The Evolution of Naval Armament

No aspect of old naval warfare is so difficult for the modern reader to visualize, perhaps, as that which displays the essential weakness of the sailing warship: its impotence in a calm. It was a creature requiring for its activities two elements, air and water. Ruffle the sea with a breeze, and the sailing ship had power of motion towards most of the points of the compass; withdraw the winds, and she lay glued to the smooth water or rolling dangerously in the heavy swell, without power either of turning or translation. For centuries this weakness told heavily against her and in favour of the oar-propelled vessel, particularly in certain latitudes. Through many years, indeed, the two types held ascendancy each in its own waters; in the smooth stretches of the Mediterranean the oar-driven galley, light, swift, and using its sharp ram or bow-cannon as chief means of offence or defence, was a deadly danger to the becalmed sailing ship; in the rougher north Atlantic the sailing ship, strong, heavy, capacious, and armed for attack and defence only along its sides, proved far too fast and powerful for the oar-driven rival. Progress—increase of size, improvement in artillery, the development of the science of navigation—favoured the sailing ship, so that there came at last the day when, even in the Mediterranean, she attained ascendancy over the galley. But always there was this inherent weakness: in a dead calm the sailing ship lay open to attack from a quarter where her defence lay bare. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, perhaps, she could move sufficiently to beat off her attacker by bringing her broadsides to bear. The hundredth, she lay at the mercy of her adversary, who could, by choosing his range and quarter of attack, make her temporary inferiority the occasion of defeat. For this military reason many attempts were made to supplement sails with oars. But oars and sails were incompatible. They were often, seen together in early times, but with progress the use of one became more and more irreconcilable with the use of the other. The Tudor galleasse, though possessing in our northern waters many advantages over the galley type, had the defects inherent in the compromise, and gave place in a short time to the high-charged “great ship” propelled by sails alone. The sailing ship was by that time strong and powerful enough to risk the one-in-a-hundred chance of being attacked by oared galleys in a stark calm. It was only when the first steam vessels plied English waters that the old weakness became apparent again. It was then seriously urged that the ship-of-the-line should carry oars once more, against the attack of small steamers converging on her from a weakly defended quarter.

§

The oar was in many ways an objectionable form of power. It was very vulnerable, its presence made manœuvring at close quarters risky and difficult; and apart from the necessity, on which the galley service was based, of a large supply of slave-labour for working them, oars and the rowers absorbed a large proportion of the available inboard space, to the detriment both of artillery and merchandise.

Many attempts were therefore made, not only to substitute animals for men, for the work of propulsion, but to apply power in a manner more suitable than by the primitive method of levers: oars or sweeps. The paddlewheel was thought of at a very early date; a Roman army is said to have been transported into Sicily by boats propelled by wheels moved by oxen, and in many old military treatises the substitution of wheels for oars is mentioned.131 In 1588 Ramelli, engineer-in-ordinary to the French king, published a book in which was sketched an amphibious vehicle propelled by hand-worked paddlewheels: “une sorte de canot automobile blindé et percé de meurtrières pour les arquesbusiers.” In 1619 Torelli, Governor of Malta, fitted a ship with paddles, and in it passed through the Straits of Messina against the tide. But Richelieu, to whom he offered his invention, was not impressed with its value.132 Before this, Blasco de Garoy, a Spanish captain, had exhibited to the Emperor Charles V, in 1543, an engine by which ships of the largest size could be propelled in a calm: an arrangement of hand-operated paddlewheels.

In Bourne’s Inventions and Devices, published in 1578, is the first mention of paddlewheels (so far as we know) in any English book. By the placing of certain wheels on the outside of the boat, he says, and “so turning the wheels by some provision,” the boat may be made to go. And then he proceeds to mention the inversion of the paddlewheel, or the paddlewheel which is driven, as distinguished from the paddlewheel which drives. “They make a watermill in a boat, for when that it rideth at an anker, the tide or stream will turn the wheels with great force, and these mills are used in France,” etc. It is possible, indeed, that this was the prior form, and that the earliest paddlewheel was a mill and not primarily a means of propelling the vessel.

Early in the seventeenth century the mechanical sciences began to develop rapidly and as the century advanced the flood of patents for the propulsion of ships increased. “To make boats, ships, and barges to go against the wind and tide”; “the drawing and working of barges and other vessels without the use of horses”; “for making vessels to navigate in a straight line with all winds though contrary”; these are some of the patents granted, the details of which are not known. At last the ingenious Marquis of Worcester, who in 1663 was granted a patent for his steam engine, also obtained a patent for an invention for propelling a vessel against wind and stream. It has sometimes been inferred that this invention was connected in some way with the steam engine, and the claim has been made that the Marquis was one of the first authors of steam propulsion. This is not so. Contained in the description of the ship-propelling invention are two statements which dispose completely of the theory that steam was the motive force; first, that the “force of the wind or stream causeth its (the engine’s) motion”; secondly, that “the more rapid the stream, the faster it (the vessel) advances against it.” From this it appears that the Marquis intended to utilize the watermill as described by Bourne. From a study of the description of the apparatus it has been concluded that “a rope fastened at one end up the stream, and at the other to the axis of waterwheels lying across the boat, and dipping into the water so as to be turned by the wheels, would fulfil the conditions proposed of advancing the boat faster, the more rapid the stream; and when at anchor such wheels might have been applied to other purposes.”133 If this reconstruction is correct, the scope of the propelling device was very limited.

