He was the first person in the western world to advocate the use of a keel that would slide through the centre of the boat and could be raised when not in use. On his return to England, Schank convinced the navy of the value of adjustable keels, and a number of vessels incorporating this feature, most notably Lady Nelson, were built. She was sent on a two-year expedition to chart the southeast coast of Australia, and was involved in the founding of a number of settlements there, including Melbourne and Hobart.
However, the sliding keels did have some problems with leakage and jamming, and for a time they went out of favour. Captain Molyneaux Shuldham came up with some modifications in 1809. He was a prisoner of war held by the French in Verdun, but he smuggled out a model of what he called his ‘revolving keel’. It was exhibited at the Adelaide Gallery in London, where it came to the notice of three brothers from New Jersey, who in 1811 patented it in the US as the ‘centre-board’.
This was quickly taken up and became a standard feature on 80 per cent of America’s enormous coastal fleet. In due course American yachts-men saw its advantages, but few British racers took it on. An accident in 1876 was a tragic setback, however. Mohawk, a 43-m schooner, had her precarious 1.8-m draught made safe by a gigantic 9.5-m centre-board. Anchored off Staten Island during the preliminaries of the America’s Cup, she was just setting sail for a leisure cruise when she was hit by a squall. Her centre-board had not been lowered and she capsized and sank; the vice commodore of the New York Yacht Club and all his guests died.
More improvements came over the years, and now the centre-board, based on Schank’s pioneering idea of a sliding keel, is standard fitting on yachting craft.
Schank died on 6 February 1823, Fellow of the Royal Society and Admiral of the Blue. Mount Schank and Cape Schank, Australia, were named in his honour in 1800 by Lieutenant James Grant during his exploratory voyage while commanding Lady Nelson.
Woodcut of Lady Nelson.
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WINDFALL – an unexpected stroke of good fortune. DERIVATION: a sailing ship close in to land could sometimes encounter a strong gust of wind blowing down and away from high land. Canny captains would try to take advantage of this to maximise their speed.
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BUSHNELL’S TURTLE
The first submarine attack in the world occurred in 1776, against HMS Eagle, Lord Howe’s flagship, while it was anchored in New York harbour. It was carried out by a one-man submarine called Turtle.
The submersible craft was the invention of American patriot David Bushnell and was an egg-shaped barrel built of oak reinforced with iron bands and fitted with an observation dome. The craft’s dimensions were 2.3 m by 1.8 m. Once in the water the turtle floated just below the surface with its small conning tower exposed. It was propelled manually, the operator steering with his right hand while with his left he turned a crank connected to the propeller. The turtle had an oversized wood screw sticking up from the top with its handle inside the vessel’s chamber. Attached to this screw was a waterproof fuse leading to a mine fastened to the outer hull.
On 7 September 1776 Sergeant Ezra Lee boarded Turtle. The plan was that he would manoeuvre the submarine under the warship and then manually drill the screw deep enough into the keel of the enemy ship to anchor it, detach both the screw and the mine, set the fuse burning and move away as quickly as possible.
But the mission was not successful; Lee was unable to penetrate the copper-plated hull of the ship.
Bushnell abandoned Turtle and concentrated on other inventions. In 1787 he mysteriously disappeared from his home. It was not until nearly ten years later that he was discovered to have moved to Georgia and become a professor, using the name David Bush.
A replica of Turtle was made for the 1976 US Bicentennial.
Drawing of a cutaway view of Bushnell’s Turtle made by Lt Cdr F. M. Barber in 1885 from a description left by Bushnell.
SIMPLY THE BEST
There have been many outstanding maritime explorers – Columbus had great practical skill, Magellan pushed the bounds of discovery to unknown lands, Dampier was a keen observer of natural history and native peoples of the regions he visited. But in Captain James Cook these skills were united to a degree unmatched by any other in history.
