Shipwrecks

Recapping what I said in a recent essay, every ship has to be a compromise. Sailing vessels must trade off a reduction in strength from thinner hulls in order to float higher and sail faster—or to carry more cargo. A broad-beamed vessel would carry more cargo, but it would wallow along, losing time. The tea clippers were lean, narrow and beautiful, and carried a light cargo, the new season’s tea, from China to a waiting world, eager to pay a high price for fresh tea.

The wreck of the Admella in Australian waters was a colonial scandal and cause for concern, but the loss of the Royal Charter in late 1859 was a far greater concern in Britain. Charles Dickens visited the site of the wreck and wrote about it in The Uncommercial Traveller, while every British man and his dog held an opinion on the cause.

Royal Charter was a famous iron ship which had gone from Liverpool to Melbourne in 59 days. The Reverend Captain William Scoresby FRS had travelled to and from Australia in the ship in 1856, studying how the compasses behaved, because compass adjustment was still an inexact art at best. 

Scoresby wanted to study the interplay of terrestrial magnetism and compass deviation on board an iron-hulled ship, but achieved little before he died in 1857. The meagre results of his researches were published posthumously in 1859.

Scoresby was a famous whaling captain who later became a parson and scientist. Aside from the link to Scoresby, the ship’s owners also made her famous, advertising her speed. Royal Charter was 2719 tons, and had 200 hp auxiliary engines, so the ship was 8 times the weight of Admella, but she only had twice the engine power. Royal Charter also had sails, which became part of the problem.

Late in August, the ship left Hobson’s Bay in Victoria with half a million pounds (around $100 million today) worth of gold and 400 passengers, bound for Liverpool. Reaching Ireland in late October, she anchored off the Cove of Cork, and some of the passengers sent letters and telegrams by the Petrel pilot-boat to their family and friends, then the captain pushed on for Liverpool as the weather closed in.

A wild storm on October 25 wrecked more than 200 vessels, but one ship grabbed people’s attention later. Off the Skerries, the Royal Charter signalled for a pilot, but no pilot could put out. The ship anchored, but both cables parted in quick succession. Wind pressure on the masts and rigging probably added to the strain, but the skipper may have avoided getting rid of the masts, fearing that the stern screw might be fouled by some of the lines that would still be attached– or perhaps he thought the masts would not go over the side cleanly.

The ship struck and the masts were then cut away, but it was too late. Guns of distress were fired, blue lights were sent up, and a line was put ashore. The captain sent 16 crew members ashore to work the line, but before anybody could be landed, the ship broke up and only 39 of the 498 passengers and crew survived.

A writer styling himself ‘Amicus’ wrote to The Times on December 6, arguing that iron ships were made of poor quality iron called ‘boat iron’. The writer wondered why a ship, a mere 50 yards offshore with a hawser in place saw so many deaths. The Great Britain had stayed aground for a whole winter without breaking up, and ‘Amicus’ said other examples showed that a well-built iron ship was safe, but Royal Charter was made of materials as wrong as a Yankee trader’s wooden nutmegs, a grocer’s sanded sugar or a petty swindler’s sewing cotton that is shorter than advertised.

Three days before the ‘Amicus’ letter, The Times reported that the plates had been tested earlier, and had then been found to be “above standard”. The view now is that the captain of an ordinary sailing ship might have dropped anchor, but the proud skipper of a famous fast ship felt impelled to rely on a drastically underpowered engine which could only drive the ship at eight knots per hour (“knots per hour” was the common usage in 1859) in dead water, according to The Times. It was a learning experience, but a harsh one.

H. Hallock and Isaac Smith announced in Scientific American that they had designed a state-room, self-contained and sheltered below a deck that might open, a room able to be sealed and equipped with food and water for those within. In an accident, the state-room would be detached and allowed to float free of the ship. It had a pump to keep waters at bay and lamps that could be lit at night. The idea sank without trace.

Other inventors were determined that warships, which by definition carried explosives, would be safer. In France, La Gloire was launched in 1859, described as the world’s first iron-clad, though Korea had iron-clad ships in the late 1500s. A ship of the line in the early 19th century used 3500 oaks, the product of 900 acres, timber which needed to be seasoned fir up to 25 years, but saving trees was not La Gloire’s inspiration, because she was timber beneath the plating. The ship was a response to the burning of the wooden Turkish fleet at Sinope in 1853 by the Russian navy’s explosive shells.

The launching of La Gloire signalled the end of the wooden warship, because where one nation led, others had to follow. In 1860, the Royal Navy’s HMS Warrior had guns mounted on a single deck, running 380 feet, displacing 9000 tons. The last wooden British ship-of-the-line was a three-decker launched in 1859, but by the end of the century, timber ships had been replaced by iron and steel dreadnoughts weighing 20,000 tons.

Charles Atherton wrote to The Times in January from Woolwich Dockyard to share his idea for making vessels with an interior of light material up to the waterline. Gunboats, floating-batteries and mortars could benefit, he said. The solids might consist of “cork shavings, light wood sawdust, rush stems, cotton waste, flocks, hemp, and other lightweight material, which, by the aid of a solution of gutta percha or other chemical process, would form a solidifying mass, so tough that it could not be knocked to pieces by shot, and so light that it would only be one half the specific gravity of water, and therefore, unsinkable, however perforated by shot…”

Atherton had previously offered a similar idea for treasure ships, so they would float, allowing recovery of the riches. It took until the end of the year for Scientific American to mention the idea, when a writer said that cork would not suit because heated shot could set fire to it, but a suitable material ought to be able to be found. Half a century on, most lifeboats were fitted with sealed cork-filled compartments and self-draining seacocks to keep them afloat under the worst of conditions.