In Bushnell’s Compleat Shipwright, published in 1678, a proposal was made for working oars by pivoting them at the vessel’s side and connecting their inboard ends by longitudinal rods operated by cranks geared to a centre-line capstan. But the disadvantages of oars so used must have been apparent, and there is no evidence that this invention was ever put into practice. The obvious alternative was the paddlewheel, and though that device had been known and used in a primitive form long before the seventeenth century, it was continually being reinvented (especially in the ’nineties) and tried by inventors in various countries. Denis Papin turned his original mind to the solution of this problem. A paper on the subject written by him in Germany in 1690 is of interest. Discussing the use of oars from ships’ sides he notes that, “Common oars could not be conveniently used in this way, and it would be necessary to use for this purpose those of a rotary construction, such as I remember to have seen at London. They were affixed to a machine made by direction of Prince Rupert, and were set in motion by horses, so as to produce a much greater velocity than could be given by sixteen watermen to the Royal Barge.” Papin, who had suggested the atmospheric steam engine, also suggested the possible application of steam to propulsion. But it was left to others to achieve what he had to propose. His talent, it has been said, lay rather in speculations on ingenious combinations, than in the mechanical power of carrying them into execution on a great scale. In 1708 he laid before the Royal Society, accompanied by a letter of recommendation from Leibnitz, a definite proposal for a boat “to be moved with oars by heat ... by an engine after the manner that has been practised at Cassel.” What form this engine was to take, and how the power was to be transmitted to the oars, is still a matter of conjecture. Only this is known, that the proposal was considered in detail by the president, Sir Isaac Newton, and that on his advice no further action was taken.134

In France it has been widely claimed that Papin actually engined a boat and propelled it over the waters of the Weser by the force of steam. His biographer states that on the 24th September, 1707, Papin “embarquait sur le premier bateau à vapeur toute sa fortune.”135 But the statement is not correct. The misconception, like that which assigned to the Marquis of Worcester the invention of a steam-propelled vessel, was doubtless due to the fact that the inventor was known to be engaged in the study of the steam engine and of ship-propelling mechanism. The two things, though distinct in themselves, were readily combined in the minds of his admirers. It is generally agreed to-day, we think, even by his own countrymen, that Papin, though he may claim the honour of having first suggested the application of steam to ship propulsion, never himself achieved a practical success.

In the meantime Savery in England had produced his successful engine. In his case, too, the claim has been made that he first proposed steam propulsion for ships. But in his Miner’s Friend this able mechanician showed that he recognized the limited application of his steam engine. “I believe,” he says, “it may be made very useful to ships, but I dare not meddle with that matter; and leave it to the judgment of those who are the best judges of maritime affairs.” But in propulsion by hand-operated paddlewheels Savery was an enthusiastic believer. In 1698 he had published, in a book bearing the title, “Navigation Improv’d: Or the Art of Rowing Ships of all Rates, in Calms, with a more easy, swift, and steady Motion than Oars can,” a description of a mechanism consisting of paddlewheels formed of oars fitted radially to drumheads which were mounted on the two ends of an iron bar placed horizontally across the ship. This bar was geared by mortice wheels with another bar mounted vertically as the axis of a capstan; rotation of the capstan was thus transmitted to the paddlewheels. Savery fitted this mechanism to a wherry and carried out successful trials on the Thames before thousands of people. But the Navy Board would not consider it. They had incurred a loss, it appeared, on a horse tow-vessel which had been in use at Chatham a few years previously: a vessel which towed the greatest ships with the help of four, six, or eight horses, and which, incidentally, may have influenced Savery in adopting the term “horse power” as the unit of work for his steam engine. The sanguine inventor made great efforts to interest the authorities, but without avail; the Surveyor rejected the proposal. So in an angry mood Savery published his book, with a description of his mechanism and an account of his efforts to interest the authorities, to show how one man’s humour had obstructed his engine. “You see, Reader, what to trust to,” he concluded, “though you have found out an improvement as great to shipping as turning to windward, or the compass; unless you can sit round the green table in Crutched Friars, your invention is damned of course.”

The first detailed scheme for applying steam-power to ship propulsion was contained in the patent of Jonathan Hulls, in 1736. Though great credit is generally given to this inventor (who has even been dubbed the father of steam navigation), it does not appear that in reality he contributed much to the advancement of the problem; which was, indeed, still waiting on the development of the steam engine. Hulls’ notion, explained in a pamphlet which he published in 1737, was to connect the piston of a Newcomen engine by a rope gearing with some wheels mounted in the waist of the vessel, which wheels oscillated as the piston moved up and down. These wheels were in turn connected by rope gearing with a large fan-wheel mounted in a frame rigged out over the vessel’s stern, the fans in their lowest position dipping into the water. The oscillating motion of the inboard wheels was converted into a continuous ahead motion of the fan-wheel by means of a ratchet. With this machinery he designed to tow ships in harbours and rivers. It must, however, be remarked that the invention was never more than a paper project; and that if Hulls had tried to translate his ideas into three dimensions he would have encountered, in all probability, insuperable practical difficulties. One very original suggestion of his certainly deserves notice; as a special case he proposed that when the tow-boat was used in shallow rivers two cranks, fitted to the axis of his driving wheels, should operate two long poles of sufficient length to reach the bottom of the river; these trailing poles, moving alternately forward, would propel the vessel. Here is an early application of the crank. But in this case it will be noted that the crank is driven, and that it converts a rotary into a reciprocating motion; in short, it is an inversion of the driving crank which, as applied to the steam engine, was not invented till some years later.

