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Historical
Introduction The long period of Pax Britannica following the Revolutionary
and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815) allowed overwhelmingly for the
unmolested passage of merchant vessels worldwide. Of course, there had been
wars at times that curtailed trade in limited areas and piracy continued to
be troublesome in some regions. Of more routine importance, mariners still
had to contend with all the usual hazards of nature causing death, injury and
illness, as well as poor treatment imposed by shipowners and their managers,
masters, mates and others.
Merchant vessel design throughout the nineteenth-century brought many
changes. There had already been the beginnings of steam-power two centuries before.
Thomas Newcomen’s atmospheric engines developed in the early eighteenth
century advanced the possibilities considerably. Even then, they were still
in their infancy, with serious deficiencies. Converting the vertical motion that
these engines produced into a rotary form for maritime uses also proved tricky.
A French river project in the 1770s may have been successful, in a
very minor way using paddles, but seems to have been the victim of sabotage. By
then a Scotsman, James Watt, was making improvements to the Newcomen engines,
in the addition of cylinders and pistons. Over a few decades these engines
developed by Watt and others, became larger and more efficient, with condensers.
Meanwhile, experimentation in the United States, best known by Robert Fulton’s
North River Steamboat (or Clermont) of 1807, made practical progress
with paddler-steamers. Further improvements through compound engines meant
greater ranges and carrying capacity could be gained. Admiralties
also took an interest in these developing technologies. In Britain, apart
from dredgers that had already been in naval service, the first full-scale paddler
experiments came within a few months of the 1815 peace. It was not until seven
years later that the first British wooden-hulled paddle-vessel Comet
was built for the Royal Navy and even then, she was not commissioned until
1831. Paddle-frigates began to appear in the British order-of-battle later in
the 1830s. Utilising shafts instead, screw power was also being considered by
the Royal Navy and the famous tug-of-war between the paddler Alecto
and the screw-sloop Rattler in 1845 ended in victory for screws. It is
worth pointing out that British Admiralties were cautious, keeping up to date
with technical developments in the commercial sectors. Similarly,
there had been iron-hulled canal craft before the 1790s, but the first more
capable vessels were not developed until the late 1810s and early 1820s. The Aaron
Manby that was built in England, was operated in France from 1822. Commercial
shipowners invested in iron hulls, even with difficulties in navigation and
it was not until 1845 that the British Admiralty began experiments. Incidentally,
the Bengal Marine’s Nemesis is said to have been the first operational
iron-hulled warship in the world. By mid-century steel was also being used in
shipbuilding. As improvements in steel production occurred from the 1860s, larger
merchantmen allowed for massive
expansion in trade. Sail was still competitive and very much
in the majority, but the development of triple-expansion steam-engines that
began in the 1860s, but became the norm two decades later, changed the game
once again. Steam having become truly reliable for the first time, these new
engines allowed for timetables to be followed and so, oversaw the rise of
liner companies, not only carrying passengers, but also vast tonnages
of cargo. Sail lost the edge financially in most, but not all trades, but by
the beginning of the twentieth century generally only long-haul carriage of
some dry cargoes was still profitable – often marginally. Threat
of major seaborne European war between Great Britain and France (and Russia)
was perceived in the latter half of the nineteenth century, in spite of the
British and French having been allied during what the British call the
Crimean War (1854-56). Technological rivalry in warship design also through
the introduction and innovation of steam-power, iron and steel hulls, as well
as other machinery, armour and weapons that had begun originally in the
1840s, resulted in increasingly expensive naval arms races. The development of torpedo-boats,
quick-firing guns and then destroyers during the last quarter of the
nineteenth century further complicated warfare. So too did submarines and
aircraft that were beginning to come on the scene in the early years of the
twentieth century. The occasional political spats between
London and Paris gave way to a revived Entente Cordial in 1904 though.
This was in a joint defence against a perceived new enemy – Imperial Germany.
Even although dreams of an unified Prussia and Austria never occurred, post
1815 smaller German states had been conglomerating, with a final political
unification with Prussia in 1871, following the Franco-German War (1870-71). By the turn of the twentieth-century,
Germany’s political policies and armed forces were regarded increasingly as
threatening by its neighbours. While
there had been some pre-war governmental work to lessen the economic
disruption that would inevitably be caused by a major European war, the
majority of planning for a war at sea was in naval terms. Even then, it can
be regarded as patchy. |
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