself, directly contributed to speed. “Length,” says Charnock, “was the only dimension regarded as indispensably necessary, by the ancients for their galleys and by the moderns for galleons. Breadth was not considered, or if considered was accepted as a necessary evil.” Pepys remarked, “that the builders of England, before 1673, had not well considered that breadth only will make a stiff ship.” It was an inquiry ordered by Sir Richard Haddock in 1684 which brought to light the fulness of the fallacy; ships were subsequently made broader, and experience showed that a good breadth was beneficial, not only for stability but for speed and sea-keeping qualities.

But even if a ship were built initially broad enough, the continual addition of armament and top-hamper to which she was often subjected had the effect eventually of impairing her stability. In such a case there were two remedies: to ballast or to girdle. The former expedient was objectionable, as it involved an increase both of displacement and of draught. Girdling was therefore generally practised. By this means the vessel was made stiffer, her buoyancy was improved, and her sides were also rendered less penetrable between wind and water. Even if, when thus girdled, she proved to be less stiff than the enemy this was not altogether a disadvantage: she formed a steadier gun-platform, her sides were less strained by the sea and, because her rolling was less violent, her topmasts were less liable to be sprung. But sufficient stiffness was necessary to allow of her lowest and heaviest tier of guns being fought in moderate weather; and for this reason alone, girdling was preferable to ballasting, in that the former tended to keep the guns high out of water while the latter brought them nearer the water-line.

Although rigidly restricted in dimensions, ships put to sea in these days under such varying conditions that it was difficult indeed to foretell whether a vessel were seaworthy or not. A commissioner of James the Second’s reign complained bitterly of the injudicious management whereby “many a fast sailing ship have come to lose that property, by being over-masted, over-rigged, over-gunned (as the _Constant Warwick_, from 26 guns and an incomparable sailer, to 46 guns and a slug), over-manned (_vide_ all the old ships built in the parliament time now left), over-built (_vide_ the _Ruby_ and _Assurance_), and having great taffrails and galleries, etc., to the making many formerly a stiff, now a tender-sided ship, bringing thereby their head and tuck to lie too low in the water.”

In spite of these strictures it must be remembered that our ships had qualities which, brought into action by brave crews and resolute leaders, served the nation well in the day of battle. In no naval war, perhaps, did superiority of material exert such a consistent and preponderating effect as in the seventeenth century wars between this country and Holland.

The tactics of the English leaders involved close-quarter fighting. The material, both guns and ships, certainly favoured these tactics; though to what extent tactics dictated the form of the material, or material reacted on tactics, it may be difficult to decide. In one respect tactics undoubtedly directed the evolution of the material: while the Dutch employed a “gregarious system” of mutual support of their vessels by others of various force, fighting in groups and throwing in fireships as opportunity offered, the English always sought to match individual ships.[18] Forming in line ahead--a formation, said to have been first used by Tromp, which enabled our vessels to avoid the fireships--they came to close quarters in a series of duels in which the strength and prowess of each individual ship was its only means of victory. The success of this plan caused the Dutch to imitate it. The size of their ships rapidly grew; their weakest units were discarded. Three-deckers were laid down, at first carrying only 76 guns, but later, after the peace of 1674, as large as the British first rates. But by that time the critical battles had been lost and won. And the success of the British is ascribed, in Derrick’s memoirs, chiefly to the superior size of our ships, “an advantage which all the skill of the Dutch could not compensate.”

With the institution of the line of battle a need arose for a symmetry between ships which had never before existed. From this arose, not only that more complete differentiation of force[19] which lasted through the following century, but a still more stringent ruling of dimensions according to “establishments,” which ruling, injudiciously applied, was henceforth to exercise so harmful an effect on English naval construction.

