Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 1793–1815

Samuel Bentham and the Royal Dockyards

Roger Morriss

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000203738
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Histoire
• Sous-sujet: Histoire du monde

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the technology employed by the British navy changed not just the material resources of the British navy but the culture and performance of the royal dockyards. This book examines the role of the Inspector General of Naval Works, an Admiralty office occupied by Samuel Bentham between 1796 and 1807, which initiated a range of changes in dockyard technology by the construction of experimental vessels, the introduction of non-recoil armament, the reconstruction of Portsmouth yard, and the introduction of steam-powered engines to pump water, drive mass-production machinery and reprocess copper sheathing. While primarily about the technology, this book also examines the complementary changes in the industrial culture of the dockyards. For it was that change in culture which permitted the dockyards at the end of the Wars to maintain a fleet of unprecedented size and engage in warfare both with the United States of America and with Napoleonic Europe.

1 State provision for naval technology

Contemporary concerns

In the 1790s, the apparent relative inertia of dockyard technology became a matter of political concern. Leading figures in the maritime community were concerned to improve the performance of ships, and in 1791 naval officers and ship builders formed a pressure group, the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture. It claimed that the sailing qualities of British ships were inferior to those of the French, a criticism that lasted well into the Napoleonic War. In 1791, the Society suggested the answer might be to appoint, like the French, an inspector of shipbuilding who assessed designs and alterations to ships.¹ Inspectors to improve efficiency had recently become a feature of British government, in particular of the Ordnance department which, to remove a reputation for poor quality and inefficiency, had appointed an Inspector of Artillery in 1780, an Inspector of Gunpowder Manufactories in 1789, followed by inspectors of small arms, carriages and barracks.

Similar concerns were raised regarding the physical facilities of the royal navy. Some of the docks and basins were a century old, too small for the growing size of ships and in need of repair or replacement. Although the Navy Board had commissioners appointed to the principal dockyards, the yard facilities were the responsibility of yard officers who directed their maintenance. At Portsmouth, one officer, the Master House Carpenter, specialised in the construction and repair of the physical facilities. But most of the work of construction and maintenance was done by contractors. During the 1780s, the Comptroller of the Navy, Sir Charles Middleton, had employed a civil architect to inspect building work in the yards, believing the yard officers were ‘totally ignorant of the subject’ and the Navy Board ‘very unequal to the task of forming such contracts’.² When Lord Howe became First Lord of the Admiralty, he had the architect dismissed as a needless expense. However, by then, Middleton had recommended the appointment of a surveyor of civil architecture to the Commissioners on Fees, perquisites and other emoluments.³

War from 1793 gave urgency to the question of improvement of the ships and facilities available to the royal navy. The improvement of the navy was already a political issue by 1795. In the House of Commons ‘a very general wish and expectation seemed to prevail… that something should be done by Administration’. It was thought foreign nations were ‘labouring and may be expected to labour more and more strenuously every day in pursuit of improvements’. It seemed ‘neither becoming nor provident in this country to be left altogether behind in a pursuit so much our own’.⁴

During the 1790s, renewed hostilities enhanced the sense of urgency for dockyard improvements. Both William Pitt as First Lord of the Treasury, and Henry Dundas as Secretary of State for War and Colonies were aware of the importance of investment in the navy. Before the outbreak of war in 1793, the former had made funds available for the completion of ships and the repair of the fleet.⁵ After war was declared, the latter looked back to the Seven Years War for war policy and wished to attack France in the East and West Indies.⁶ Britain’s navy was expected to operate on a global scale. Since the 1740s, the Bourbon alliance between France and Spain had demanded Britain’s navy achieve a two-power standard in numbers of warships. The American War of Independence had raised that number to a three-power standard.

In 1790, Britain could boast the largest navy in Europe. With 276 warships, including a potential 130 battle ships of the line, Britain’s navy could dominate the individual navies of her recent enemies: France with 152 warships including 73 ships of the line, Spain with 125 including 72 line of battle ships and Holland with 84 ships including 48 of the line. The British navy was in good condition: during the 1780s repairs and the completion of new building had been overseen by Sir Charles Middleton, Comptroller at the Navy Board until 1790. However together Britain’s enemies posed a real threat. And the odds against Britain could have been increased by any of the Baltic powers: Denmark-Norway with 48 ships including 32 ships of the line, Sweden with 29 including 16 of the line and Russia with 112 including 58 battleships. In view of their control over access to naval stores in the Baltic, and the repeated threat of a northern alliance, they potentially held the balance of naval power.⁷

