1670 - Shipbuilding Rises to Naval Architecture

Anthony Deane, 37 years old, Master Shipwright at Portsmouth dockyard since 1668, publishes his Doctrine for Naval Architecture.

Eight years ago, this atypical future master shipwright won an influential patron, and a friend, in Samuel Pepys, of the same age, Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board, himself under the patronage of Admiral Edward Montagu, earl of Sandwich. Deane impressed Pepys for, first he had developed a vision of modern shipbuilding which now leads him to claim the notion of naval architecture ; second, he had injected calculus into the rule of thumb which prevailed and still prevails amongst his colleagues.

¤ Deane is not a descendant of a dynasty of shipwrights, contrary to most of his colleagues. The Petts have formed the greatest and largest one : after Phineas, the patriarch, designer of the famous Prince Royal (1610) and Sovereign of the Seas  (1637), there have been another Phineas, two Peters and a Christopher, all master shipwrights.

¤ The term Naval Architecture ’was first used by Georges Fournier, a mathematician and a Jesuit priest who had been for eight years chaplain of the fleet commanded by Henri d’Escoubleau de Sourdis, archbishop of Bordeaux as well as an admiral. He published in 1643 his encyclopedic Hydrographie, the first section of which was De l’Architecture Navale. It was a modest contribution yet. No doubt that the term displayed and still displays an ambition.

Samuel Pepys, clerk of the Admiralty

Thus we know that Deane uses an algorithm which works well. Has he worked out said algorithm ? Who else ? Anyway this prime link with calculus wears his signature.

It is not that easy to impress Pepys. He is much more than a Montagu’s protégé. He works hard on a trade that he discovered when entering the job, ten years ago. A fellow of the Royal Society since 1665, an inquisitive learner, an incisive questioner, he has interchanged with the most brilliant scholars whom he calls on as advisors to the Navy Board on occasion. He is in straight line with the zeitgeist brought by King Charles II, 40 years old, keen on science in general and on naval questions in particular, to the point of looking into some individual ship design as a connoisseur if not a complete expert.  

This is not only to please his king, but to meet his own convictions, that Pepys is used to supporting technical endeavours. Thus, seven years ago, for instance, Pepys gave a hand to William Petty, a member of the Royal Society, a mathematician rightly famous for his political arithmetic, to try his idea of a double hull.

¤ The double-hulled Experiment unfortunately sunk on the way back from its maiden voyage in 1663, which ruled out the concept whatever the cause of her shipwreck might have been. She is described in an issue of the Journal des Sçavans of 1665. She was a 300-ton vessel, 80-foot long and 32-foot broad.

Amongst the shipwrights, Deane is the one, in line with Pepys and King Charles II, who paves the way for a scientific approach. Yet his background may seem slight for the herald of a doctrine. As for the large ships, he only designed and built the 66-gun Rupert (1666) and the 70-gun Resolution (1667).

To be frank, issuing this doctrine by now may appear a bit early. It has been said that it was on Pepys’ request but, even if Deane may be rightly proud of his ships, he perforce knows that they cannot be established as the epitome of naval art craft yet.

In comparison, a master shipwright of the old school as Jonas Shish, 65 years old, Master at Deptford dockyard, illiterate though, has an impressive record of service. He has worked at Deptford and Woolwich dockyards for fifty years, learnt from the masters, especially the Petts, and finally designed and built six large ships on his own to date. The old craftsman is said to enjoy King Charles’s consideration. Moreover, beside the Petts and John Tippetts, 48, Master Shipwright at Portsmouth before Deane, Shish belongs to an elite who reached to outline the modern warship by merging two former types derived from the venerable galleon and from the modest flute, i.e. the great ship and the frigate. It was a transformation, almost a revolution, which occurred in the 1650s, that younger Deane has inherited as a starting basis.

The lesson was promptly drawn everywhere. Massive building programmes were implemented in the United Provinces, in England and in France in the 1660s. They have certainly helped the shipwrights to improve their practices but it also gave rise to a rather frantic trend to expand ship dimensions and to change their lines without even waiting for the results of a previous try. It resulted in a number of failures, even with the most experienced shipwrights. This is a frequent complaint of the day to discover after her launch that a new ship sits very low on the water and that she cannot bear her full intended battery, or that she cannot open her lower gun ports on even moderate seas.

¤ The 1,100-ton 84-gun Royal Katherine, launched in 1664, designed by Christopher Pett, Master Shipwright at Woolwich Dockyard, has been noted by Pepys, somewhat ill-disposed to the Petts to be frank, as having her lower ports three feet only above water before having all her guns and provisions aboard. She is far from being the worst ship yet.

Nasty surprises are especially common with the three-decker, plagued with a relatively high payload for her waterplane area, not to mention stability issues she may prove as well. The three-decker has become a basic warship in Britain, even small and short, by contrast with the Dutch who keep to the two-decker even for their largest warships.

The Netherlands are surrendered by shallow waters, which is the original reason to limit ship draught, but the prime one is that the resulting form factor, inherited of the large merchant vessel with her cargo-friendly slayed flanks, has proved to be very satisfactory in terms of seaworthiness and of steadiness. The French have got mixed views on this, as both followers of the Dutch shipbuilders and supporters of heavy firepower. They therefore launch ships of the two species, the two-deckers being hailed for their fulfilment and the three-deckers being praised for their prestige – a psychological dimension which terribly matters in France, but also in England and in Sweden. Yet they have forsaken the Dutch flat bottom for a high depth on both sorts. Beyond the appealing concentration of fire, the partisans of the three-decker have also the belief that the high vessel would offer more stiffness against the stresses on her hull while sailing, that the sailors rightly fear and name working, which result in disjointing planks, hence in watering. This supposed benefit is untrue in general, owing to the marked excess of burden in the hull ends of the high ship.

