PREFACE.
The great activity in shipbuilding and marine engineering during recent years, and the substantial progress, both in science and practice, which has marked the period, have often formed the subject of articles in the technical and daily press, and of papers read before professional institutions. So far as I am aware, however, no single work dealing historically with modern shipbuilding in a way at once trustworthy and popular, and in a form handy and accessible, has yet been published. The present work aims at supplying this want. In undertaking it originally, I felt encouraged by the acceptance which various articles, contributed to the columns of the Glasgow Herald, The Engineer, The Steamship, Iron, &c., had met with from many whose good opinion I had reason to value highly. With the kind permission of the proprietors of the above journals, I have made use to some extent of the articles in question—but largely amplified and corrected—in preparing the following pages.
The work is concerned exclusively with shipbuilding for the merchant marine, and no attempt is made to trace the progress connected with naval shipbuilding, although some of the many important influences which the one exerts upon the other have been indicated. Even as thus defined and restricted, the field of review is so vast that the limits which I had determined should bound the work with respect to price, and consequently with respect to size, have compelled me to treat briefly and in a general way many matters which it might have been of interest to enlarge upon. The list of authoritative papers and lectures to which readers can at first hand refer—given at the end of each chapter—may, it is hoped, compensate to some extent for these deficiencies.
The book being mainly historical, originality in the strict sense of the term cannot, of course, be urged for much of the contained matter; but efforts have been made throughout to present trustworthy statements of the very latest steps in advance. This is specially true of the chapter on scientific progress. My object, however, having been more to enlighten general readers than to seek to interest or inform professional ones, it is perhaps wanting in the scientific fulness needed to give it special value, viewed from the standpoint of the trained naval architect.
While the biographies and portraits given throughout the book may be considered fairly representative of those who as shipbuilders, shipowners, naval architects, or marine engineers have made their influence felt on the world’s mercantile marine during the period of review, the collection by no means includes all who are deserving of such notice. The subjects of portraiture are all in life, and actively engaged in their respective spheres of labour. The diffidence generally evinced by them in consenting that their likenesses and the note of their professional career should be given, has made my task one of difficulty. What may be called the over-diffidence of a few, originally selected for portraiture, has to some extent occasioned the incompleteness now commented upon.
As further accounting for the limitations of the present work, I think it fitting to add that the preparation of the whole book, including the task of seeing it through the press, has devolved upon me at a time when the ordinary intervals of respite from daily business have had to suffice for its accomplishment.
My best thanks are due to those firms and individuals to whom I had to appeal for statistics and other particulars, for their generally ready and courteous attention to my requests.
DAVID POLLOCK.
Dumbarton, November, 1884.