PART THREE: TRANSPORT
522
later, similar sails were set between the masts. Other improvements came with the
increasing size of ships, and with the need to carry more sails for greater speed;
individual sails became larger and increased from one or two to three or four on
each mast by 1800. The masts themselves, becoming loftier and more square in
proportion, soon outran the average tree and had to be assembled from two or
three sections, one above the other; often, too, the largest sections had to be ‘made’
from smaller timbers. Sails were cut better and set more tautly to obtain the best
from the wind: blocks, containing pulleys to increase manual capacity when
hauling on ropes, appeared at an early stage, and multiple blocks with metal
sheaves and bearing made running rigging easier to work.
Changes in hull design also improved the qualities of ships. The basic layout,
with a deep waist between high castles, remained, but the forecastle was soon
much reduced in height. The aftercastle, later known as the poop or quarter-
deck, remained somewhat more pronounced and provided accommodation for
officers and passengers, if any. The sheer, or fore-and-aft curve of the deck, was
also gradually reduced, which greatly reduced the wind resistance of these ships
and made them more weatherly. To accommodate the mizen mast, tiller steering
had given way in the fifteenth century to the whipstaff, a vertical lever which
operated a yoke attached to the rudder; this in turn was succeeded in about 1710
Figure 10.2: A Flemish ship of c. 1560.
PORTS AND SHIPPING
523
by the wheel and tackles, making ships much more manageable. For example, in
1700 flag officers of the British navy were still making sure that the ‘great ships’
were safely in harbour by the end of September; but in 1759, Admiral Hawke
was able to maintain the blockade of Brest far into November and then fight a
decisive battle close inshore in Quiberon Bay in a rising gale.
During the period from 1500 to about 1850 the average merchantman was
designed along similar lines to the contemporary warship, although at 100–200

tonnes it would have been much smaller. However, much uncertainty still exists
about the detailed layout of early merchant vessels, at least until the emergence of the
Dutch fluyt at the end of the sixteenth century (Figure 10.3). This was a capacious
three-masted vessel, rounded at the stern, cheap to build and run, without armament
and so needing only a small crew. A sound bulk carrier, it was the basis of Dutch
commercial supremacy and was copied by other seafaring nations. The largest
merchant ships were the East Indiamen (Figure 10.4), of all nations, usually 500–600
tonnes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but rising to 1200 tonnes in the
1790s. These tonnages compare with the 500 and upwards of a small naval frigate,
rising to more than 2000 for a first rate ship of the line.
Such big ships were approaching the limits for wooden construction, and
schemes were being evolved for strengthening them. Gabriel Snodgrass
introduced a straighter side to the hull and a flat upper deck, much improving
the strength of the whole, and Sir Robert Seppings, master shipwright at the
Figure 10.3: A Dutch ‘fluyt’ of the early seventeenth century.
PART THREE: TRANSPORT
524
Chatham naval dockyard, developed a system of diagonal bracing to increase
the strength of wooden hulls. In actual hull form there were few developments,
although Sir Anthony Deane in England, Frederick af Chapman in Sweden
and various French naval architects made advances in the theoretical principles
of sailing performance. (French ships had a good reputation for speed, but
were often found to be weak in construction.) The Baltimore clipper (in fact a
schooner), which emerged in the early nineteenth century, represented the
most important development to date in hull form: its long, low profile, with
sharply raked stem and overhanging stern counter, resulting in the minimum
area possible in contact with the water, made these revolutionary vessels the
fastest then afloat.
Another important innovation of the eighteenth century was coppering, or
sheathing ships’ bottoms with copper plates (earlier experiments with lead

having proved unsatisfactory) to protect them from boring by shipworms and
fouling by barnacles and weed. Once it was recognized that copper nails must
be used, to avoid the galvanic reaction that occurred between the copper
plating and the iron bolts at first used to attach it, coppering much improved
ships’ speed, as well as reducing the need for maintenance, and it was widely
adopted after 1780.
Figure 10.4: A merchant ship of the late eighteenth century.
PORTS AND SHIPPING
525
The nineteenth century
From the early 1800s the very considerable increase in the volume and extent
of trade, especially to more distant parts of the world, created economic
conditions that encouraged both more and still larger ships and new
commercial methods. By 1815, although the majority of merchant ships
continued to be built along conventional lines, some significant changes began.
Several trades demanded greater speed, sometimes, as in the tea trade, to reach
markets quickly, in other less reputable activities, such as the slave trade, to
elude pursuers. Many more passengers were seeking conveyance, and
regularity of performance began to be important. Although steam would not
become a serious competitor on most ocean voyages until around 1850,
economical working became more necessary as the expanding markets
stimulated increased competition alongside their many opportunities.
The square-rigged three-master was initially supplanted for coastal trading,
by the brig, similarly rigged but with only two masts, but the sharp and fine
Baltimore hull form, schooner rigged (fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts,
with square topsails on the foremast), steadily replaced both ship and brig. For
longer voyages the same fast and economical hull was applied to larger and
larger square-rigged vessels, for their size slowly but steadily increased. These
fast square-riggers were the true clippers, famous in the China tea trade from
the 1840s. They were also run by some of the Atlantic packet lines, which