After the peace of 1674 the navy sank into inefficiency. The French navy, on the other hand, ascended in power with an extraordinary rapidity. By 1681 it had expanded so much under the fostering care of M. Colbert that it comprised no fewer than one hundred and fifteen ships of the line. In design, as apart from construction, French ships were superior to ours. In size especially they had an advantage, being universally larger than British ships of the same artillery force: an advantage based on the law, known to our own shipbuilders but never applied, that _the greater the dimensions of a ship, relatively to the weight she has to carry, the better she will sail_. So superior were some French ships which visited Spithead seen to be, that in imitation of them Sir Anthony Deane was ordered to design and build the _Harwich_; and from the plans of this ship nine others were ordered by parliament, the class constituting the greatest advance in naval architecture of that time. But this departure from precedent had little effect. In dimensions as compared with tonnage we continued parsimonious. In the face of French experience we cramped our ships to the requirements of the faulty “establishments”; and until the end of the century no increase in size took place except in the case of some ships laid down in the year 1682, when the threat of a war with Louis XIV not improbably caused them to be constructed on a more extensive scale than had ever before been in practice.

In another respect our ships were inferior in design to those of our chief rivals: in the extreme degree of “tumble home” given to their sides. Adhering to ancient practice in this particular, in order to obtain advantages which have already been mentioned, we suffered increasingly serious disadvantages. The sides of our ships were so convex that, when sailing on a wind, every wave was guided upward to the upper deck, thereby keeping the crew continually wet. The deck space required for the efficient working of the sails was contracted. Moreover, ships having this high degree of convexity were more easily overset than were wall-sided ships. This exaggerated convexity had a striking effect on one feature of our construction, viz. the manner in which we affixed the chain-plates, to which the shrouds were secured, in a low position on the curve of the hull; while Holland and France raised them to a more convenient height--over the upper tier of guns, in their two-decked ships.

On the other hand the horizontal lines of our ships were (in the absence of science) cleverly moulded. The after lines in particular were well suited for supporting the stern and at the same time allowing a free run of water to the rudder; other nations, overlooking the importance of this part of the vessel, adhered to the old-fashioned square tuck and stern which was a chief but unappreciated factor of the resistance to the passage of the vessel through water.

When war actually broke out in 1689 the balance of material between English and French was much the same in character as it had been between English and Dutch. Our fleet was once more in a seaworthy and efficient condition. Our guns were generally shorter and of larger bore than those of the French; our ships were narrower and less able to bear out their ordnance, but their sides were thicker, and better able to withstand the racket of gun fire. Once more, at La Hogue, the British squadrons showed that they possessed the offensive and defensive qualities which favoured victory in close-quarter fighting; and the end of the century found the prestige of the navy at a level as high as that to which Cromwell and Blake had brought it.

In the decade which ended in 1689 the navy had passed, on its administrative side, “from the lowest state of impotence to the most advanced step towards a lasting and solid prosperity.” In Pepys’ rare little _Memoirs_ the story of this dramatic change is told. We read how, after five years’ governance by the commission charged by the king with the whole office of the Lord High Admiral, the navy found itself rotten to the core; how in ’85 the king resolved to take up its management again, helped by his royal brother; how he sent for Mr. Pepys; how at his instigation new, honest, and energetic Commissioners were appointed, including among them the reluctant Sir Anthony Deane; how Mr. Pepys himself strove to reorganize, how new regulations were introduced, sea stores established, finances checked, malpractices exposed, the navy restored both in spirit and material.

Mr. Pepys claimed to prove that integrity and general knowledge were insufficient, if unaccompanied by vigour, assiduity, affection, strictness of discipline and method, for the successful conduct of a navy; and that by the strenuous conjunction of zeal, honesty, good husbandry and method, and not least by the employment of technical knowledge, the Royal Navy had been rendered efficient once again.

The following extract from an Essay on the Navy, printed in 1702, is here quoted for its general significance:

“The cannon (nearly 10,000 brass and iron) are for nature and
make according to the former disposition and manner of our
mariners’ fighting (whose custom was to fight board and board,
yard-arm and yard-arm, through and through, as they termed it,
and not at a distance in the line, and a like, which practice
till of late our seniors say they were strangers to), they are
therefore much shorter and of larger bore than the French,
with whom to fight at a distance is very disadvantageous, as
has been observed in several fights of late, their balls or
bullets flying over our ships before ours could reach them by a
mile....” etc., etc.

§

In Laputa, early in the eighteenth century, the people were so engrossed in the mathematics that the constant study of abstruse problems had a strange and distorting effect on the whole life of the island. Their houses were built according to such refined instructions as caused their workmen to make perpetual mistakes; their clothes were cut (and often incorrectly) by mathematical calculation; the very viands on their tables were carved into rhomboids, cycloids, cones, parallelograms, and other mathematical figures!