As before remarked, the whole problem of steam propulsion waited upon the development of the steam engine. In the meantime the application of convenient forms of man power received considerable study, especially in France. In Bouguer’s Traité du Navire the problem was investigated of propulsion by blades or panels, hinged, and folding when not in use against the vessel’s sides; and in 1753 the prize offered by the Academy of Sciences for an essay on the subject was won by Daniel Bernouilli, for a plan on those lines. Euler proposed paddlewheels on a transverse shaft geared like Savery’s, by mortice wheels to a multiple capstan. Variations of this method were proposed by other writers and inventors, and some of the best intellects in France attacked the problem. But nothing definite resulted. The most valuable result of the discussion was the conclusion drawn by M. Gautier, a professor of mathematics at Nancy, that the strength of the crew was not sufficient to give any great velocity to a ship. He proposed, therefore, as the only means of attaining that object, the employment of a steam engine, and pointed out several ways in which it might be applied to produce a rotary motion.136

In the course of time the problem marched forward to a solution. The first great improvement in the steam engine which rendered it adaptable to marine use was the invention by Watt of the “double impulse”; the second, Pickard’s invention of the crank and connecting-rod. By virtue of these two developments the steam engine was made capable of imparting to a shaft a continuous rotary motion without the medium of noisy, brittle or inefficient gearing. As soon as engines having this power were placed on the public market attempts were made to mount them in boats and larger vessels; steam navigation was discerned as a possibility.

§

Of the many efforts which were made at the end of the eighteenth century to apply steam power to the propulsion of ships a striking feature is their complete independence from each other and from the results of prior experience and research. Little information is available as to the results of various experiments which were known to be carried on in France at this time, and, with all respect, it is improbable that they contributed in any way to the subsequent evolution of the steam vessel. The Abbé Darnal in 1781, M. de Jouffroi in 1782, and M. Desblancs in 1802 and 1803, proposed or constructed steamboats. M. de Jouffroi is said to have made several successful attempts on the Saone at Lyons; but the intervention of the Revolution put an end to his undertakings.

In Britain a successful attempt to apply the steam engine to the paddlewheel was made in 1788. In that year three men, combining initiative, financial resource, and a large measure of engineering ingenuity, proved the possibility of steam propulsion in an experiment singularly complete and of singularly little effect on subsequent progress. In the summer of ’87 a wealthy and inventive banker, Mr. Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, Edinburgh, had been making experiments in the Firth of Forth with a double vessel of his own invention, sixty feet long, which, when wind failed for sailing, was set in motion by two paddlewheels. These paddlewheels were fitted between the two hulls of the vessel and were worked by men, by means of a geared capstan. Miller believed that a boat furnished with paddlewheels and worked manually would be of great advantage for working in shallow rivers and canals. But the result of a sailing race between his boat and a custom-house wherry of Leith, in which his own sails were supplemented by the labours of four men at the wheels, convinced him that manpower was insufficient. His sons’ tutor, a Mr. Taylor, suggested the application of a steam engine. And being acquainted with an engineer named Symington, Taylor prevailed on his patron to engage him to mount a one-horse-power engine in a double pleasure boat, upon the lake at Dalswinton. The experiment was a complete success. “The vessel moved delightfully, and notwithstanding the smallness of the cylinder (4 inches diameter), at the rate of 5 miles an hour. After amusing ourselves a few days the engine was removed and carried into the house, where it remained as a piece of ornamental furniture for a number of years.”137 Determined to pursue the experiment, Miller ordered a replica of the original engine on a larger scale, and this engine, with a cylinder of 18 inches diameter, was erected at Carron and fitted to a larger boat. This also was successful. But no further trials were made after ’89; for Patrick Miller, who had spent a large sum in order to establish the feasibility of the invention, decided to close his investigations, and to turn to other pursuits.

No further attempt was made in Great Britain until 1801, when Lord Dundas engaged Symington to make a series of experiments on the substitution of steam power for horse towage of barges on the Forth and Clyde canal: experiments which resulted in the Charlotte Dundas. In this celebrated vessel a double-acting Watt engine, with its 22-inch diameter cylinder mounted horizontally on the deck, actuated, through a simple connecting-rod and a crank with a 4-foot throw, a paddlewheel which was carried in a centre-line recess at the stern. In March, ’03, Symington in the Charlotte Dundas towed two 70-ton vessels nineteen miles against a strong head wind in six hours. Success seemed assured to him. His reputation was already high, and now an invitation came from the Duke of Bridgewater for eight similar tow-boats to ply on his canal. But the inventor’s hopes were disappointed. The Duke died suddenly, and the governing body of the Forth and Clyde canal vetoed the further use of steam vessels for fear of the damage the waves might cause the banks. Other bodies took the same view, and thus came to an end an important passage in the history of steam navigation. It is remarkable, considering the efforts which had been made by inventors from the sixteenth century onwards to improve on oar-propulsion for military purposes, that Miller, Symington, and their friends do not seem to have envisaged any use for steamboats other than as tugs on canals. It is remarkable that in the presence of this initial success neither the government nor the public showed any realization of the possibilities which it unfolded; that no attempt was made by commercial enterprise—even if, in the realm of naval strategy, such an innovation was regarded as impolitic or impracticable138—to develop its advantages and to secure an undisputed lead in the new application of steam power.

It was in America that the most persistent and continuous development took place, quite independently of efforts elsewhere and almost contemporaneously with those above described. America, whose geographical conditions made water transport relatively far more important than it was in Great Britain, lent a ready ear to the schemes of inventors. In 1784 James Rumsey, and shortly afterwards John Fitch, had already laid plans before General Washington for the propulsion of boats by steam.