Cook was born in very humble circumstances in 1728; his father was an agricultural day labourer. Cook had the good fortune of having a benefactor in Thomas Skottowe, the local lord of the manor. He helped with his education and later with an introduction to the Admiralty. Cook initially went to sea in the merchant navy and then joined the Royal Navy, where he worked his way up to the position of master in 1757.
Cook’s brilliant work in charting the entrance to the St Lawrence River was crucial in the success of the British assault on Quebec. It allowed General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack on the Plains of Abraham and helped bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty. This led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of his famous voyages.
The three voyages of discovery that he made between 1768 and his death in 1779 set new standards in navigation and surveying. He dispelled the myth of a Great Southern Continent, established that New Zealand was two islands and discovered and charted the eastern coast of Australia to a high degree of accuracy. The many scientists and artists who accompanied Cook collected invaluable data for numerous branches of study.
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‘Common Friend to Mankind’
Cook was a wise and respected captain and his contributions were widely recognised during his lifetime. In 1779, when the American colonies were at war with Britain, Benjamin Franklin wrote to captains of American warships at sea recommending that if they came into contact with Cook’s vessel to:
‘not consider her an enemy, nor suffer any plunder to be made of the effects contained in her, not obstruct her immediate return to England by detaining her or sending her into any other part of Europe or to America; but that you treat the said Captain Cook and his people with all civility and kindness… as common friends to mankind.’
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Cook was killed ashore in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, in a fight with the natives. His body was burnt and the flesh stripped from the bone, following local funerary rites for a tribal elder. His skull and some arm and leg bones were later buried at sea, but many smaller bones were taken as prized artefacts. In 1824 King Kamehameha II repatriated Cook’s remains to Britain, together with an arrow allegedly carved from one of Cook’s leg bones. However, DNA tests have proved that the arrow is of animal, not human origin.
The legacy of Captain Cook lives on in his charts, which were adopted in their entirety by the Admiralty Hydrographic Department and have only ever been refined since then.
‘THE GENTLEMEN MUST HAUL AND DRAW WITH THE MARINERS’
Francis Drake was born on a small farm in Devon in about 1540. He became one of the great Elizabethan sea explorers and adopted as his motto ‘Sic Parvis Magna’ – great achievements from small beginnings.
In person he was stocky, with red hair and beard, and the ability to talk straight to anybody. Some called him an arrogant upstart but he was immensely courageous and energetic, and an inspiring leader of men. At one point he famously proclaimed to his crew: ‘I must have the gentlemen to haul and draw with the mariners, and the mariners with the gentlemen.’ This established professionalism at the core of the Royal Navy.
In 1580 Drake became the first English sea captain to circumnavigate the globe. By the time he returned to Plymouth in September of that year he had rounded Cape Horn through the strait named after him, sailed up the coast of Peru, ballasted his ship with Spanish gold and silver, landed on the shore of California, crossed the Pacific, reached the East Indies and the Spice Islands and sailed back via the Cape of Good Hope.
So vast was the treasure that he brought back with him that it was reckoned to meet the cost of an entire year’s government. It was destined for the royal coffers, but Queen Elizabeth privately told Drake
to take £10,000 for himself and the same for his crew.
Drake devoted much time to civic affairs and politics, but whenever he could he returned to sea. He boasted of ‘singeing the King of Spain’s beard’ after an audacious raid on Cadiz in 1587 and a year later played his part in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, after coolly completing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe.
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Buccaneer at the Bar
When in London Drake was sometimes a visitor to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, one of the inns of court. The high table in the hall consists of three 8.8-m planks of a single oak, reputedly a gift from Elizabeth I, cut down in Windsor Forest and floated down the Thames. The members of the inn still dine there as they did one evening in August 1586 when Drake, just back from a successful expedition against the Spaniards, was rapturously congratulated by all around the table. The hatch cover of his galleon Golden Hinde was later used to make the present ‘cupboard’, the table on which new barristers sign the roll book after being called to the Bar.
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Drake captures a Spanish treasure-ship.
