{"id":2355,"date":"2024-04-06T13:48:44","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T11:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/the-transition-from-wooden-to-iron-warships-within-thenetherlands-navy-in-the-19th-century\/"},"modified":"2024-04-20T15:16:16","modified_gmt":"2024-04-20T13:16:16","slug":"the-transition-from-wooden-to-iron-warships-within-thenetherlands-navy-in-the-19th-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/the-transition-from-wooden-to-iron-warships-within-thenetherlands-navy-in-the-19th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"The transition from wooden, to iron warships within theNetherlands Navy in the 19th century."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The advantage of iron ship construction for merchant shipping was that it had little space andweight requirement. This gave the opportunity to carry more cargo. Also, thanks to thelight ship construction carry more armament and carry more fuel, making theships obtained a greater radius of action.The Navy introduced steam propulsion for ocean shipping during the period from 1830 to 1865and performed pioneering work in this introduction of steam navigation.When steam propulsion was introduced, the Navy led the way, but it certainly wasn’tat the other innovation, the use of iron to build ships. For a long time, the Navy fromoperational considerations an aversion to the use of warships with an iron inInstead of a wooden hull. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, theState Shipyards, where most ships for the Navy were built, primarily woodapply. Private shipbuilding did include initiatives to buildiron ships. As early as the period from 1830 to 1850, private shipbuilders inNetherlands that they could build iron steamships for seafaring. Yet theseinitiatives did not lead to a breakthrough. Traditional shipbuilders continued well into thesecond half of the last century essentially build wooden sailing ships, despite the aforementionedadvantages of iron construction.<\/p>\n\n

The technique (iron and rivets)<\/h2>\n\n

After 1780, when the “puddle process” was invented, the cheap production of wrought ironpossible. This made it possible to use iron for shipbuilding instead of wood. Aimportant advantage of wrought iron was that the bandages could be forged and bent into any shapewere and that one was no longer dependent on what nature provided. Certain speciesIndeed, wood was becoming increasingly scarce, so that shipbuilders, who relied entirely on woodenconstructions were in place, have reluctantly had to accept that wooden parts were made byiron were replaced.Iron further had the following advantages. The iron bandages and plating took lessspace and weight than wooden structures and offered more cargo space. By theability to make stronger structures with iron, the construction of larger ships was possible.Furthermore, iron was cheaper, incombustible and, under favorable conditions, more durable. But therein return, iron could not be “copperized,” like wood, to prevent fouling.Other disadvantages were that the iron adversely affected the operation of the compass and thatan iron ship sustained more damage in collisions, groundings and enemy shelling.The first use of iron structures involved inland navigation. One of the first builders ofiron steamers was John Laird at Birkenhead. In 1833, he built the iron paddle steamerLady Landsdown. However suitable iron craft on the rivers and canals proved to be, for the seaconsidered an iron ship too dangerous to “risk the life of the sailor and the merchant’s goods. It was believed that the sea water would cause the skin to rust completelycause it to decay and would destroy the hull. The compass would be disturbed by the iron and theship would drift, lack stability and listen badly to the rudder. The first iron shipshad to navigate along the coast as a result of that compass deviation (deviation) and it took until1855 before reliable compass correction for merchant ships was available.<\/p>\n\n

Thanks in part to this compass correction, the benefits of iron began to weigh more heavily over timeoutweigh the disadvantages and switched to building entirely of iron constructedseagoing vessels. Construction initially consisted of “translating” wooden structures into thoseof iron. Iron trusses, for example, were built in sections just like wooden trusses. Thistranslation can also be clearly seen in the evolution of the construction of the keel, which is based on theattached illustration is explained. Slowly but surely, people began to useof the specific properties of iron and went on to construct entirely on this materialapply. As early as 1845, the case in favor of iron ships seemed decided after the construction of the GreatBritain, designed by I.K. Brunel and built by John Scott Russell. What possibilities airon structure Brunel then showed with his design of the giant ship GreatEastern. The launching in 1858 of the Great Eastern, which had both propeller andpaddle propulsion was provided, however, became a deb\u00e2cle. The construction of the large ship worked moredeterrent than encouraging the construction of iron steamships. To deal with ironbe able to construct, required craftsmanship that was new to shipbuilding and that onlywas present among iron smiths and boiler makers. One difference from timber construction was that the ironhad to undergo other pretreatments and that different tools were needed, There had to beare heated, hammered, rolled, punched, cut and violence. As long as it involves the construction of asingle iron ship went these operations took place by hand power. But for buildingof several iron ships in succession, the work was more routine and wereboth machine tools and new techniques for the pre-processing of profile andsheet material required.<\/p>\n\n