John Fitch, whose original idea was a steamboat propelled by means of an endless chain of flat boards, afterwards experimented with an arrangement, “borrowed no doubt from the action of Indians in a canoe,” of paddles held vertically in frames mounted along the sides of the boat and operated by cranks. In 1786 a boat thus equipped made a successful trial on the Delaware, and in the following year a larger boat, fitted with a horizontal double-acting engine with a 12-inch cylinder and a 3-foot stroke, giving motion to six paddles on each side, was publicly tried on the same river. The speed attained was very small. At last in 1790, still protected by a patent which granted him a temporary monopoly in steamboat building, Fitch succeeded in building a boat which was an undisputed mechanical success. Discarding the paddle-frame and adopting a beam engine to drive paddle-boards at the stern, he produced a steamboat which, after being tested and credited with eight knots’ speed on a measured mile in front of Water Street, Philadelphia, in the presence of the governor and council of Pennsylvania, ran two or three thousand miles as a passenger boat on the Delaware before being dismantled. It was a considerable achievement. But the excessive weight and space absorbed by the machinery prevented the boat from being a financial success; and, after a journey to France, then distracted by the Revolution, Fitch returned home to America and ended his days a disappointed and a broken man. Nevertheless, the work he did was of service to others. He proved that the ponderous nature of the machinery was the greatest obstacle to the propulsion of small craft by steam, and from his failure deduced the conclusion, on which later inventors were able to build, that the solution of the problem lay in the scale: that, “it would be much easier to carry a first-rate man-of-war by steam at an equal rate than a small boat.”139

James Rumsey, a Virginian, carried out in 1775 the first practical trials of water-jet propulsion, a small boat of his plying the Potomac at a small speed by means of a steam pump which sucked in water at the bow and threw it out at the stern. But as he felt himself obstructed in further experiments by the patent rights which had been given his rival Fitch he came to England; where, financed by a wealthy compatriot and aided by James Watt himself, he produced in ’93 a boat which on the Thames attained a speed of over four knots. Unfortunately Rumsey died in the middle of his experiments.

An individual of extraordinary qualities had now turned his attention to the problem of steam propulsion. In that same year a young American artist, Robert Fulton, who had come to England to work under the guidance of his countryman Benjamin West, wrote to Lord Stanhope informing him of a plan which he had formed for moving ships by steam. Lord Stanhope, well known as a scientific inventor, had recently been experimenting with a vessel fitted with a 12-horse-power engine of Boulton and Watt’s working a propeller which operated like the foot of an aquatic bird. A correspondence ensued. Fulton, whose self-confidence equalled his originality, illustrated by drawings and diagrams his ideas on the subject. At first, he said, he thought of applying the force of an engine to an oar or paddle which, hinged on the counter at the stern, by a reciprocating motion would urge the vessel ahead. But on experimenting with a clockwork model he found that, though the boat sprang forward, the return stroke of the paddle interfered with the continuity of the motion. “I then endeavoured,” he wrote, “to give it a circular motion, which I effected by applying two paddles on an axis. Then the boat moved by jerks; there was too great a space between the strokes. I then applied three paddles, forming an equilateral triangle to which I gave a circular motion.” These paddles he proposed to place in cast-iron wheels one on each side of the boat and mounted on the same shaft at some height over the waterline, so that each wheel would “answer as a fly and brace to the perpendicular oars.” And he stated that he found, from his experiments with models, that three or six oars gave better results than any other number. From which it is clear that the paddlewheel was evolved by Fulton from the simple paddle independently of suggestion received from previous inventors.

Some time was to elapse before the results of his experiments were utilized. Attracted by the boom in canal construction then in vogue Fulton devoted his mind to that subject; though in this connection the idea of steam-propelled boats still occupied him, as is shown by a letter he wrote in ’94 to Messrs. Boulton and Watt, asking for an estimate of costs and dimensions of “an engine with a rotative movement of the purchase of 3 or 4 horses which is designed to be placed in a boat.” From England he went to Paris, to try his fortune at half a dozen projects. In ’98 he was experimenting on the Seine with a screw propeller—“a fly of four parts similar to that of a smoke-jack,” which gave promising results. This screw propeller, however, was as yet unrecognized as the propulsive medium of the future. It had already been patented in England by Bramah in 1785—“a wheel with inclined fans, or wings, similar to the fly of a smoke-jack or the vertical sails of a windmill”; and, hand-operated, it had actually been used in America in 1776 by Bushnell in connection with his submarine. But in 1802 Fulton had decided against the screw, and in favour of the paddlewheel.

It was in this year that an introduction to an influential compatriot, himself an experimenter in steam propulsion, gave Fulton the opportunity to display his talents to their mutual advantage. Chancellor Livingston, U.S. Minister to France, was aware of the enormous advantages which would accrue to America (and to the happy inventor) if steam propulsion could be achieved economically. With Fulton’s aid he decided on building an experimental steam vessel in France, with a view to transferring to America for commercial enterprise the perfected results of their labour. A partnership was formed, the work proceeded; but the experimental steamboat, whose scantlings were unequal to supporting the weight of the 8-horsepower machinery placed on board, sank at her moorings in a storm. A second boat, stronger and bigger, attained complete success. Fulton promptly wrote to Messrs. Boulton and Watt asking them to export to America a 24-horse-power engine complete with all accessories, in accordance with his sketches; and with a brass air-pump suitable for working in salt water. Then, going himself to England, he visited Messrs. Boulton and Watt and gleaned what information he could as to the properties of their machinery; studied the newly published results of Colonel Beaufoy’s experiments on ship form and fluid resistance; and journeyed to Scotland to visit Symington and see the famous Charlotte Dundas.

