Propellent

The story of from sail to steam

The continuation of this Naval History follows on from; "Warship and Merchantman"

Through all the ages, near to the end of the eighteenth century, there had existed only two ways of propulsion; one the sail had been invented at a date so dim it is unrecordable; while for the second, from an even earlier date man had used the oar or paddle.

Sail won the contest in all but the smallest of ships, which were still propelled by oars. No one man invented the Steamboat. Such a feat really involved two inventions-a convenient method of displacing the water, and a powerful propellent with which to do so.

It is extremely unlikely that any one man would hit upon both. It is even unwise to sugest that one man alone was responcible for either invention. Experiments with steam and various forms of oar or paddle had certainly been going on, indepentently, for a very long time in man's strivings after a suitable water-displacer.

The obvious weakness of Sail, was quickly discovered, it lay in its independence on air currents, if there were none, then there was no propellent and no motion. The Calm was the deadly enemy of the sailor, and he often found himself at its mercy, when he wanted to manoeuvre his ship.

This would happen under two kinds of circumstances; first, on those special occasions when he was in action with an enemy, especially if his adversary happened to be oar-propelled and immune from the calm menace; and second-and much more frequently-whenever his ship was entering or leaving the narrow confines of land-locked waters; when he had no "sea-room."

At other times, when he was in the open sea and not in the presence of an enemy, a calm, or even a gentle wind, proved to be very annoying, but unless it persisted unduly, not necessarily fatal.

Warship and Merchantman

The "Urge" Feeling

So here we have-the "urge"-that feeling of necessity, which is the mother of invention. Most of the early attempts at a solution, and specifically one of these reasons, the loss of time, and even danger, occasioned by calm in land-locked waters provides the common "urge."

Now oars themselves are by no means perfect water-displacers a fact realised by most of the early inventors. They are long and combrous, yet not particularly strong, nor easily controlled, since the outboard part must be much longer than the inboard part.

They tend, to hamper a ship's approach to its objective, whether it be another ship or quayside; they make the ship they propell very vulnerable in action, since they are much exposed to the enemy's attack; and they require, a very large compliment of hands. Man not Nature, must do the work.

Even the paddle in its simplest form as used to this day in a canoe, obviated some of the above mentioned disadvantages; as our inventors discovered. By far the larger of these early efforts seek to develope the paddle rather than the oar; of course, a series of simple paddles fixed to a wheel-a paddle wheel, that is -which represented the peak of water-displacement development at the moment when steam was first applied seriously as a propellent.

A Full Head of Steam

And the same prime "urge"-the getting in and out of ports safely and quickly-remains the principal incentive to further efforts even when steam is introduced. In other words, the first practical application of steam to turn paddles-wheels produced the Steam Tug.

So much for the displacer; now for the propellent. Steam, as we know, won the day, but steam was by no means the first propellent to be suggested.

It is said, that the Romans once conveyed an army, against the wind, from the mainland of Italy to Sicily by means of some form of paddle-wheel propelled by oxen.

Thereafter through the ages appear accounts, of greater or less authenticity, of many other such efforts. So long as these inventions occur, and are recorded, in an altogether unscientific age, we must not expect any sort of scientific specification of them; because we certainly will not find it.

Yet there is no doubt that many experiments were made, some exhibiting considerable ingenuity. A French engineer named Ramelli, published in 1588 an account of a contrivance described as "une sorte de canot automobile, wherein the water-displacer was a paddle-wheel and the propellent the human hand.

In the seventeenth century, several talented enthusiasts were experimenting first with geared paddle-wheels propelled by hand, and then with a new propellent-gunpowder. Sir Samual Morland, Royal Master Mechanic of Charles II, was one of the later and Huyghens was another.

These men, their machines were forerunners of the internal combustion engine. The century between 1680 and 1780 produced great engineers Papin, Savery, Newcomen, Cawley and above all James Watt; and the steam-engine was an established fact. But not yet was it applied to ships.

The truth was that the engine had not reached the requisite degree of development. yet that moment had duly arrived. In the 1780s the French and Americans as well as ourselves were giving much thought to the problem; and towards the end of the decade, there appeared in the field William Symington, already an expert in steam and an inventor in locomotion.

The Private Paddle-Boat

On 14th October 1788, on the private lake of Mr. Patrick Miller in Dunfriesshire, he navigated a small paddle-boat propelled by one of his engines; it maintained a speed of five miles per hour. In a public trial in the following year a larger vessel of his achieved a speed of seven miles per hour on the Forth-Clyde canal.

