On 4 Oct 2006, at 17:01, Jonathan Sanderson wrote:

>
>
> Back in the days when Local Heroes was being made for the BBC, we  
> used to have a catchphrase in the production office:
> 	"...but the Admiralty said it would not, and could not, ever power  
> a ship."
>
> We came across this - or minor variations thereon - unbelievably  
> frequently. Any technology applied to the structure, engines,  
> fuelling, propulsion, armament or navigation of vehicles would be  
> shown to the Admiralty, who would decree that the invention was of  
> no interest to them whatsoever, they were quite happy with sails/ 
> wood hulls/coal/paddles/watches/etc. One can understand what drove  
> Parsons to tootle around the Spithead review in Turbinia

Jonathan does the Admiralty a disservice in perpetuating the myth  
that they were somehow willfully technologically backward. Of course  
there were individual senior officers whose conservative views lead  
them to instinctively reject any innovation 'it was good enough for  
(insert name of dead naval hero here) and its good enough for us'.   
However the C19 Admiralty was not the technophobe it is often  
caricatured as being. As long as go as 1806 it embraced the  
production of ships blocks by machinery, because the machines made  
cheaper and better blocks that the old hand methods did, and it was  
quick to adopt structural improvements such as Sepping's diagonal  
braces in the decade 1810-20.

The problem it had with steam propulsion was that until about 1860  
seagoing steam plant simply wasn't up to the job of propelling  
warships.  Early marine engines had truly voracious appetites for  
coal and were notoriously unreliable. Until about 1870 any ocean  
going 'steam ship' also got a full sets of masts and rigging so that  
the wind could be used to eke out the coal supplies, and get the ship  
home when (not, usually, if) the engines broke down. Paddles, the  
universal method of propelling steamships until the 1840s, were  
obviously useless on a battleship - they would get in the way of the  
guns and make very tempting, and unmissable, targets for the enemy.

Far from rejecting steam propulsion out of hand the Admiralty was  
paying it keen attention to it, and waiting for the technology to  
develop to the point where it was mature enough to be useful for  
their particularly demanding requirements. So in the early 1840s they  
retained Isambard Brunel as a consultant to investigate the  
possibilities of the screw propellor, and in the 1850s having decided  
that screw steamers were a good idea they were involved in the  
development of more compact engines for use in warships.

Even the story of Parsons and the steam turbine needs qualifying: at  
Spithead the marine steam turbine was NOT a mature technology -  
Turbinia was the fruit of several year's frustrating experimentation  
and in many ways was an unstatisfactory vessel. But within five years  
of Parsons' demonstration at Spithead (which was tacitly authorised  
by at least some senior figures in the Admiralty) the Royal Navy had  
its first turbine propelled torpedo boats. In 1906 HMS Dreadnaught   
was launched - the worlds first all big gun, turbine propelled  
battleship. Turbinia's engines developed about 2000 hp. Dreadnaught's
  gave about 75,000 hp. To get from one to the other in less than  
nine years speaks of commitment to technological advance, not  
resistance to it.

If you want to understand the Admiralty's attitude towards new  
technology you have to understand what the Royal Navy had to do. It  
Victoria's day it was a go anywhere, anytime, do anything in support  
of British interests organisation. As such it demanded highly  
reliable and relatively simple technology. Innovations are rarely  
either of these things. But it kept an active watching brief on  
innovations in field such as merchant ship propulsion and it adopted  
these technologies as they became mature enough to meet its  
particularly demanding requirements.

So, please, don't dismiss Victoria's Lords of the Admiralty as  
technophobes - the real story is much more complex, much more  
fascinating, and teaches us a great deal more about how technology  
spreads than the simple caricature version does.

Hope this helps





Richard Ellam
L M Interactive
Science Shows and Hands-On Stuff

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