To most Englishmen of that time any attempt to apply science to shipbuilding must have appeared as far-fetched and grotesque as these practices of the Laputans. Ship design was still an art, veiled in mystery, its votaries guided only by blind lore and groping along an increasingly difficult path by processes of trial and error. The methods of applied science were as yet unknown. The builder was often a mere carpenter, ignorant of mathematics and even of the use of simple plans; the savant in his quiet study and the seaman on the perilous seas lived in worlds apart from each other and from him, and could not collaborate. Such speculative principles as the shipbuilder possessed were almost wholly erroneous; no single curve or dimension of a ship, it is said, was founded on a rational principle. Everything was by tradition or authority. Knowledge had not yet coalesced in books. Men kept such secrets as they had in manuscript, and their want of knowledge was covered by silence and mystery. Preposterous theories were maintained by the most able men and facts were denied or perverted so as to square with them. “Forgetful of the road pointed out by Lord Bacon, who opposed a legitimate induction from well-established facts to hypothesis founded on specious conjectures, and too hastily giving up as hopeless the attainment of a theory combining experiment with established scientific principles, they have contented themselves with ingeniously inventing _mechanical methods_ of forming the designs of ships’ bodies of arcs of circles, others of ellipses, parabolas, catenaries--which they thought to possess some peculiar virtue and which they investigated with the minutest mathematical accuracy. So they became possessed of a System. And, armed with this, they despised all rivals without one; and, trusting to it, rejected all the benefits of experiment and of sea experience.”[20]

The intervention of the philosophers had not had any appreciable effect. Sir William Petty had indeed projected a great work on the theory of shipbuilding; he had carried out model experiments in tanks, and had invented a double-keeled vessel which, by its performances on passage between Holyhead and Dublin, had drawn public attention to his theories.[21] In his discourse before the Royal Society on Duplicate Proportions, he had opened out new and complex considerations for the shipbuilder; inviting him to forsake his golden rule, or Rule of Three, and apply the law _x varies as y²_ to numerous problems in connection with his craft. But it could soon be shown, by a reference to current practice, that this new law could not be rigidly applied. And the shipbuilder, realizing his own limitations and jealous of sharing his professional mysteries with mathematicians and philosophers, was willing to laugh the new theories out of court.

Again, of what practical use had been the discovery of the “solid of least resistance” or of that “cono-cuneus” which Dr. Wallis had investigated with a view to its application to the bows of a ship? A final blow to the scientists was given when the _Royal Katherine_, a three-decker of 80 guns, designed by the council of the Royal Society, was found so deficient in stability that it was deemed necessary to girdle her. Old Shish had beaten Sir Isaac Newton and all the professors! The impossibility of applying abstract scientific principles to so complex a machine as a sailing ship, moving in elements so variable as air and water, was patent to everyone. The attitude of the professional may be judged from the resigned language of William Sutherland, a shipwright of Portsmouth and Deptford Yards, who in 1711 published his _Ship-builder’s Assistant_:

“Though some of our preceding Master Builders have proposed length as expedient to increase motion, yet it has seldom answered; much extra timber is required to make them equally strong. Besides, if the solid of least resistance be a blunt-headed solid, extreme length will be useless to make cutting bodies.”

Again, in connection with the dimensions of masts:

“Though several writers say, that the velocities are the square roots of the power that drives or draws the body; from which it should be a quadruple sail to cause double swiftness. Hence, unless the fashion is adapted to the magnitude of the ship, all our Art can only be allowed notional, and the safest way of building and equipping will be to go to precedent, if there be any to be found. But this is a superfluous caution, since ’tis very customary, that let a ship be fitted never so well by one hand, it will not suit the temper of another. Besides, the proper business of a shipwright is counted an very vulgar imploy, and which a man of very indifferent qualifications may be master of.”

Science was, in short, discredited. The corporation of shipwrights had disappeared, not long surviving the fall of the house of Stuart. No master-builder had succeeded the Petts and the Deanes having sufficient influence and erudition to expose the faulty system under which warships were now built, English shipbuilding had once more become a craft governed entirely by precedent and the regulations. The professor was routed, and the practical man said in his heart, There is no knowing what salt water likes.