Armed with this knowledge, with all the experience of Rumsey and Fitch, and with the data from his own trials, Fulton brought to a successful solution the problem of steam propulsion on a commercial scale. It has been remarked that there was no element in the Clermont or her successors so original in conception that it would entitle Fulton to be regarded as the inventor of steam navigation. Nor did he himself claim to be such. He was successful in fitting together the elements, the inventions of others. Science is measurement, and Fulton applied his data and measured with great insight, adapting his elements in the right manner and proportion to form an efficient whole. “He was the first to treat the elementary factors in steamship design—dimensions, form, horse-power, speed, etc.—in a scientific spirit; to him belongs the credit of having coupled the boat and engine as a working unit.” From Fitch he had learned the economy of size, and the advantages of enlarging the scale of operations; from Beaufoy, the importance of a fair underwater form, with a sharp bow and stern. From Symington, who generously took him for a trip in the Charlotte Dundas, he could not fail to have gleaned much practical advice and information; it is remarkable, in this connection, that, after a sight of Symington’s horizontal cylinder with its simple connecting-rod drive to the stern wheel, he should have adhered to the vertical cylinder and the bell-crank or beam for the transmission of the force: an initial divergence which was perpetuated, and which became the hall-mark distinguishing American from English practice for some years to come. Most of his knowledge he gained by his activities in England, and many writers have contested a claim—which so far as is known was never made by him—to the invention of the steamship. His achievements were well defined and legitimately executed, and the remarkable insight and initiative which he displayed in adapting the labours of others to serve his own utilitarian ends cannot, surely, deserve the opprobrium cast on them by some of the nineteenth-century writers. Prometheus, it is said, stole fire from heaven. Fulton bought his in the open market; obtaining his engine in Soho and his boiler in Smithfield he transported them across the Atlantic, and in 1807 produced the Clermont.

The Clermont, a flat-bottomed wall-sided craft 166 feet in length and only 18 feet in beam, steamed at a speed of five knots from New York to Albany, in August, 1807; to the surprise of thousands of spectators who knew her as “Fulton’s folly,” and whose shouts of derision gave place to silence, and then to a chorus of applause and congratulation. Many of the inhabitants of the banks of the Hudson had never heard even of an engine, much less of a steamboat. “A monster moving on the waters, defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke! The first steamboat used dry pine wood for fuel, which sends forth a column of ignited vapour many feet above the flue, and, whenever the fire is stirred, a galaxy of sparks fly off which, in the night, have a very brilliant and beautiful appearance.”140 The Clermont was followed by others, each an improvement on the last; until in 1816, so rapid was the process of evolution, the Chancellor Livingston was built, ship-shaped, with figure-head and fine bows, faired sides and tapering stern, with engines of 75-horse-power and with promenade decks and accommodation for 120 passengers. Certain characteristics now showed themselves in all American construction. The engines were mounted with cylinders vertical, their rods actuating large overhead beams which transmitted the force of the steam to the paddlewheels. The boats were made very broad to give the necessary stability, the machinery being carried high; and to reduce their underwater resistance as much as possible their bodies were made full near the water-line and lean below. For the same reason, and since the principal weights were concentrated amidships, fine forward and after bodies were given them; a rising floor, and a deep draught if necessary. The position of the paddlewheels was limited by that of the engine. Experience showed that where two paddles on each side were used their relative position had to be adjusted nicely, otherwise the rear paddles, acting on accelerated water, might actually be a disadvantage. Much difficulty was caused with accidents to paddles; on the Mississippi the wheels were generally mounted astern, where they were protected from floating logs of timber. In some cases double hulls were built, with the paddlewheels between them; but owing to the rush of water on which they acted these wheels were not very efficient.141

Fulton had so far built steam vessels only for commercial traffic. He now came near to revolutionizing naval warfare with them. In 1813, in the middle of the war with this country, he presented to the President his plan for a steam-propelled armoured warship for coast defence, a design of an invulnerable vessel of thirty guns, twin-hulled, with a 120-horse-power engine in one hull, a boiler in the other, and a single paddlewheel in a space between the two; double-ended, flat-bottomed, and protected by a belt of solid timber 58 inches thick. Her armament was to consist, in addition to thirty 32-pounders, of submarine guns or columbiads, carried at each end and firing 100-pound projectiles below the water-line. Named the Demologos, this monstrous vessel was nearly completed when the war came to an end. It was too late for use. The treaty of Ghent being signed, interest in armaments immediately evaporated. Nevertheless, in the following year a trial of the Demologos was carried out, which showed that a speed of five and a half knots could be attained with her. The Demologos, now renamed the Fulton, served no useful purpose. She was laid up in Brooklyn Navy Yard, and many years elapsed before steam war vessels were built again in America.

