Slowtack
Well-Known Member
Semiconductors
What modern material would have made most difference to 18th Century sailing ships?
- Thread starter Babylon
- Start date
johnphilip
Well-Known Member
To bend the question
My variation on the thread idea.
Rather than taking one material back to use on old vessels I have imagined the reaction if I travelled in time with my modern bermudian rigged sloop back to an England of Nelson and the Victory.
What would the sailors then make of the ridiculously thin rigging, the slender deep fin keel, the smooth hull which needs no caulking?
How I would love to let them try the close winded ability of a cruiser/racer or flying a tissue thin spinnaker. I would think though that the diesel engine might be a step too far, I might leave that one in the 21st century.
I think that there might be some scoffing at the fragility of our boats but the contrast with contemporary craft would be intriguing.
Taking a modern car back a hundred years would be a similar game, but my difficulty would be explaining how all the electronic gadgetry works, my understanding of cars faded soon after the Mark 1 Cortina or Escort.
My variation on the thread idea.
Rather than taking one material back to use on old vessels I have imagined the reaction if I travelled in time with my modern bermudian rigged sloop back to an England of Nelson and the Victory.
What would the sailors then make of the ridiculously thin rigging, the slender deep fin keel, the smooth hull which needs no caulking?
How I would love to let them try the close winded ability of a cruiser/racer or flying a tissue thin spinnaker. I would think though that the diesel engine might be a step too far, I might leave that one in the 21st century.
I think that there might be some scoffing at the fragility of our boats but the contrast with contemporary craft would be intriguing.
Taking a modern car back a hundred years would be a similar game, but my difficulty would be explaining how all the electronic gadgetry works, my understanding of cars faded soon after the Mark 1 Cortina or Escort.
GHA
Well-Known Member
Plastic and antibiotics.
And google
And google
pyrojames
Well-Known Member
I'd love see a battle between a modern racing fleet and a Napoleonic fleet! The modern fleet might sail circles around the ships of the line, but they would be very rapidly disabled in action!
prv
Well-Known Member
Jonas
Well-Known Member
I'm finding it intriguing that posts are focussing in on war, it's not something that I had considered as part of the question.
I must be suffering from a lack of bombast.
I must be suffering from a lack of bombast.
AntarcticPilot
Well-Known Member
I think the point is that then as now, the latest technology tended to be used on warships first! Exceptions for fast sailing; smugglers and privateers tended to be faster and more weatherly than warships - but far more fragile; they depended on running away from anything that could overwhelm them.
A modern bermudan rig would be far too vulnerable in battle; injury to practically any component of the rig would mean that the whole rig was lost. The system of topmasts etc. allowed for injuries to the rig to be handled in a more modular manner. Loss of a single stay might mean loss of part of the rig, but not all of it. And, of course, fore-and-aft rigs WERE widely used on smaller, faster vessels such as smugglers and customs vessels, but these were expected to run away rather than stand and fight.
The same argument goes for reducing the weight aloft using steel rather than hemp - there was a definite advantage to the high degree of redundancy implied by using a weaker material; you might well be able to replace multiple hemp shrouds with with a much smaller number of steel ones, but it would increase the risk of losing more of the rig if a single shroud was lost.
The other issue is that the material for the masts was wood; it only comes in limited lengths, and has much lower strength than steel or alloy for the same weight. There was also an advantage in a vessel that didn't have the advantage of modern weather forecasting of being able to reduce the rig and top-hamper greatly if evil weather happened.
prv
Well-Known Member
Warships never went to double topsails, that was merchant vessels only. And I'm not sure who switched to all-steam (ie a ship without sails, not an all-steam fleet) first, I vaguely remember the Navy being worried about self-sufficiency and reliance on coaling stations whereas liners knew exactly where they were going and where they'd refuel. I don't think Jarvis brace winches ever appeared on naval vessels, although I'm not sure when they were invented and possibly the Navy was already well on the way to steam at that point.
Pete
AntarcticPilot
Well-Known Member
There were other factors involved - mainly the need to keep the large crew required to man the guns busy when not fighting. So the Navy didn't adopt labour-saving devices as readily as the merchant marine; they needed a large crew for other reasons, and it was better to keep them busy. Of course, the need to have a global reach constrained the adoption of steam power until after the development of a network of coaling stations, and even well after the adoption of steam there were still plenty of sailing naval vessels in roles such as hydrography (HMS Challenger and HMS Beagle, for example). But even in the Napoleonic wars, the potential of steam power was recognized by forward looking officers, including, ISTR, Nelson. The Navy was also the first adopter of modern production line techniques (the block-works at Portsmouth, designed and implemented by Marc Brunel, isambard's father), and was not slow at adopting new technology when it saw a need; carronades are a case in point!
mobeydick
Well-Known Member
Tek-Dek!
MD
MD
Birdseye
Well-Known Member
Obvious Innit? Would has no place near water. What Nelson needed was glass fibre.
bbg
Well-Known Member
How about latex (for condoms)?
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