Miller's money gave out, and Symington, seems never to have had any. So nothing more was done until 1801. Then Symington, working for Lord Dundas of Kerse, produced the famous paddle-tug, "Charlotte Dundas. This little vessel, launched in 1802, began to tow heavy barges for considerable distances.

The authorities of Forth-Clyde Company, forbade such dangerous innovations on their water. These types of people often delay progress, of such vested interests, but they seldom kill it. The torch was taken up in America, and Fitch, Rumsey and others made the running, preparing the way for-Robert Fulton.

Had Great Britain been enterprising enough, she could have procured the services of this brilliant young American. But she was not; after picking the best engineering brains in Britain, he offered his results to the British Government, who declined the offer, he carried them over to America in 1807, and produced the "Clermont."

This famous ship was not useful in the sense ascribed to the "Charlotte Dundas," but it served even better to advertise the new invention-it was the first Pleasure Steamer.

Fulton designed his own "paddle-wheel"

Fulton is often regarded as the true inventor of the Steamboat. But the grounds for this judgment are not substantial. He certainly had a daringly original mind which he turned to all sorts of inventive enterprises.

But his only considerable contribution to the steamer problem was, his own design of paddle-wheel, which was certainly an excellent one.

He was the first to make the steamboat a commercial proposition. And he nearly achieved something else. He all but introduced steam into war. He did build a steam warship, which he intended to take part in the Anglo-American War of 1812 to 1815. But, the warship was completed too late and was never used.

The "Fulton," or, as it was first called, the "Demologos," was an astonishing conception, and must have been an astonishing sight. It was veritable "Siamese Twin," consisting of two separate hulls, joined at bow and stern, but with a space between. One hull housed the engines, the other housed the boiler, and a paddle-wheel operated in the sea-space in the middle.

The Great Western

Thereafter, for commercial and pleasure work, things moved fast. In 1812 Henry Bell, a Clyde-side hotel-proprietor, built and plied for pleasure, the celebrated "Comet"; and Clyde-side, "in on the ground floor," has not lost it's place in ship building.

In 1815 the invention, mainly Scottish in origin, invaded the south, when the "Thames" successfully accomplished the long trip from Greenock to London. Her progress around Cornwall to Plymouth, Portsmouth and elsewhere was one long triumphant procession.

The Cornish people thought she was on fire and made gallant unsuccessful attempts to put it out. The Steamer had arrived.

Soon, her horizon broadened. In 1819 the "Savannah," a ship of 300 tons with a length of about 100 feet, crossed the Atlantic in twenty-five days. In 1824 the "Falcon"-a much smaller ship (a yacht)reached India from London.

The long-voyaging steamers, were sailing ships also-and fully rigged ones at that. They might easily be described as sailing ships fitted with auxilliary steam engines; because they still performed a greater part of their journeys under sail, only using their engines when there was no wind.

The first real "steamer" crossings of the Atlantic are considered to be the ships "Sirius" and "Great Western" in 1838, racing against each other for that unique first "Blue Ribbon." The "Sirius" a much smaller and less powerful; won by a few hours; but she had four days start.

The "Great Western," whose claims are great to be regarded as the first Atlantic liner, was a ship of 1,340 tons and did the trip in fourteen days.

The Admiralty were wary of steam

In 1822, General Paixhans, pleaded with the French Government, that, if France would build an entirely new steam-driven navy armed with shell-guns, she would over a short space of time achieve the unachieveable-sink the British Fleet, and gain complete command of the seas.

Their Lordships at the Admiralty felt duty bound to discourage the employment of steam vessels; they considered the introduction of steam would strike a fatal blow at the naval supremacy of the empire. Lord Melville in 1828, crushed the arguments for steam.

In 1830, Lord Melville was replaced at the Admiralty by Sir James Graham, and during this decade the desirability of larger steam-ships; even steam-driven battleships, was grudgingly admitted. So the problem gradually changed too; it was not so much as the will to do it, but the way to do it.

The paddle-castings made it difficult to find space or to place guns for a broadside. With not only the sail of the line having to go, but also that battle winner the broadside. The Admiralty said: "No." With that somebody discovered a better form of water-displacer. The "Screw."

Captain John Ericsson of the Swedish Army and Mr Francis Pettit-Smith, were certainly the ones whose practical work established the Screw's efficiency. It was not done without a fight-waged this time, in Merchant as well as naval circles. In spite of them the Screw made good.

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "The Screw"

Propellent The Screw

"Pirates Trilogy" $20