§

In the meantime progress had been made on this side of the Atlantic. Stimulated by Fulton’s commercial successes, Thomas Bell of Helensburgh built in 1812 a vessel of thirty tons’ burden named the Comet, successfully propelled by a 3-horse-power engine which worked a paddlewheel on each beam. This “handsome vessel” was intended to ply between Glasgow and Greenock, to sail by the power of wind, air, and steam; and so it did, with fair financial success, with a square sail triced to the top of a tall smoke-stack: the first passenger steamer to ply in European waters. Shortly afterwards steam vessels were built which pushed out to the open sea. In 1815 the Argyle, built on the Clyde and renamed Thames on being purchased by a London company, made a voyage from Greenock to London which was the subject of much comment. On making the Cornish coast after a stormy run south, boats were seen by those on board making towards her with all possible speed in the belief that she was on fire! All the rocks commanding St. Ives were covered with spectators as she entered the harbour, and the aspect of the vessel, we are told, “appeared to occasion as much surprise amongst the inhabitants, as the ships of Captain Cook must have produced on his first appearance among the islands of the South Seas.” Next day the Thames, her 9-foot paddlewheels driven by a 16-horse-power engine, reached Plymouth, where the crews of all the vessels in the Sound filled the rigging, and the harbour-master was “struck with astonishment.” From Plymouth she steamed to Portsmouth, making the passage in twenty-three hours. So great was the swarm of vessels that crowded round her, that the port admiral was asked to send a guard to preserve order. She steamed into harbour, with wind and tide, at from twelve to fourteen knots. A court-martial was sitting in the Gladiator frigate, but the whole court except the president adjourned to inspect the strange visitor. Next day the port admiral sent off a guard and band; and soon afterwards he followed, accompanied by three admirals, eighteen post captains, and a large number of ladies.142

The success of the Thames led to the immediate building of other and larger steamers. In ’17 the son of James Watt purchased a 94-foot boat, the Caledonia, fitted her with 28-horse-power machinery driving 10-foot paddlewheels, and for a pleasure trip proceeded in her up the Rhine as far as Coblentz. From this time onwards steam navigation for commercial purposes progressed rapidly. In 1818 a steamboat made regular voyages at sea; the Rob Roy, 90 tons, built by Denny of Dumbarton, with engines of 30 horse-power made by Napier, plied regularly between Holyhead and Dublin. In the same year the Savannah, a ship of 350 tons’ burden built and fitted with auxiliary steam machinery at New York, crossed the Atlantic, partly under steam; her paddlewheels with their cast-iron frame and axletree successfully withstanding heavy weather. In ’21 the postmaster-general introduced a steam service for the mails at Dover and Holyhead; and in the following year there were steamboats running between London and Leith, and other seaports. The experience of the Holyhead packets was of special value, as it proved that steam vessels could go to sea in weather which would keep sailing vessels in harbour. Soon after this the question was raised of employing steam power to shorten the passage between England and the East, as well as of the navigation by steam of the great Indian rivers. Steam superseded sails in the government mail service between Falmouth, Malta and Corfu; everywhere commercial enterprise was planning new lines of steamships and new possibilities of ocean travel. In ’25 a barque belonging to Mr. Pelham, afterwards Earl of Yarborough, was fitted with steam machinery as an auxiliary and made the voyage to India. The plash of the paddlewheel was then heard for the first time in Oriental waters.

By this time the great question of steam as applied to naval ends had arrived to agitate the Admiralty.

In ’22 M. Paixhans discharged his revolutionary treatise at the French nation, advocating, with a wealth of argument, a navy of steam-propelled warships armed with a few shell guns. Six years later a warning echo reverberated through Whitehall. Captain Sir John Ross published a volume on “Steam Navigation, with a System of the Naval Tactics peculiar to it,” in which, though his name was not mentioned, the arguments of M. Paixhans were set forth from an opposite point of view. The two books, starting with the same arguments, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions. While Paixhans claimed that steam power offered important advantages to France, the English writer reached the gratifying conclusion that the change which steam would effect in naval affairs might be rendered favourable to this country. For coast defence alone steam vessels would be invaluable. The colonies would be safer from piracy. Passages, at present difficult or dangerous, would be made with speed and safety. Incidentally, an entirely new system of tactics would be evolved by the coming of steam; each ship-of-the-line would be escorted by a steam vessel, to tow her into position, and concentration of force would be obtained by such means as, harnessing two steamers to one sailing ship, so as to tow one half of the fleet to a position of vantage over the enemy. After the main action the steamers would themselves attack each other; and so on. Both French and English writers agreed that there would be a reversion to the ancient warfare of the galleys; the steamer, whose paddlewheels lent themselves readily to a pivot gun armament and to great powers of manœuvring, would always attack like a bull, facing the enemy, its bows presenting one or more large and well-protected cannon. Sir John Ross regarded the steamer, however, essentially as an auxiliary. M. Paixhans took a more sanguine view. “At this moment,” he wrote in May, ’22, “the English admiralty are building two steam vessels, each of thirty horsepower, one at Portsmouth and one at Plymouth, for tugging sailing ships held up by contrary winds. They commence by being the servitors of the ships-of-the-line; but it is their destiny to become their masters.”143

But the views of Sir John Ross did not find favour at the Admiralty. In the presence of the revolution the authorities continued to steer a policy of passive resistance to all changes and methods which might have the effect of depreciating existing naval material; and Lord Melville himself penned, as a reply to the Colonial Office to a request for a steam mail service between two Mediterranean ports, the principle which guided the Board. They felt it their bounden duty (he wrote in 1828) to discourage, to the utmost of their ability, the employment of steam vessels, as they considered that the introduction of steam was calculated to strike a fatal blow at the naval supremacy of the Empire.144145

So far, then, new methods of propulsion had not been greeted with enthusiasm. Yet to the First Lord himself was due the utilization of steam for minor purposes in the navy. In spite of the non-success of Lord Stanhope’s experimental “ambi-navigator” ship in 1795, Lord Melville in 1815 caused the three-masted schooner Congo, designed for a surveying expedition to the river of that name, to be fitted with paddlewheels and machinery by Boulton and Watt, expressly to try it in a ship-of-war. This machinery was so large and ponderous that, not only did it usurp one-third of the space aboard the ship, but brought her down so deep as only to give four knots through the water. It was all removed again before she sailed, and sent to Chatham for use in the dockyard. In the following year we find Mr. Brunel in correspondence with his lordship on the question of steam navigation. Brunel wrote quoting evidence to the effect that paddlewheels could be made of sufficient strength and stiffness to withstand the violence of seas and gales; to which Lord Melville replied that the Board deemed it unnecessary to enter, at that time, into the question of steam navigation generally, but desired his views on the application of steam to the towing of ships-of-war out of harbour against contrary winds and tides: which would be a matter of great advantage to his Majesty’s service. Brunel answered recommending that the steamer Regent, plying between Margate and London, be chartered during the winter and employed on this work, as a particular experiment.