Yet the science of naval architecture was at the dawn. Not in this country, but in France, in the early part of the eighteenth century, research and inquiry received such encouragement from the State that it conferred on their fleets a superiority of design which they retained for long: a superiority which enabled them, in the _guerre de course_ which was developed after La Hogue under the intrepid leadership of men like Jean Bart, Forbin, and Duguay-Trouin, to strike us some shrewd blows.

We propose to summarize as briefly as possible the principal events which mark the evolution of the scientific side of naval architecture.

A mere enumeration of the names and works of the men who chiefly contributed to the discovery of the true natural principles underlying the performance of sailing ships would suffice to show the debt owed by the world to French effort, and the tardiness with which this country faced the intellectual problems involved. In the year 1681 a series of conferences was held at Paris on the question of placing the operations of naval architecture on a stable scientific basis; but before that date, in 1673, Father Pardies, a Jesuit, had published the results of his attempts to calculate the resistance of bodies moving in fluids with varying velocities. In ’93 the Chevalier Renaud and Christian Huyghens were engaged in public controversy on the merits and deficiencies of Pardies’ laws. In ’96 James Bernouilli entered the lists on Huyghen’s side, and in the following year a remarkable work appeared from the pen of another Jesuit, Paul Hoste, professor of mathematics at Toulon. Father Hoste, having noticed the frequency with which vessels of that time required girdling, had put the question, why they should not be built initially with the form which they had when ultimately girdled. The replies given him being unsatisfactory, the professor investigated a whole series of problems: the relation between speed and resistance, the effect of form on resistance, stability, stowage, the properties affecting pitching, and the best form of bow. Though incorrect in much of his theory, he had admittedly a great influence on later research. He was followed, in 1714, by John Bernouilli, professor at Basle, whose investigations were purely theoretical. And then, a few years later, M. Bouguer made his great discovery of the _metacentre_, that all-important point in space whose position in a ship, relatively to its centre of gravity, marks with precision the nature of the vessel’s stability.

A treatise by Euler, entitled _Scientia Navalis_, was published in 1749, and a little later, stimulated by prizes offered by the Société Royale des Sciences, Don G. Juan in Spain, Euler in Russia, and Daniel Bernouilli in Germany, all published the results of their investigations into the forces acting on a rolling ship. Euler’s contribution was especially valuable. Treating the ship as a pendulum he laid down two definite rules for the guidance of shipbuilders, (1), not to remove the parts of a ship too far from the longitudinal axis, (2), to make the most distant parts as light as possible.

Up to this time the discoveries of the mathematicians had had little practical effect on shipping. The abstruse form in which new truths were published, and the lack of education of the shipbuilders, prevented that mutual collaboration which was necessary if the art of shipbuilding was to benefit by the advances of science. Soon after 1750, however, a succession of able men, possessed of imagination and initiative, led inquiry into practical channels, and by actual trial proved, incidentally, that much of the accepted theory was faulty. The Chevalier de Borda, a naval captain and a member of the Academy of Sciences, investigated with models the resistance of fluids to motion through them, and enunciated laws which shook confidence in current beliefs. The result was a commission from the government to three eminent men, M. D’Alembert, the Marquis Condorcet and the Abbé Bossut, to report on and continue de Borda’s investigations. The report, read by the Abbé before the Academy in 1776, confirmed generally de Borda’s theories, and revealed new problems--in particular, the alteration in shape of the free water surface and the effect of wave resistance, the latter of which was ultimately to be solved in this country by Mr. W. Froude--that required investigation. The circumstances of this commission illustrate the enlightened interest of the State in the advancement of knowledge, significant testimony to which was paid by Abbé Bossut. “M. Turgot,” he said of the Comptroller-General of Finances, who took responsibility for it, “who is not only an admirer of the sciences, but has pursued the study of them himself amidst his numerous important official functions, approved of our intentions, and granted every requisite for prosecuting them.”