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DELIVER A BROADSIDE – give a forceful rebuke that ends all further discussion. DERIVATION: a broadside was the simultaneous firing from one side of the ship of every cannon that could be brought to bear on the enemy. In a three-deck ship of the line with 50 guns or more this meant a considerable weight of ironmongery!
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FATHER OF METEOROLOGY
Robert Fitzroy captained the famous second survey voyage of HMS Beagle in which Charles Darwin developed his revolutionary theory. This association with one of the world’s most influential men has somewhat overshadowed the contributions Fitzroy made to weather science.
During the first voyage Captain Pringle Stokes committed suicide at sea and Lieutenant Robert Fitzroy was appointed as Beagle’s captain. In February 1829, the new commanding officer found his ship blown on her beam-ends by a sudden violent squall. Only great skill in seamanship saved the day, but two crewmen had been swept from the rigging and drowned.
There had been a sharp drop in barometric pressure just before the squall, and Fitzroy’s traumatic experience prompted him to wonder if a more systematic means could be devised to forecast bad weather. In 1843 he suggested that barometers be distributed along the coast of Britain to provide early warning of storms, but nothing came of this.
In 1854 the Board of Trade created a Meteorological Department and Fitzroy was made its superintendent. In 1857, by now an admiral, Fitzroy designed a simple robust ‘Fishery Barometer’ (which soon became known as the Fitzroy barometer) on which were inscribed weather lore rhymes such as ‘When rise begins after low, squalls expect and clear blow’. With the financial assistance of a number of philanthropists he distributed 100 of the barometers to various seafaring centres and lifeboat stations.
Despite his efforts, in 1859 a well-found ship, the iron-clad steam clipper Royal Charter, sank in a storm off the Welsh coast resulting in nearly 400 deaths. The tragedy led to calls for the Meteorological Department to extend its activities by not only collecting weather statistics but also using the new telegraph network to send storm warnings to coastal centres, albeit the storms were probably already in progress. Fitzroy went further and developed his department into a unit for producing ‘weather forecasts’, a term he had coined in 1855.
By 1861 Fitzroy had in place a comprehensive system for getting out weather information and storm warnings which he coordinated from his London office. He then went on to produce a daily weather forecast, something no one had ever seriously attempted to do, which was published in The Times. However, the forecasts inevitably attracted attention when they were wrong and Fitzroy was subjected to public ridicule and condemnation in the House of Commons.
Fitzroy worked himself into the ground in his efforts to improve the quality of his forecasts. Going deaf and suffering from exhaustion and depression, on 30 April 1865 Admiral Fitzroy committed suicide at his Surrey home. It was a tragic echo of the fate of the captain of HMS Beagle from whom he took over.
In 2002, when the shipping forecast sea area ‘Finisterre’ was renamed to avoid confusion with the Spanish sea area of the same name, the new name chosen by the Meteorological Office was ‘Fitzroy’ in honour of their founder.
HMS Beagle in the Straits of Magellan.
WHERE ARE WE?
Since the early days of sail mariners had been able to calculate latitude (their north–south position) by measuring with instruments the angular height of a star or the sun above the horizon. But a reliable way of calculating longitude (their east–west position) remained elusive until the late eighteenth century. As vessels undertook longer voyages this became an increasing problem. The loss of some 2,000 seamen in October 1707 when Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s fleet sailed to disaster on the Scilly Isles brought clamours for a solution.
In 1714 the government of Great Britain offered a prize of £20,000 to anyone who could provide a solution to the problem of how to calculate longitude at sea. To administer and judge it a Board of Longitude was set up. The task was to invent a means of finding longitude to an accuracy of 30 nautical miles after a six-week voyage to the West Indies.