“From this period may be dated the introduction of steam navigation into the English navy. Lord Melville was now so fully convinced of the great utility which the naval service would derive from it, that he ordered a small vessel to be built at Deptford, by Mr. Oliver Lang, to be called the Comet, of the burthen of 238 tons, and to have engines of 80 horse-power. She was built accordingly and ready for sea in 1822.”146 As a matter of fact, the first steamer actually brought into H.M. service was the Monkey, built at Rotherhithe in 1821; and she was followed by the more powerful Sprightly, built at Blackwall by Messrs. Wigram and Green in ’23. Gradually the use of these paddlewheel tugs extended, their tonnage and horse-power increased, and the Surveyor of the Navy and his master shipwrights began to divert their talents to a consideration of the small steamers.

For the reason stated by Lord Melville, steamers were at this time tolerated only for towing and other subsidiary duties; authority poured cold water on the idea of utilizing them as ships-of-war; and if steam could have been dispensed with altogether, everyone would have been the better pleased.

Even at this period the idea of using manual labour, applied in an effective manner, for towing and bringing into position sailing warships had not been altogether abandoned. In 1802 the transport Doncaster had been propelled at a slow speed in Malta harbour by the invention of a Mr. Shorter: a screw propeller rigged over the stern. In 1820 experiments were made at Portsmouth with paddlewheels manually worked, and in ’29 Captain C. Napier took his ship Galatea out of Portsmouth Harbour by use of paddlewheels geared to winches which were worked by the crew. One hundred and thirty men were able to give her a speed of 2½ knots, while the full crew of a hundred and ninety produced a speed of three. After this doubtful success another trial was held—a race between the Galatea, propelled by paddles, and the Briton, towed by boats—which Galatea won. Captain Napier’s paddlewheels afterwards did good work for his ship in other quarters of the world.147 Nothing resulted, however, from his initiative in this connection; only was emphasized the enormous superiority of steam-propelled vessels as tugs, in which capacity they had already made their appearance, and from which they were destined to evolve, in the next decade, into fighting vessels of considerable force.

By 1830 steam navigation had made significant strides along the lines of commercial development. In that year a service of steam mail boats started to run at regular intervals between Falmouth and Corfu, covering the distance in about one-fourth of the time which had been taken by the sailing packets; a Dutch government steamer, the Curaçoa, built in England, had since ’27 been running between Holland and the East Indies; and already the Indian Government had built an armed steamer, designed as the forerunner of others which were to connect Bombay with Suez and thus to place India in more direct communication with England.

The navy was still represented only by paddle-tugs. With a change of administration, however, came a change in Admiralty policy. The new Board took a distinctly progressive view. It was agreed that, if foreign powers initiated the building of steam war-vessels, this country must build as well, and not only as well but better: a policy tersely summed up by Admiral Sir T. M. Hardy in his saying, “Happen what will, England must take the lead.” Certain objections to steam vessels as naval units which had hitherto held a vogue were now seen to be ill-founded or baseless. In particular it was discovered, not without surprise to many, that steamers could be manœuvred without difficulty. A paddlewheel steamer, the Medea, gained her commander considerable credit from the skill with which she was navigated from the Thames into the basin at Woolwich dockyard, which proved that steamers could be steered and manœuvred better than sailing ships. In ’33 the construction of steamers was placed in the hands of the Surveyor.148

But small progress was made. One reason alleged was that the shape of hull which the Surveyor had made peculiarly his own was ill-adapted for steam machinery. “Nothing more unpropitious,” observed a later writer, “for Sir William Symond’s mode of construction than the introduction of steam can be conceived. His sharp bottoms were the very worst possible for the reception of engines; his broad beam and short length the most unfavourable qualities that could be devised for steam propulsion. As much as he could, he adhered to his principles.... Rather than yield to the demands of the new power, he sacrificed the armaments of his vessels, kept down the size of their engines, and recklessly exposed the machinery to shot should they go into action.”149 There doubtless was something in this criticism. And yet, as we have seen, experience in America led to a form of hull for paddle steamers in many respects approaching that condemned as being favoured by the Surveyor!