The opening naval campaigns of the French Revolutionary War were fortuitous for Britain. Despite a degree of disorganisation at sea, the British Channel fleet under Lord Howe defeated the French fleet at the battle of the Glorious First of June 1794. France lost seven ships but still had a powerful fleet in Brest which the Admiralty had to keep under observation and, if possible, blockade.⁸ This demanded the maintenance of a strong force of ships of the line at sea, the maintenance of healthy crews and the refitting of ships with the minimum of delays in port.⁹ To achieve these ends, between 1795 and 1798 the Admiralty asserted increasing control over the distribution, relief and refitting of ships.¹⁰ Central to these developments was the role played by Plymouth and Portsmouth dockyards and the necessity if possible to increase their speed of work and the number of ships they fitted, refitted and returned to sea. By 1795, when the Inspector General’s department was proposed, seventy per cent of Britain’s line of battle ships were in commission; by 1797 eighty-two per cent of the battlefleet.¹¹

During this war, repairs became steadily more important. As the war drew on most of Britain’s domestically built battleships grew older and more stressed by long service. The effects of the sea ‘in deranging the structure of ships’ emphasised the weakness of their design.¹² The construction of new ships of the line made little progress but the capture of foreign ships added to the navy. By 1802, by the purchase of prizes, 27 French ships of the line, 17 Dutch ships, 5 Spanish ships and 1 Danish ship of the line entered the navy which thus grew to 165 ships of the line, of which over a third was foreign built.¹³ However, the maintenance and repair of these ships demanded timber the domestic supply of which was becoming increasingly scarce. The Surveyors of the Navy were thus obliged increasingly to consider iron for reinforcement. The design, strength and repair of ships were therefore as much matters of concern as the capabilities of the dockyards.

The Admiralty response

The management of the navy was the responsibility of the First Lord of the Admiralty, aided and advised by the Board of Admiralty. George, second Earl Spencer, was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in December 1794 and he was advised by Sir Charles Middleton, appointed to the Board of Admiralty in May 1794. As Comptroller or chairman of the Navy Board during the American War of Independence, Middleton had been alert to innovations that could make a difference to Britain’s power at sea, lobbying for the introduction of carronades and for the introduction of copper sheathing. Having overseen the coppering of the fleet between 1779 and 1782, he reaped credit for the significant difference it made to ship speed according to fleet commanders like Rodney who had two victories against the French and Spanish.¹⁴

In the spring of 1795, in response to contemporary concerns about the navy, Middleton proposed to Lord Spencer and Admiral James Gambier at the Admiralty ‘some loose thoughts on an intermediate Sea Board, a committee qualified to inspect and report on all plans of improvement which may be offered relative to naval matters’. He observed that ‘the shipbuilding and civil building have been too long committed to insufficient men’ and maintained that ‘the want of such a committee is severely felt in the loss of everything that is valuable and the want of progress in all naval improvements’.¹⁵

Possibly prompted by this initiative, the Admiralty received a letter of 21 April 1795 from Samuel Bentham proposing improvements in the dockyards including the introduction of machinery and steam power. Theoretically on leave from service in the Russian army, Bentham was already well known to members of the government. The family home in Queen Square Place, Westminster, had become a showroom for machinery invented by Bentham and, as his brother Jeremy termed it, ‘a raree-show’. Bentham’s wife recalled how ‘numberless persons of rank, of science, and of manufacturing intelligence almost daily obtained an introduction to see the wonders at Queens-square Place’; the machinery had become ‘the subject of notice in the House of Commons, where it was generally eulogised, but more particularly by Mr Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville’.¹⁶

‘A good deal’ of discussion then took place between Bentham, Lord Spencer, Middleton and Admiral James Gambier. What that discussion was about is unknown but Bentham almost certainly proposed to enlarge the yards’ dock capacity, to construct ships of his own experimental design and to improve the conditions of seafarers through systems of heating and ventilating ships. In the first instance, Bentham was given permission to visit the dockyards and to firm up his proposals. At this time, he abandoned ideas of returning to Russia and committed to British service. The first dockyard he visited was Portsmouth yard, where large-scale works based on a long-term plan were in gradual progress. There he met Admiral Sir Hugh Seymour, then serving in the Channel fleet but appointed in March to be a member of the Admiralty Board. They discussed the potential of Bentham’s ideas for their value to the fleet at sea. His report on Portsmouth yard was dated 29 May 1795 and upon this was based the decision to appoint Bentham to a post at the Admiralty.¹⁷ According to Charles Abbot, Bentham’s stepbrother, Bentham’s plan for Portsmouth permitted the Board ‘for their present estimate to treble the capabilities of the yard’.¹⁸

On Bentham’s return to London, in June 1795 discussions turned to the role he might play and the nature of an appointment. An adamant objector to divided responsibility, Bentham argued against Middleton’s proposal for a committee to inspect and repo...