Sailing ships

by E. Keble Chatterton

The progress which had been made in the ships of the Royal Navy had its counterpart in the mercantile marine. Gradually through the centuries since the Crusades had opened up the Mediterranean to English trade our ancestors had acquired bigger and bigger ships for the purpose of carrying merchandise. The discovery of the West Indies, of North America, the Newfoundland Fisheries, and subsequently the founding of the East India Company, had step by step developed the ships which were used for purposes of commerce. Especially favourable for merchant shipping had been the East and West Indian trade. The voyages and discoveries made by Dampier, Anson and Cook increased still further the scope of English trade, and, consequently, the need for both ships and seafaring men became greater. Wars obviously arrested the progress already made, but by 1821 the tonnage of the shipping of the British Empire amounted to the significant sum of 2,560,203, in spite of the keen competition now made by the United States. The East India Company at the beginning of the nineteenth century occupied the position now held in the twentieth century by the principal companies owning the biggest liners to-day; that is to say, the largest and finest merchant ships belonged to them. And profiting by the monopoly which they owned, paying very handsome profits, they could afford to build their ships well and strong. Consequently it is not to be wondered that the East Indiamen from the commencement of the century down to the last of their race became historical for their building and capabilities. Fig. 70 shows the Newcastle, a well-known East Indiaman of the early part of the nineteenth century.

Photo. by Hanfstaengl.

During the eighteenth century brigs of about a couple of hundred tons had been used for coasting trade, and especially for carrying coals from Shields and Newcastle: but with the advent of the steam collier the days of these ships were numbered. The illustration in Fig. 71 is from the painting by Turner in the National Gallery entitled Spithead: Boat’s Crew recovering an Anchor. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1809, and is here included in order to provide a contemporary picture of the full-rigged ships of the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Not till about 1810 was iron introduced for knees, breast-hooks and pillars, although the use of iron had been tried for the whole structure in a small boat as far back as 1787. The real introduction of building ships of iron occurred in 1829, yet it was not till the ’forties that opposition was entirely swept aside and iron came to be recognised as a suitable material for ships.

Fig. 72. A West Indiaman of 1820.

But we have digressed from the period before us. If the East India trade was a monopoly, commerce with the West Indies was unfettered by any such condition. Not unnaturally, therefore, competition was keen on this route, and as a result a number of excellent cargo-carrying ships were built, able to endure the trying conditions of the Atlantic without being deficient in the virtue of speed. The illustration in Fig. 72, taken from a print dated 1820, in the British Museum, will give some idea of the appearance of a contemporary West Indiaman. Gradually the similarity between purely mercantile and exclusively naval ships was disappearing, and we shall see presently how this gulf was widened still further.

Sir Robert Seppings was succeeded by Captain Sir William Symonds, R.N., who was Surveyor to the Royal Navy from 1832 to 1847, years full of importance in the history of the sailing ship. We have referred more than once to the slavish copying of French models which had been a feature of our naval architecture. This was now to end. Just as before, and many times after, England had shown herself to possess a genius not so much for inventiveness as for improving on the ideas of others, so now she began to design and build vessels that could not be surpassed even by the French themselves. During Symonds’ régime the golden age of the wooden walls of England was reached. It was he who was responsible for the design of such ships as the Vernon (fifty guns), the Queen, and about one hundred and eighty others. Seaworthiness combined with speed were their outstanding virtues, and these he obtained by improving their underwater lines and making them less heavy and clumsy.[110] Internally the ships were constructed so as to provide more room and air. Symonds completed the work of Seppings in getting rid of the mediæval stern which had lingered with certain modifications for so long a period. Instead of the circular, he gave his ships an elliptical stern, and devised a system whereby not only were the different spars of one ship interchangeable, but the spars of different ships and different classes of ships. There is a very fine large model of his Queen in the Greenwich Museum which has been rigged with the greatest regard to accuracy in every possible detail, so perhaps in studying her we shall get as good an example of Symonds’ ships as we can desire. Built in 1839, this 110-gun ship had a tonnage of 3104. Her length was 204 feet 2½ inches, her breadth 60 feet 0½ inch, her depth 23 feet 9 inches, and she carried a crew of 900. She had been laid down as early as 1833, and her name had originally been the Royal Frederick, but after the accession of Queen Victoria she was named Queen at her launching. Later, in 1859, she was given the addition of a screw propeller.

In the Greenwich model she is seen as a sailing ship pure and simple, with three decks. As to her rigging I have had the pleasure of talking with more than one of those who served in this, the first three-decker that was launched during the reign of Victoria. One of the first points that strikes one is that the Queen is seen to have relinquished the historic hempen cable for the chain. The rounded bow instead of the square shape already alluded to is immediately obvious. The yard of the spritsail athwart the bowsprit still remains, although this sail remained longer in the merchant service than in the Navy, being used but rarely in the latter at this late period. She possesses a bowsprit in three parts, i.e., bowsprit proper, jib-boom and flying-boom. To encounter the downward strain the ship by now has also a dolphin-striker. The Queen carried stun’sails (studding-sails) of course, square in shape, which were often weighted down by shot at the outboard end. Many merchant ships of that time, however, had them cut not square but triangular, and these were then set, not as the modern yacht sets her spinnaker with the apex of the triangle at the top, but at the bottom. In the edition of “Falconer’s Marine Dictionary” revised by Burney, and published three years before the Queen was laid down, he speaks of and illustrates stun’sails only for the courses, topsails, and t’gallant sails. Royal studding sails most probably never were seen, although I notice that E. W. Cooke, R.A., whose life was covered by the period between 1811 and 1880, who was one of the most faithful marine artists of the time, whose father was well known as an engraver of Turner’s pictures, who himself was also at one time largely engaged on similar work, has an illustration showing a British frigate with both t’gallant and royal stuns’ls. It seems unlikely that so accurate an artist as Cooke should make such a mistake, although the weight of evidence is decidedly against him.