Another and more valid reason for the slow progress made lay in the inherent unsuitability of the paddlewheel steamer as a substitute for the large sailing warship. Not only did the paddlewheels offer a large and vulnerable surface to destruction by enemy shot, but the wheels and their machinery could not be embodied in a ship design without interference with its sails and sailing qualities and, still more, without serious sacrifice of broadside armament. The machinery monopolized a large section of the midship space, the huge wheels covered the sides and interfered with the training of those guns for which room remained. The problem of arming steam-vessels was novel and difficult of solution. The guns must be few and therefore powerful. Hence it appeared that paddlewheel steamers, notwithstanding the advantages they possessed of speed and certainty of motion, could only sustain a small concentrated armament, consisting of the heaviest and most powerful ordnance: guns of large calibre, which possessed large power of offence at ranges where the broadside cannon would be deprived of much of their efficiency. Hence in ’31 a 10-inch shell gun of 84 hundredweight was expressly designed and cast for this purpose; and all the classes of steamers in early use in the navy were armed with it until, in ’41, it was displaced by the 68-pounder pivot gun, which then became the principal pivot gun of the service. Thus the development of paddlewheel machinery reacted on the development of artillery. The steamer was a stimulus to the development of large ordnance worked on the pivot system. And this form of armament in turn influenced the form of the ship. The main weights—those of the propelling machinery—were already concentrated in the waist of the vessel, and it was now possible so to place the few pivot guns that the ends of the vessel were left very lightly loaded. Thus it was possible to give unprecedentedly fine lines to the new steamers, a sharp and lengthened bow and a well-tapered run: an improved form of body by the use of which high speeds were obtained. In the case of commercial steamships the advantages of fine lines had already been recognized, and their designers had been free to give them a form which would allow of a high speed being attained; but in the case of war vessels designed to carry a broadside armament the limitations imposed by the heavily weighted ends had hitherto prevented other than bluff bows and sterns being given them. But now the subject of ship form came under general consideration, and the new conditions led to a more serious study of the laws governing the motion of bodies through water.

Year after year the size of steamers grew.150 And as with size the cost of construction and maintenance increased, the question pressed itself more and more clearly—what was the naval utility of such expensive and lightly armed vessels? Numerous attempts were made to produce a form of paddlewheel steamer which would carry a broadside armament comparable with that which a sailing vessel of the same burthen would bear. In 1843 the Penelope, 46 guns, was cut in halves at Chatham and lengthened by the addition of about 65 feet, in which space engines of 650 horse-power were installed. But the extra displacement failed to compensate for the weight of the machinery; the altered vessel drew more water than had been anticipated and, though various alterations were made to minimize the effects of this, the experiment was not a success and was not repeated. In ’45 a steam frigate called the Odin was built by order of the Board. “The results aimed at in constructing this ship were—capability of carrying broadside armament; diminished rolling, in comparison with any war steamers then built; and less draught of water in relation to the size. These objects were accomplished; but as the position of the machinery and boilers is partially above the water-line, and the propellers are exposed to danger in broadside fighting, the ship is necessarily imperfect in these two conditions, as well as in the position of the sails; for in this case the proper place of the mainmast was occupied by the boilers, and consequently the centre of effort of the wind on the sails is in a wrong place.”151 In the same year the Sidon was laid down, the design being on the lines of the Odin but modified in accordance with the ideas of Sir Charles Napier: with greater depth of hold and with machinery below the water-line. Iron tanks were placed in the hold for carrying the coals; by filling these with water when empty the steamer was kept at a more or less constant draught, a matter of considerable importance to the efficient working of the paddlewheels. In other respects, however, the Sidon was unsatisfactory. She was so crank that the addition of ballast and a modification of her armament were necessary. Her engines were cramped, her boilers of insufficient power and of unsuitable design, and her coal capacity too small to give her a useful radius of action. For the attainment of all the properties specified it was subsequently calculated and shown that a much larger displacement was necessary. Just as Fitch had discovered and Fulton had discerned, increase in scale reduced many of the difficulties encountered in designing heavily weighted steam vessels. Hence the success of the Terrible. In the case of the Terrible, a large paddlewheel frigate of 1,850 tons and 800 horse-power built in 1845, it was clear that an increase of size had given a partial solution to the problem of designing a war-vessel with heavy and spacious propelling machinery, with adequate armament, and with full sail-power and all the properties of a sailing ship.

Still the steam war-vessel was not satisfactory. Her machinery usurped the weight and space required for armament, her cumbrous paddlewheels were far too exposed to damage by shot or shell. And how to surmount these difficulties and reconcile the conflicting requirements of artillery and motive power, was a problem which cost the country years of unsuccessful experiments and millions of money. “It was,” said Dahlgren, “the riddle of the day.”

§

The problem was solved by the adoption of the screw propeller.

Since Archimedes’ day the screw had been known in the form of a pump, and in two familiar objects—the smoke-jack and the windmill—the principle of the driven screw had been for centuries widely employed. In connection with ship propulsion the screw appears to have been tried at an early date, like the Marquis of Worcester’s water-wheel, in the form of a mill. Among the machines and inventions approved by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris between the years 1727 and 1731 is one described as a screw, suspended in a framework between two boats, which when acted upon by the current was intended to warp the vessels upstream, the motion of the screw being transmitted to a winch barrel on which a tow-rope was wound. But so far as is known no attempt had been made at this date to use the screw directly as a propeller. In 1768 its use in this form was suggested in a work entitled Théorie de la Vis d’Archimede.152 And shortly after, as we have already seen, Bramah in England and Bushnell in America had patented, and the latter had actually put into use, the screw as a means of propelling vessels through water. We have seen, too, that Fulton successfully adapted the screw propeller, on a small scale, in one of his experimental steamboats. Sporadic attempts were made in the early days of the nineteenth century both in this country and in America to drive ships by means of screws, both manually and by the medium of steam, some of which were attended with a certain measure of success.153 Yet some time was to elapse before screw propulsion gained recognition. Doubt as to the efficiency of a screw’s action, ignorance as to the shape of the vessel required and as to the best position for the propeller, difficulty in accommodating the early long-stroke steam engine to drive direct an under-water propeller shaft; inertia, prejudice and vested interest, all seem to have played a part in delaying the adoption of what, when it did come, was acknowledged to be the only suitable form of steam propulsion for war vessels.