¤ It seems that bearing lower ports at three feet above water is the current standard for an English ship having 2-month provisions aboard. This is a bad one, and felt so by Pepys in comparison with the four feet and a half with 4-month provisions aboard reported for the six ships built by the Dutch for the French in 1666.

Pepys certainly wondered why these 66-gun two-deckers built by the Dutch for the French were as large as Shish’s 96-gun three-decker Charles (1668) and what might be the underlying trade-off. He has got the clue : he knows that his fellows have a mania for a heavy firepower for the tonnage, to the detriment of steadiness and seaworthiness.

Deane’s contribution is, in the end, more philosophical than practical. He mainly brings this major and necessary discipline that the ship must conform to the drawing. Every detail is required to be envisioned, intended and shaped, including the lines, to form a pre-calculated construction. Consistently, he displays a predilection for deliberation in ship features.

In his doctrine, every item of ship’s proportions is given after the length of the keel – which has already been the usual way before him. From Deane’s viewpoint, which is not original and can be found in previous treatises as the late Edmund Bushnell’s The Compleat Ship-Wright (1669), the length of the keel is the key of a harmonious formula which gives the length of the gun deck, the beam, the rake of the stern, the rake of the stem, the keel height, the hull depth, the height of the masts, and so on… everything but captain’s age.

It may look strange because this is certainly not the predominant specification that an admiral would express, but the weight of cannonballs fired at an enemy at each round. Actually, there is a connection between the two : housing a 32-pounder gun requires a 3½-foot wide port and a 7½-foot wide space, in total an 11-foot length on the gun deck – which is 10¼-foot for a 24-pounder gun. Hence the ship length, measured at the crucial gun deck, varies by steps of nine, ten or eleven feet according to her main armament. However eleven feet is a narrow space to room the twelve servants required by a 24-pounder gun.

¤ For the French, the value are about the same : 11 English feet for a mixture of twelve 36-pounders and eighteen 24-pounders on the lower gun deck of the Royal Louis. The French foot is longer by 1/15th which fits with larger guns stemming from a heavier French pound. In the United Provinces, the foot varies from a province to the other. At Rotterdam, it is longer by 1/30th than the English one, at Amsterdam shorter by 1/14th. The Dutch have five admiralties bound to local usages and local units of measurement. It is also the case in France but the officials refer to the Paris units when specifying ship features.

This system can only work around a given size. Off a certain range, there is no evidence that appropriate dimensions would vary by a homothety, which is Deane’s implicit guess. Obviously, deck height is a constant.

However, in the details of the proportions he gives the ship, it is worth noticing and righteous to hailing that Deane has rubbed out every previous excess, by significantly reducing tumblehome and rake of stem. As for the curves, he privileges circles of a diameter more or less equal to the beam, endowing his ships with a plain and sober style – may we say a modern turn?

These days, Deane also introduces iron girdles for his third large ship, the 1,400-ton 100-gun Royal James, just laid down. But this innovation goes too far against tradition. This is a sacrilege of sorts – as if the rising violin-maker Antonio Stradivari, 26 years old this year, better known as Stradivarius, would incorporate iron into his violins... Even Pepys drops his friend thereon and the case is submitted to Charles II, who finally endorses Deane’s endeavour as a relevant one. Pepys’ opposition, likely based on an expert’s opinion, may have originated from his wondering if this heterogeneous combination would not generate extra stress as a counterpart of extra stiffness. Who knows?

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LINKS WITH PREVIOUS CHRONICLES

1660 - New Sovereign

1668 - Advent of Giant Vessels

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IN RETROSPECT FROM TODAY

NOTE A - About Deane’s production.

His individual production will be brief: one 66-gun, three 70-gun, three 100-gun ships. They are good or excellent vessels but his 100-gun Royal Charles (1673), divested from iron girdles after the Royal James’ controversy, which is a failure, her flanks tending to twist so her ports to water even in moderate seas. She has to be recast soon by adding girdles – wooden ones, of course.

NOTE B - About his doctrine destiny.

No Deane’s ship will conform to his own doctrine after Resolution, being all beamier than his rule for an overall betterment. Looking firstly for speed in the 1660s, Deane changes his mind in the 1670s and stability comes first if speed is not neglected – e.g. his 70-gun Harwich (1674) will be said the best sailer in the fleet.

Deane has not set a model of proportions for the other shipwrights either. The old school, by rule of thumb and intuition, has come to broadening their ships beyond Deane’s rule as he does on his own. Shish’s 1,100-ton 74-gun Royal Oak (1674) is perhaps the English masterpiece of the period. She is 125-foot long on her keel, 40½-foot broad, 18¼-foot deep in her hold.

The points of doctrine which survive are (1) deliberation in drawing ; (2) conformity of execution to prevision.

NOTE C - On iron girdles.

Despite King Charles’s agreement, Deane will not dare again to use iron in ship structure afterwards and two generations of shipwrights after him. Moreover, the Royal James will be burnt by the Dutch in 1672 at the battle of Solebay, which prevents any demonstration of the merit of iron girdles over time. Deane will therefore build another Royal James (1675) on a traditional full wooden pattern.

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SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Georges Fournier – Hydrographie, contenant la théorie et la practique de toutes les parties de la Navigation – Paris, 1643 - available on the Internet

Anthony Deane – Doctrine of Naval Architecture – London, 1670

Brian Lavery – The Ship of the Line – London, 1983

Peter Goodwin – The Construction and Fitting of the sailing Man of War 1650-1850 – London, 1987

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CREDITS

Unknown Painter – Portrait of Anthony Deane – found by chance on the Internet

John Hayls – Portrait of Samuel Pepys – oil on canvas, 1666 – © National Portrait Gallery