In the same year curious and important discoveries were made by M. Romme, professor of navigation at La Rochelle. In an endeavour to find the form of ship body which would give good stability in conjunction with small resistance, he ascertained the importance of the “run” or after part. Hitherto the form of bow had absorbed attention to the almost entire exclusion of the form of run, except in so far as it had been shaped to allow water to flow freely to the rudder. M. Romme called in aid methods which are now approved as scientific, but which were then conspicuously novel: he experimented by comparative trials between models in which all variable features except one had been carefully eliminated. He was rewarded by some new discoveries. By fixing the length and successively varying the curvature of different parts of his models he laid bare an important paradox. While at low speeds the resistance was least when a sharp end was in front and a blunt end in rear, at higher speeds the opposite obtained. This accounted for a great deal of the contradictions of previous investigators. M. Romme went further: the curves by which the bow of a ship was connected with her middle body, hitherto looked on as all-important, were shown to be relatively immaterial. He astonished the world of science by proving that, given certain conditions, the resistance upon an arc of a curve is the same as that upon the chord of this arc. His deductions were proved by commissions to be well founded. Experience confirmed that the form of the bow curve did not much influence the resistance experienced in passing through water; on the other hand the form of the run was shown to have a far greater effect than had hitherto been suspected.

In the year before M. Romme published the results of his experiments a treatise appeared, full of empirical rules and shrewd reasoning, by one of the greatest naval architects, Henry de Chapman, chief constructor of the Swedish navy, an Anglo-Swede who came of an old shipbuilding family of Deptford. Chapman was a most gifted shipbuilder. Though his formulæ were empirical, they were founded on careful observation and induction, and his name ranks with those of Phineas Pett and Anthony Deane in the history of naval architecture.

Nothing, so far, had come from English writers. “The only English treatise on shipbuilding that can lay any claim to a scientific character was published by Mungo Murray in 1754; and he, though his conduct was irreproachable, lived and died a working shipwright in Deptford dockyard.”[22] But indifference was at last giving place to interest. Inspired by the formation of the Society of Arts in 1753 (which Society was itself inspired by the recognition, on the part of the founder, of the value of prizes and rewards in improving our breed of racehorses) a London bookseller named Sewell succeeded in 1791 in forming a Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture. “Impressed with the many grave complaints which reached him as to the inferiority of our warships as compared with those of France and Spain,” he gained the interest of Lord Barham and other influential men. A meeting was held at which it was decided, as something of a novelty, that the theory and art of shipbuilding were subjects of national importance; that a radical deficiency in knowledge of the same existed; and that the most effective remedy was a focussing of the wisdom of the country on this matter by the institution of the above Society.[23]

For a time the society flourished. A learned paper by Atwood before the Royal Society, on the stability of a rolling ship, proved that this country was not wholly destitute of mathematical talent. An interesting series of experiments was carried out for it by Colonel Beaufoy, a devoted student who had made his first experiments on water resistance before he was fifteen years old. It appears that his attention was first drawn to the subject by hearing an eminent mathematician state one evening that a cone drawn through water base foremost experienced less resistance than with its apex foremost; and it was said that sailors always took a mast in tow by the heel. The paradox excited young Beaufoy’s curiosity. Before bedtime, with the assistance of a neighbouring turner, he was making experiments in one of the coolers in his father’s brew-house, a large bunch of counting-house keys being put into requisition as a motive power. Though the society was dissolved in 1799 Beaufoy continued to pursue this subject with unabated zeal until his death. In one direction, especially, he did good work. Attracted by the frequency with which North Sea fishing vessels, fitted with wells for carrying the fish, foundered at sea, he showed experimentally the loss of stability involved in carrying open tanks of water. He also demonstrated to English builders by means of models that Bouguer’s diagram of metacentric stability was of great practical value, even for large angles of heel. “His experiments,” says Mr. Johns, “should take an important place in the history of stability of ships.”

§

We now revert to the beginning of the eighteenth century. In the desultory warfare which was carried on during the reign of Queen Anne events occurred to demonstrate the superiority in design of the French warship over its English opponent of the same nominal force. One in particular, an expedition under Count Forbin which was intended to cover a descent on the Scotch coast in favour of the Pretender, “showed, even in failure, that in material France held a lead on us.” Chased back to its ports from the latitude of Edinburgh by larger English forces, Forbin’s squadron proved a superiority over all our ships, both in speed and seaworthiness. In weather which disabled many of our vessels the French squadron arrived home with the loss of only three--and these all English built.

At about the same time the capture by us of a 60-gun ship, the _Maure_, of extraordinarily large dimensions for her rate, showed the direction in which French design differed from our own. The recapture, not long afterwards, of the _Pembroke_, which was now found to carry only fifty, instead of her original number of sixty-four guns, corroborated (says Charnock) the direction in which improvement was sought and found.