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‘Translation’ from wooden to iron keel. Initially, they forged iron plates in the shape of a wooden keel. The shape depended on the method of attachment to the skin plates as shown in the first two figures. To increase strength, they then made the keel solid by adding shims. In wooden ships, a beam called zaathout ran across the bottom trusses parallel to the keel. In the evolution of the iron keel, this zaathout played a role. This was because, for strength reasons, they made the iron keel narrower and raised it so high that it took the place of the wooden zaathout. In iron shipbuilding, this part of the ship’s structure is no longer called the keel but mid-sawn wood.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

The various iron parts were connected with rivets. Initially, it wasriveting work in shipbuilding performed by boiler makers. The handiwork of the boiler makers wastoo expensive for this work, however, and bricks appeared in the yards, which in time replaced the woodenshipmakers were going to be displaced. Clinkers were the ones who joined the loose iron plates togetherhad to attach in such a way that no more water could get between the seams of the aanriveted together plates could come through. With the riveting work, the work to create awatertight connection to be established yet. After riveting, the seams had to beof the chiseled plates joined together are sealed by the edges of the upperplate with a special chisel against the lower plate. This operation had an equalfunction as the waterproof caulking or caulking of the skin of a wooden ship. The Englishdesignation for caulking is “to caulk,” a term the British also use for waterproofingmaking the seams of iron and steel plates. The Dutch name for this operation isderived from the English and is “cooking. The special chisel was called cooking chisel. This namingpoints to the English influence on iron shipbuilding in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n

There were attempts in the nineteenth century to rivet and cook and other handicrafts.mechanize. This did involve working with steam hammers and hydraulic hammers. But these machineswere difficult to move and were only used in the shipbuilding shed, the workshop where thepretreatments took place, applied. For riveting work on ships in the pipeline,which often required working in hard-to-reach places, handiwork continued into thetwentieth century maintained. Iron construction also required a different method of transportation. Thetools for moving wooden structural components were not adequate fortransporting the iron material.<\/p>\n\n

Developments within the Dutch navy.<\/h2>\n\n

The fact that the Dutch shipbuilding industry before 1870 did not involve the construction of ironnaval vessels was involved had two causes. In. first, the Navy built the mostships in Empire’s own yards. Second, until 1865, the Navy had no need foriron sea ships. This was not conservatism, but a deliberate choice. The policy on the use of iron was similar to that of the British Navy. The DutchNavy was therefore not far behind England in terms of building iron ships, for eventhe British Admiralty continued to build wooden ships until the 1960s. The British had earlierhad a number of iron warships and supply ships built by private shipyards,including the HMS Ruby. By 1846, however, shooting tests on HMS Ruby had shown that theiron skin shattered by the impact of bullets and shells. The projectiles had largecaused devastation in the interior of the ship. After this, the British Navy stopped for the time beingwith the construction of iron warships. It was not until 1860 that the Admiralty took the armored shipWarrior the construction of iron ships again. In 1863, Dutch naval engineers visitedBritish Empire yards to investigate the state of armoring of warships, and then they saw that even in the yards of the British Admiralty, except at Chatham, no iron ships were yet being built. The debate between proponents of iron and wooden ships was undecided. The Netherlands did have iron ships in the pipeline before 1860, and a dry dock was built for the government in 1864, but it was commissioned by the Minister of Colonies, not the Navy. The Navy did not begin to play a significant role in the introduction of ironclad ship building in the Netherlands until the armored age. This erabegan about 1860, following foreign events in the maritime field.Gradually, the Navy then moved to using iron as a structural material in theshipbuilding.In connection with developments in iron armored ships, the minister ofNavy a number of engineers and officers visited England to learn aboutthe armor technology. He then proposed to the House of Representatives the new construction of wooden shipscease.<\/p>\n\n

At the Rijkswerf in Amsterdam, the first iron armored ships were built in the Netherlands.Shortly after 1860, British private shipyards, notably Napier at Glasgow and Laird atLiverpool, began designing and building small iron armored ships forforeign account. The Secretary of the Navy himself went to see some built ironarmored ships view, after which negotiations began with Laird for the delivery ofa new armored ship.In February 1865, a contract was signed with Laird for the delivery of the first armored shipfor the Dutch Navy, the ramship Prince Hendrik of the Netherlands. It was an ironarmored propeller steamship with an armament of 4 guns mounted in two rotatingarmored towers were set up. Furthermore, the ship was equipped with a ram stern and twoscrewing.The naval engineer Bruno Joannes Tideman had drawn attention as early as 1862 to the need foracquire armored frigates for ocean duties. Armored ships, according to him, wereneeded to protect merchant shipping on connections to the West and East Indies. Thearmored ships had to be built in the Netherlands, according to Tideman, as well as the necessaryarmaments and infrastructural facilities such as docks, cranes and railroad equipment. In short,The Netherlands should seize its opportunity to create a heavy industry, which would provide thecould compete with foreign countries.<\/p>\n\n