carried mail under government contract and therefore needed to offer speedy,
reliable and regular service; here, too, the threat posed by steam made speed
crucial. The discovery of gold in California in 1848, and in Australia in 1852,
created a demand for passages at any price and, as steamships could not yet
undertake such long voyages, the clippers, mostly built in the USA of
softwood, prospered. Even after the boom years clippers, now mostly British
built, continued until about 1870 in the China trade and 1890 in the passenger
and wool trades to Australasia, and their example encouraged smarter sailing
in general.
After 1860 iron rapidly replaced wooden construction for deep-sea vessels.
The larger sizes already in existence were too much for wood—the American
clippers quickly wore out—and by the early 1870s ships of over loom long were
being built. Concomitant improvements in rigging were needed: sails had
reached their maximum practicable size and were subdivided, and were fitted
with patent reefing systems such as Cunningham’s, which enabled the area of
sail to be reduced without sending so many men aloft. Iron or steel masts and
yards, and wire rigging, replaced wood and hemp, and sometimes sailing ships
had steam-powered donkey engines to drive their winches, all of which
allowed crews to be reduced.
These improvements helped sail to remain competitive, even after the
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 (see p. 505) enabled steamships to take over
PART THREE: TRANSPORT
526
more and more of the main trades between the Orient and Europe. In the
1870s four-masted ships and barques (three-masters, square-rigged on fore-and
mainmast, fore-and-aft rigged on mizen, see Figure 10.4) were extensively built,
largely for bulk cargoes such as grain and nitrates. Later a few five-masters
were built. Big sailing ships of 1500 to over 3000 tonnes remained profitable
for bulk trades and were built up to the 1890s, a few even up to 1905, but after
that date their decline was rapid. A few survived in the Australian grain trade

and the Baltic timber trade between the wars.
The other characteristic type of the last days of commercial sail was the
schooner (see p. 524), still commonly built of wood until 1900. Small coastal
schooners remained very active until 1914, while in North America some very
large craft of this rig were built for coal and timber carrying, many with four
or more masts, one with seven.
Since the 1970s evidence of an increasing energy crisis has directed attention
once more to the use of wind power for shipping. Taking advantage of
aeronautical discoveries, controllable sails of aerofoil type have been fitted to
several otherwise conventional cargo vessels, but the economic benefits have
yet to be measured.
Figure 10.5: An iron clipper of the 1870s—the Piako.
PORTS AND SHIPPING
527
STEAMSHIPS
Paddle steamers
Paddle-wheels, operated by men or animals, are said to have been used by the
Chinese to power small craft at an early date, and there were vessels driven by
treadmill in European waters during the seventeenth century. Early attempts to
propel boats by means of steam-driven paddle-wheels were those of Denis
Papin (1707); the Marquis de Joffroy d’Abbans (1776), who in 1783 used a
horizontal double-acting steam engine developed independently of Boulton
and Watt; and the American John Fitch (from 1786), whose experiments
included the use of steam-driven oars. Financial backing, however, was not
forthcoming until William Symington’s Charlotte Dundas, driven by a stern
paddle-wheel between two hulls, became the first commercial steamship,
operating on the Forth and Clyde Canal from 1802. Other pioneers included
Robert Fulton, whose Clermont, with a pair of side paddle-wheels, ran
commercially on New York’s rivers from 1807, and Henry Bell, with the first
coastal steamer, the Comet of 1812, which ran off the west coast of Scotland. By

about 1825 there was an extensive system of steamship services around the
British Isles and to Europe, as well as on American rivers. The majority of
these vessels were side-wheel paddle steamers with low-pressure non-
condensing engines, conforming (with suitable strengthening for engines and
boilers) to normal wooden ship layout.
The first transatlantic steamship crossing has been claimed for the
American Savannah as early as 1819, but she was a hybrid vessel and
completed most of the voyage under sail. Among early eastward crossings
under steam, the twenty-five-day voyage of the Royal William in 1833 is notable.
However, transatlantic steam navigation as a commercial reality dates from
1837, with both the Sirius and Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s first marine essay,
the Great Western, designed to extend the Great Western Railway from Bristol to
New York.
The British government, recognizing the political and commercial value of
fast, regular communication with distant regions, was quick to support the
establishment of four subsequently famous shipping companies: the Royal
Mail Steam Packet Co (1839) to the West Indies and South America; the
Peninsular Steam Navigation Co. (1840, later the Peninsular and Oriental) to
India and later Australia and the Far East; the Cunard company (1840) to
North America; and the Pacific Steam Navigation Co. (1839) for service along
the west coast of South America. These routes usually employed ships of
1500–2000 tonnes with large engines, usually of side-lever type, by now fitted
with jet or surface condensers which conserved fresh water.