But for some time the lesson remained unlearnt. For a number of years the inferiority of our design was an accepted fact; “every action won by British valour was a stigma to British science.” Throughout the whole of this century we set no value on scientific principles as applied to naval architecture, and were content to remain copyists. Although before the advent of the Napoleonic wars we had thus endeavoured to reduce their balance of advantage, yet even so the French still maintained an absolute superiority in design. In the first half of the century this superiority was especially conspicuous; and, in conjunction with an inferiority of seamanship and workmanship which in the end more than neutralized all its advantages, it was the cause of the disreputable incongruities which Charnock has depicted in his well-known epigram: _Very few ships captured by the enemy from the British have ever continued long the property of their possessors. If it has so happened, that one of them, being in company with others of French construction, has ever fallen in with any English squadron, that ship, almost without exception, has been among those captured, and most frequently the first which has fallen. On the other hand, the recapture of any ship from the British, which was originally French, is a circumstance extremely uncommon. Captured French ships were sought for as the best commands, which not infrequently were the means of recapturing captured English vessels._

Very seldom was our failure to overhaul the speedy Frenchman attributed to inferiority of design; nearly always to the fortuitous circumstance that we were foul-bottomed and the enemy clean; which may have been sometimes true, but which was evidently a partial and inaccurate explanation.

We have already made mention of the periodic “establishments” of dimensions to which ships built for the royal navy were made to conform. The first of these, after the rules laid down by the commissioners of James I, was decreed in 1655, when Blake was organizing a new standard navy. In 1677 dimensions were established for ships of 100, 90, and 70 guns, but were exceeded in the case of those ships which were actually built; and in ’91 a revised establishment for all classes, very similar to those which previously governed practice, appeared. In 1706 a new establishment was decreed, a compromise between the ideas of the Surveyor and the master shipwrights, in which the dimensions of each class were slightly increased. The dimensions still remained small compared with those of all foreign ships, however, and still “all superior faculties of sailing were attributed to the mere length of the vessel itself, without any but trivial regard to shape or form of bottom.” Assuming that the ships built under this establishment derived some slight advantage over earlier construction on account of their augmented tonnage, yet this was nullified when, in 1716, the force of their armament was raised. As the work of a committee presided over by Admiral Byng, a new establishment of guns was ordered, a change being made in calibres but not in numbers:--

First and second rates, instead of carrying 32-pounders on the lower, 18-pounders on the main, and 9-pounders on the upper deck, were ordered to carry, 42-pounders (or 32-pounders) on the lower, 24-pounders on the main, and 12-pounders on the upper deck. Eighty-gun ships, instead of carrying 24-pounders on the lower, 12-pounders on the main, and 6-pounders on the upper deck, were ordered to carry 32-pounders on the lower, 12-pounders on the main, and 6-pounders on the upper deck. Seventy-gun ships, which in the previous century had carried 18-pounders on their main, and 9-pounders on their upper deck, and which during the reign of Queen Anne had carried 24-pounders and 9-pounders, were now ordered to carry 24-pounders and 12-pounders. And so on with the smaller rates.

In 1719 a new establishment for ships was decreed, the dimensions slightly exceeding those of 1706, but being totally insufficient for satisfactory construction. In ’32 and ’41 attempts were made to formulate new rules; but the master shipwrights seem to have been loth to accept the lesson which the French enemy was teaching them, and hesitated to recommend any radical departure from traditional practice.

At length, in 1745, general complaint of the inferiority of our ships in size and scantlings forced improvement on the authorities. Spain, who had joined France in war against us, possessed ships which exceeded in size even French ships of the same rate. The capture in 1740 of a Spanish 70-gun ship, the _Princessa_, by three of our ships, nominally of equal force with herself but of far inferior dimensions and scantlings, is said to have been the chief cause of the new reform. Their lordships of the Admiralty, surveying naval construction in this country, noted that our royal ships were weak and crank, while those of other nations went upright. There was no uniform standard of size, ships of the same class were of different dimensions, the existing establishment was not adhered to. They therefore decided on a new establishment, based on the latest armament of guns; which should result in ships which would carry their lower tier six feet above the water, and four months’ provisions.

