Steamships and their story

by E. Keble Chatterton

STERN OF THE “ARCHIMEDES.”

From the Model in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

THE “NOVELTY” (1839).

From the Model in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Now the introduction of the propeller was not so simple an event as the reader might imagine. Ordinarily, one is tempted to argue that it was merely a case of putting the power aft instead of at either side, as in the use of the paddle-wheels. But, in fact, the introduction of the screw opened up a new set of problems connected with ship design. In the early days the design of a ship’s stern, both in the sailing ship and the steamer, was badly neglected. Later on the improved lines of the clipper sailing ships certainly did much to improve matters. I referred at the beginning of the previous chapter to the manner in which a vessel going ahead moves the water in which she floats, and how the eddies round the stern impede her advance. Now when a propeller revolves, much of its power is, even nowadays, wasted by what is called “slip”—that is to say, by the yielding of the water so that the screw does not progress to the full extent of its “pitch.” (The “pitch” of a propeller is the amount of distance which is represented by one whole turn of the thread. We could measure, for instance, the “pitch” of a corkscrew by the distance which it would penetrate in a cork.) Even after years of experiments and improvements the wake at the end of a steamship tends to reduce the speed of the water past the propeller, but when first the screw experiments were conducted the design of the afterbody of a ship’s hull was so carelessly considered that the “slip” of the propeller was considerable. There is also to be taken into account the fact that by the rounding in of the “stream lines” at the stern the vessel receives a pressure which helps her forward. When, however, a propeller is added to a ship and set in motion it disturbs this helping-forward movement, and in a ship fitted with only a single screw this disturbance is even greater than in a twin-screw steamer, because the latter has her propellers placed well out, away from the hull. We need not here pursue the subject further; it is enough now to show that every improvement in the steamship began a new chapter of problems, introduced difficulties that could never have been anticipated, which time and patience alone can solve satisfactorily.

And so we come to the construction of the Great Britain, of which the model is illustrated [opposite page 126]. Let us recollect that it was only in 1836 that the little six-ton launch Francis Smith had been built, and that it was only three years later that the Archimedes showed by her successful voyages that the screw method of propulsion was no fanciful, impracticable theory. In this same year, 1839, there began to be built a still more wonderful screw steamer. The Great Western Steamship Company had already been so satisfied with the Great Western that they believed that a far larger ship would be even still more profitable. Therefore, Brunel was again consulted, and he reported that already the furthest limit of long ships built of wood was reached. There was no alternative but to construct her of iron, for the reasons that I explained some time since. Iron had already been used in ship-building for barges and also for steamboats, but on no large scale. Aaron Manby, in conjunction with Charles Napier, had built the first iron steamboat as far back as 1821. This ship had been conveyed in sections from Horseley, where she was made, to the Surrey Canal Dock, and there put together. After being tried on the Thames on May 9th, 1822, she steamed away the next month with Napier in command, and Manby as engineer, arriving in Paris on the eleventh of the same month. She was thus not merely the first iron steamship, but the first iron ship that ever put to sea. For the next twenty years she continued to ply on the Seine. Napier was the financier of the attempt to promote iron steamers on the French river, but by 1827 the slump in the steamboat had taken an acute form, and he was left a comparatively poor man. But in 1832 the Lady Lansdowne was built by John Laird of Birkenhead for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, and she was the first iron steamer constructed with the intention of performing sea-service. She was a paddle-boat, and measured 133 feet long, 17 feet wide, with a tonnage of 148 and a nominal horse-power of 90. Later still the Robert F. Stockton, to which we have alluded, was also of iron.

But the Great Britain was to be 322 feet long, with a beam of 50½ feet, and a displacement of 3,618 tons, with a cargo capacity of 1,200 tons, able to carry also 1,000 tons of coal, and 260 passengers. To build such a big lump of a boat as this was to be a very grave undertaking indeed. In fact, no contractor could be found who would undertake the construction of the ship or her engines. She was something out of the unknown; there were no data upon which to base calculations. Brunel, therefore, made out the designs and the Great Western Company with great daring proceeded to lay down plans for building her themselves at Bristol. This was in 1839. It was intended to give her the usual paddle-wheel engines, but the Archimedes arrived at this port, and the success of her screw propulsion caused Brunel to modify his designs so that the Great Britain should become not only the largest iron ship ever built, but the largest screw steamer.

It was originally intended to name her the Mammoth, but she had better been called the White Elephant, for all the use she was afterwards to her owners. Her rig was like nothing afloat, and the vocabulary of nautical terms contains no adequate description. [From our illustration] it will be seen that she had six masts. On all except the second she carried fore-and-aft canvas, but this second mast carried two yards and square sails. Forward she had a bowsprit and triangular headsails. In sail area alone she carried 1,700 yards of canvas, and in length the hull was 100 feet in excess of the largest line-of-battleship afloat. She was actually floated on July 19th, 1843, but it was not until December of the following year that she was able to enter the river, owing to the delay in the alteration of the dock. In the meantime her engines had been put aboard, and on July 26th, 1845, after trips to London and Liverpool, she left the latter port with sixty passengers, and 600 tons of cargo for the Atlantic run. She arrived in New York after a fifteen days’ passage, with an average speed of 9¼ knots. On the homeward voyage her best day’s run was 287 miles. [The illustration facing page 126] is from a model of her six-bladed propeller, with which originally she was fitted; but on one of her voyages she had the misfortune to break this and proceeded to Liverpool under her canvas. A new propeller was then fitted which had but four blades, but later on she again resorted to the original number. She continued her Atlantic voyages until 1846, when she ran ashore off the Irish coast in Dundrum Bay during the month of September, and remained for eleven months exposed to the terrible wintry weather; but Brunel had a wooden breakwater, loaded with stones, constructed round her, and she was eventually re-floated and taken to Liverpool, and though her bottom was naturally considerably damaged, yet the mere fact that she had been able to survive at all showed that confidence might be placed in iron as a material for ship-building. But by this time her owners had had enough of her, and she was sold for less than one quarter of the £100,000 she had cost. After alterations to her rig and her engines, she was employed in the Australian trade. She was next relieved of her engines, and turned into a sailing vessel, and then used as a coal-hulk off the Falkland Islands. Finally she was broken up at Barrow.