PART THREE: TRANSPORT
528
Iron ships and screw propulsion
The Staffordshire ironmaster John Wilkinson and others had experimented
with iron hulls before the end of the eighteenth century, using the methods of
wooden ship construction, but the idea was long regarded with scepticism. By

the 1840s, however, even sailing ships were beginning to outgrow the
capabilities of wood; it was becoming evident, too, that the strength of iron
would allow the building of hulls that were not only larger but which could be
clear of structural members, improving cargo capacity and handling as well as
the flexibility of ship layout. The screw propeller seems to have been invented
almost simultaneously in 1836, by Francis Pettit Smith in England and John
Ericsson in Sweden; in 1845 the British Admiralty conducted trials between
two identical frigates, the Alecto, with a pair of paddle-wheels, and the screw-
driven Rattler, in which the latter was clearly superior.
Brunel’s second ship, the Great Britain of 1845, was a very large (over 3000
tonnes) iron screw ship of advanced design, with the first watertight bulkheads.
The minor damage she incurred on running aground in Dundrum Bay,
Ireland, in 1847 demonstrated the strength of her hull construction. His Great
Eastern of 1858, designed to run to the Far East, was even more far-sighted, a
vast ship of nearly 19,000 tonnes and more than 200m long, with both a screw
and a pair of paddle-wheels to provide sufficient power. Although both ships
were technically successful, they were too large for the commercial needs of
their time and were not emulated.
Figure 10.6: An early paddle steamer—the Clarence.
PORTS AND SHIPPING
529
From about 1860 to the present day, merchant ships and warships followed
different lines of development and must be considered separately.
MERCHANT SHIPPING
Apart from a short period when composite construction (iron frame with
wooden planking) was popular, after 1860 only iron ships were built for ocean
work, to be replaced from 1880 by the steel made widely available by the
Siemens-Martin process (see p. 171). While hull structure followed in essentials
that of wooden ships, with keel and ribs to which the plates were bolted, later
riveted, iron and steel sections were far less bulky than wood. It was also now

possible to install watertight bulkheads and double bottoms (both pioneered by
Brunel) and to adapt the hull for a variety of specialized requirements, whether
for cargo, for a particular route or, as became increasingly the case, to
minimize harbour and other dues calculated on tonnage. In the bigger ships
made feasible by iron, multiple decks could be provided for more and better
passenger accommodation (a trend that had begun with the largest wooden
Atlantic packets), and steamers with three, four and eventually more decks
were built.
With cargo vessels the introduction of the screw propeller rapidly brought
steam to the forefront. The original bulk carrier steamships, built by Charles
Mark Palmer and others for the coal trade between the north-east of England
and London, were one-deck ships and the first to use water ballast tanks to
reduce turnaround time in port, an invention attributed to John McIntyre.
Very quickly these ships extended their activities further afield, becoming the
predecessors of the tramp steamers. For regular trades more complex ships
appeared with several separate holds and one or two lower decks, allowing
cargo to be stowed according to its type or destination.
The vast majority of these steamships were driven by screw engines. Paddle
steamers were retained until the early 1860s by the ocean contract packets, and
until well into the twentieth century by river, coastal and cross-channel
passenger steamers, especially where high speed was required and where the
diameter of a large single screw was too great for the available draught of
water. On such routes, too, the availability of fuel was not a major
consideration, but on longer voyages it virtually governed the extension of
commercial steam navigation, other than the subsidized mail services. A world-
wide network of coaling stations was established to replenish the bunkers of
steamships on ocean voyages—the lack of possible sites for such facilities
significantly delayed the introduction of steamship services to Australasia—and
the supply of these ports provided in itself an extensive trade for the preferred
Newcastle and South Wales coal as well as from other sources. The