The new standard was of little avail, for the same error made some thirty years previously was now repeated: with the augmentation of the ship dimensions the armament was also raised in calibre. The first rates were ordered to carry the 42-pounder (which had before been optional) on their lower deck; the 90-gun ships, 12-pounders on their upper decks; the eighties, 18-pounders and 9-pounders instead of 12’s and 6’s; the seventies, which were only two hundred tons in excess of the former establishment, 32-pounders and 18-pounders, instead of 24’s and 12’s. “The ships, therefore, built by this establishment proved, in general, very crank and bad sea-boats.”[24]

This establishment was, in point of fact, little adhered to. The war with France during the years 1744-8 repeatedly revealed the defective nature of our ship design. Experience pointed to the necessity either of reduced gun-weights or of larger ships. Able administrators were now willing, under the inspiration of such names as Hawke and Anson, to initiate improvements. Our naval architecture at last took benefit, though still by slow and cautious degrees, from foreign experience. Some time was necessary for results to show themselves; not only were new decisions slowly formed, but the rate of building was deliberately slow. The _Royal George_, for instance, described as “the first attempt towards emancipation from the former servitude,” was ten years building. But, when war broke out again in 1756, the improvements already embodied in the newest construction proved of considerable benefit. The establishment of ’45 was given the credit. “The ships built by the establishment of 1745,” says Derrick in his Memoirs, “were found to carry their guns well, and were stiff ships, but they were formed too full in their after part; and in the war which took place in 1756, or a little before, some further improvements in the draughts were therefore adopted, and the dimensions of the ships were also further increased.”

To meet the advances in French construction a new classification of rates took place, with French captured ships as models. The capture of the _Foudroyant_, for instance, in 1758, provided us with the form and dimensions of a splendid two-decked 84-gun ship. Our 80-gun three-deckers were thereupon abolished, and no three-decker was thenceforth built with fewer than 90 guns. The capture of the _Invincible_, in 1757, gave us a valuable model for a 74-gun ship, a rate highly esteemed, which bore the brunt of most of this century’s warfare.[25] From her was copied the _Triumph_, and other experimental 74’s, with dimensions varying from those of the _Invincible_, were at this time laid down. All 50-gun ships had already dropped out of the line of battle; they were now followed by the 60’s. No more 60 or 70-gun ships were built; their places were taken by 64’s and 74’s respectively, of relatively large size and displacement.

Nor was improvement confined to form and dimensions. Attention was now paid to material. New rules were made for the cutting and seasoning of timber, and for its economical use. Sheathing was tried; in 1761 the frigate _Alarm_ was sheathed in copper for service in the West Indies, where the worm was active. The copper was found to keep clean the hull, but at the expense of the iron fastenings; so when, in ’83, copper sheathing became general, an order was issued for all new royal ships to be copper fastened up to the water-line: an order beneficial on another count, since even without the presence of copper sheathing, iron bolts had always been liable to corrosion from the acids contained in the oak timbers. Ventilation was also studied, more for its effects on the hull timbers than on the health of the crews. The scantlings of all ships were strengthened. Taffrails and quarter-pieces were reduced in size, and the weight thus saved was devoted to strengthening the sterns and reinforcing the deck supports; additional knees and fastenings were provided throughout the structure. Moreover, towards the middle of the century the formation of the sails was gradually altered, first in the smaller rates and afterwards in the larger ships. The old-fashioned spritsail, which had been of greatest effect when going free, but which had also been used with the wind abeam by the awkward expedient of topping up its yard, gave place in our navy to the fore and aft jib, which could be used with the wind before the beam. Later the lateen sail on the mizzen gave place to a spanker hung from a gaff or half-yard. These alterations had a general effect on the size and position of masts and sails.

The order of 1745 was virtually the last of those rule-of-thumb establishments which had imposed rigorous maximum limits of length, beam and draught in conjunction with an equally rigorous minimum of armament weight, and which had been a glaring example of the evil effects of standardization when unscientifically and unsuitably applied. The East India service, the contract-built ships of which were designed by architects untrammelled by the rules which cramped and distorted the official architecture, provided the clearest proof that the King’s ships were, as a whole, of poor design. Naval opinion confirmed it.[26]