John Harrison was a Yorkshire carpenter by trade. He had only a limited education but developed a keen interest in machinery. Legend has it that at the age of six he was confined to bed with smallpox and was given a watch to amuse himself. He spent hours listening to it and carefully studying its moving parts. Harrison set out to tackle the problem of longitude in the most direct way – by attempting to produce a reliable clock that would not be affected by temperature, humidity and the rigours of being at sea. The idea was to be able to compare local time to that of Greenwich time, to which the chronometer would be set, and thus find the ship’s longitudinal position. It would take him 30 years of development and experimentation.
In 1735 Harrison completed the first of his timepieces, T1. It was heavy and cumbersome, but he continued his work, encouraged by an award of £500 from the Board, and fired by the gritty determination of a Yorkshireman. After two more versions, T2 and T3, Harrison completed his fourth timepiece in 1759, and with T4 he hoped to claim the prize. This was demonstrated to fall well within the accuracy range specified by the contest. However, there was disagreement within the Board and delays for further testing.
Harrison began work on T5, which he sent to George III to test, whose interest in science was well known. The king was pleased with its accuracy and appealed to the Prime Minister on Harrison’s behalf. In 1773 Harrison was awarded £8,750, but the Board insisted this was a bounty, not the prize.
In 1772 James Cook had taken one of Harrison’s ‘sea clocks’ with him on his second voyage. When he returned in 1774 he pronounced it completely satisfactory, having been able to make the first accurate charts of the South Sea Islands. Cook took the timepiece with him again on his third and final voyage.
Harrison died in 1776. The Board of Longitude was disbanded in 1828, and although the main prize was never actually awarded, Harrison had been the main winner with disbursements over time in effect totalling the amount of the prize money offered.
Harrison’s first four sea clocks are preserved in working order today in the National Maritime Museum.
John Harrison.
THE BUCCANEER WITH AN ENQUIRING MIND
William Dampier was born in Somerset, England, in 1652. He was orphaned while a teenager and started his sea career apprenticed to a ship’s captain on a voyage to the Newfoundland fisheries. He so hated the cold, however, that he made sure the rest of his travels were to the tropics, first as a sailor before the mast on an East Indiaman to Java.
When he returned he served in the Royal Navy for a time. He then worked as a sugar plantation manager in Jamaica, after which he found employment with the logwood cutters in Campeachy, Mexico. The dye of the logwood was highly prized for textiles but it was arduous work. The area was the nursery of English bu
ccaneers at the time and Dampier found himself attracted to their free-wheeling lifestyle.
Much of his life at sea from then on was as a buccaneer. Dampier circumnavigated the globe three times, visiting all five continents and taking in regions of the world largely unknown to Europeans.
When not engaged in plunder he took careful notes of the places he visited – their geography, botany and zoology and the culture of the indigenous peoples. He carried his journal with him in a joint of bamboo sealed with wax at both ends. It was published in 1697 as A New Voyage Around the World and was followed by several other popular books. As a result Dampier was taken up by London society and he came to the notice of the British Admiralty. In 1699 he was sent on a voyage of discovery around Australia in HMS Roebuck. Unfortunately he lost the ship when it was wrecked at Ascension Island, which ruled out any further employment with the Royal Navy. He went back to buccaneering.
Future navigators benefited from Dampier’s geographic surveys and observations, especially his ‘Chart of the General and Coasting Winds in the Great South Ocean’, 1729. This was the world’s first integrated pattern of the direction and extent of the trade-wind systems and major currents around the earth.
THERE WAS SOMETHING very special about a sailing ship under full canvas, with nothing but the ocean winds and the skill of the mariner to carry her to the four corners of the world. At the height of the age of sail the man-of-war was the moon rocket of its day, a complex, self-contained community of 800 or more men. Day and night it could move faster than a man could run on land and was far taller than most buildings ashore. Its construction required the timber from 5,000 oak trees and it had nearly 2 hectares of sail and 40 km of rope and rigging. It could remain at sea for six months or more, carrying huge quantities of supplies including 110 metric tons of shot, 27 metric tons of meat and 40 metric tons of ship’s biscuit.
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