development of more economical engines and boilers progressed steadily to
PART THREE: TRANSPORT
530
answer this problem. Attempts were made in the 1850s to use steam twice, but
it was not until the mid-1860s that the famous Holt engine and other designs
brought the compound engine into practical use combined with improved
boiler construction to allow higher pressures. Holt’s Ocean Steamship
Company’s service to China in 1866, combined with the opening of the Suez
Canal in 1869, marked the death-knell of sail on the routes to India and the
Far East in favour of compound steamships. From this period, too, the tramp
steamer emerged, delivering and picking up freight in an ad hoc manner from
port to port and making serious inroads into the bulk cargoes carried by large
sailing ships. With the development of the triple expansion engine (see p. 286)
about 1880, the last bastions of sailing ships as regular passenger and high
quality cargo carriers were threatened—the routes to Australia and New
Zealand. Both countries, as well as Argentina and the Mid-west of the United
States, also provided more bulk cargoes for the tramp steamers, such as grain
to feed the industrial populations of western Europe, and refrigeration
developed to the point where large consignments of frozen meat in fast cargo
ships became a prime business.
In the same period, the 1880s, engines for fast ships were produced,
running at higher revolutions and much more compact, and in the 1890s
quadruple expansion engines came into use. Twin screws had been tried
earlier, with limited success, but also in the 1890s they were widely adopted
and, to provide increased power for larger and faster ships, triple and
quadruple screws were introduced. The great expansion in trade, and in
commercial methods, allowed larger cargoes to be readily handled and
opened the way for the economic use of the much bigger ships already
shown to be feasible by the Great Eastern. In the 1870s the long ship was
pioneered by the Belfast shipbuilders Harland & Wolff, with a length: beam

ratio of 9 or 10:1, and from the 75m (248ft) of the 1860s the length of the
largest ships rose to more than 120m (394ft); an especially rapid enlargement
during the 1890s brought lengths up to 200m (65 6ft) or more, with beam
increasing rather more in proportion to around 7 or 8:1. By 1914 great liners
of 240m (787ft) were in service. Until the 1890s virtually all the passenger
accommodation was in the hull, but as facilities grew more and more
luxurious it was sited on the hull in superstructure. As more power needed
more boilers, the great ‘funnel race’ began, the number of funnels being
regarded as an index of quality.
Further important changes in the engine room accompanied these
advances to produce the merchant ship as it was to remain until the 1970s.
The water-tube boiler was developed in various forms and, after much
trouble, eventually became a reliable steam producer, especially when
combined with the Parsons steam turbine (see p. 290). The early turbines
were directly coupled to the propeller, but by 1914 gears had been developed
to a state where they could be inserted into the shaft to give slower and more
PORTS AND SHIPPING
531
economical propeller speeds. In some ships low-pressure turbines were fitted
together with reciprocating engines.
From the 1880s, Russia used indigenous petroleum fuel for ships’ boilers,
and by 1914 copious supplies of oil were being produced by the countries
around the Persian Gulf. Its advantages as a fuel, and its ease of handling and
cleanliness compared with coal, ensured its popularity; and after 1918, in more
stringent economic conditions, the savings it offered, in time and in the need
for numerous stokers, made oil the most used fuel for steamships.
It was also the fuel of a new and serious competitor to steam—the internal
combustion or diesel engine (see p. 303ff.), first used in Russian vessels
around the Caspian Sea. Much development work by the Danish firm of
Burmeister & Wain made it suitable for ocean-going vessels; the Selandia of

1912 was the first deep-sea ship fitted with diesel engines, which made rapid
progress especially among Scandinavian owners, while its application to
submarines was crucial.
Electric power was also adopted for ships, but with less widespread success.
Current was generated by either steam or diesel engines and fed to motors
which were small enough to occupy otherwise little-used space aft. While the
installations were technically successful, electric drive was found to be
uneconomic except in specialized cases where exact control was important,
such as ferries or cable ships.
The coal-fired steam engine did not remain untouched in this period of
diversity, for many improvements were made in both reciprocating and turbine
types, such as the use of higher steam pressures, poppet valves and other
refinements such as mechanical stokers with pulverized fuel.
Types of ship did not, in general change greatly, although there were many
modifications of detail. The main novelty was, of course, the appearance of the
oil tanker in large numbers, the first having been built in 1886. From the
earliest days these vessels had their engines aft, a feature which became
increasingly common on small coastal steamers. For safety reasons tankers had
to be closely subdivided into numerous compartments, and they were
equipped with expansion tanks and pumping systems to handle the cargo. The
new Isherwood longitudinal system of construction, in which much of the
strength is in stringers running fore-and-aft as well as in the more usual frames,
was found especially advantageous for tankers. The inter-war period also saw
a considerable increase in the number of refrigerated ships, not only for meat
and dairy products but also for fruit.
Other new methods of building were introduced, many to be of great utility
in the emergency building programmes of the Second World War, such as the
American Liberty ships. These included welding, instead of the time-honoured
riveting of plates and sections, and large-scale prefabrication in shops away
from the slip. Another change was in the use of lighter-weight materials for

superstructures.