The three chief advantages of an iron ship were firstly, that her hull would stand unlimited driving, especially into a head sea; secondly, she had more room for cargo than a wooden ship of the same size; and thirdly, she was safer from that dreaded scourge at sea—fire.
Increase in the Size of Ships.
The chief change brought about by iron has been the increase in the size of ships. The old-style shipowner held that a very big ship was a very big mistake.
When the Jason, a 1500-ton ship, went out to Calcutta at the beginning of the seventies, Patrick Keith, of Gladstone, Wyllie & Co., wrote to the Carmichaels, her owners, saying that she was far too big a ship for the Indian trade, and that Smith’s smart little 1000-ton “Cities” were quite large enough. Yet on her last voyage to the Hooghly, 20 years later, the Jason was by far the smallest deep-water sailing ship in the port of Calcutta.
The difficulty of working wood in big sizes kept down the tonnage in the old days, but with the introduction of iron this difficulty was at once removed. And iron masts and yards in the place of Oregon pine, and wire in the place of the tremendous hemp shrouds, solved the problem of rigging strain—thus, with sail as with steam, the first result from the use of iron was the steady increase in individual tonnage.
Sail Plan Alterations.
Iron masts and wire stays caused a big change in the sail plan of the full-rigged ship. The increased strength led at first to a certain amount of over-masting as well as over-carrying of sail, with the result that many a new clipper was dismasted on her maiden voyage. 1874 was a specially disastrous year in this way. No less than seven ships lost their masts bound out to Australia, and the Loch Ard was twice a victim. It was her maiden voyage, and she lost her “gossamer,” as Joseph Conrad poetically calls it, before she had cleared the land. She put back to the Clyde and refitted, only to again lose her masts running the easting down. About this date also a great number of iron ships were posted as missing, notably the Africa, Asia, Loch Laggan (ex-America), Cairo and Great Queensland. No doubt some of these losses were due to dismasting.
It was not only that the ships were tremendously lofty, but their yards became squarer and squarer, until it was found that stunsails were a luxury. In fact, partly for this reason and partly owing to the competition of steam and the resulting need for economy, flying kites of all descriptions were given up and by the early eighties even a fore topmast stunsail was looked upon as a curiosity.
The lesson of rigging strain had to be learnt with the iron clippers, just as it had had to be with the early wood clippers, but it was not long before the seas were crowded by perfectly sparred iron ships. Specially worthy of mention for perfection of sail plan were Carmichael’s beautiful main skysail clippers, such as the Golden Fleece, Jason, Mermerus, Thessalus, Argonaut and others.