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Bruno Joannes Tideman<\/strong>: Shipbuilding engineer; founder of modern shipbuilding in the Netherlands andof the Kon. Mij ‘De Schelde’ te Vlissingen. Became an engineer cadet for the East Indies at the Breda Military Academy in 1851. Studied shipbuilding from 1853-1857. Became adspirant engineer at the Vlissingen State Shipyard in 1857 and there successively appointed engineer 2nd class, first attending engineer and chief engineer. Published Treatises on Shipbuilding in 1859; Dictionary of Shipbuilding in 1861. From 1865-1867 he was in charge of supervising the construction of the armored ship “Prince Henry of the Netherlands” at Birkenhead.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

Tideman must have exerted great influence on the minister’s opinion formation. Theconcept of the ramship Prince Hendrik of the Netherlands, which had already been created, before thecommission to revise coastal defense took office, did not deviate much in terms of intentOf Tideman’s ideas.<\/p>\n

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Tideman had great faith in the capacity of shipbuilding in the Netherlands, which not only had theiron armored ships for the Navy, but also modern iron merchant ships should bedeliver. In 1865 he applied for a concession to establish a modernshipbuilding company on the grounds of the former State Shipyard at Flushing. The location was convenientthrough the deep waters. He wanted to establish a large industry there for building steamshipsfor Navy and merchant marine, railroad equipment and all other heavy equipment that the Netherlands has inwould need in the coming decades. The Secretary of the Navy supported the application, but Paulof Flushing protested and the Interior Minister therefore opposed approval.He saw an advantage over pre-existing industries. This argument prevented theestablishment of a state-subsidized modern shipbuilding company. Tideman went toEngland to supervise construction of the Prince Henry of the Netherlands at Laird. Heleft in April 1865 and stayed there until February 1867. He also spent his time studyingof the state of the art in England and Scotland in the field of marine andmechanical engineering. He wrote treatises and books on the subject. Also, his brother Bruno WillemTideman, who had previously supervised the manufacture of armor plates, wrote a bookOn the construction of iron ships. In this way, knowledge was transferred regarding thedesign and construction of ships, which was important not only for naval shipbuilding,but also for merchant shipping. In April 1867, the House of Representatives gave approval for the implementationof fleet renewal with iron armored ships as by the committee to revise thecoastal defenses had been recommended. The Navy placed orders with private shipyards in Englandand France. It was planned that those first ships would be at the Rijkswerf in Amsterdambe recreated, and the minister accordingly sent engineers to England and France tooverseeing construction while looking off the trade. The first ships to arrive inNetherlands were built were the ram monitors Cerberus and Bloodhound. Before that, thedrawings of the Heiligerlee and Crocodile supplied by Laird used. The NSBM provided thecomplete machinery installations for these two ships. The third ship to visit the State Yard atAmsterdam built was the ramship Guinea, made to the modified design of theBuffalo that was under construction at Napier. This ship received an engine from the Royal Factory ofSteam and Other Tools. The Cerberus was completed in January 1869, making it the first inNetherlands-built iron armored ship.<\/p>\n\n

An impression of the quality of Dutch-built armored ships compared to theproducts supplied by England can be obtained by ordering ships in England tocompare with the ships that were subsequently (re)built in the Netherlands. The speed of the inAmsterdam-built Guinea on the sea trial was 9.5 knots at a power of 2460 ipk(Indicator ground forces). The nearly identical Napier-built Buffalo was used during thetrial run achieved a speed of 12.7 knots at an indicative power of 2168 iphp. The largespeed difference cannot be explained from the difference in draft or water depth. Also, the inAmsterdam-built monitors during the trial voyages underperformed the ones from Englandoriginating ships. It is not known what caused those differences. Only from theBloodhound was known to be “dirty,” that is, the ship’s skin had grown on.Because the first ships built in Holland were virtually replicas of those built in Englandbuilt ships, the difference in speed could not be due to a difference in size or shapeof the hull. Rather, the difference indicates a lower efficiency of Dutch machinery installations compared to those of British-built ships. Probably the mechanical and thermal losses were relatively large in the NSBM and Royal Factory’sdelivered machines, because the power in the steam cylinder was large enough on its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The use of iron and steam were important to both merchant shipping and the Navy,
\nbut for different reasons. The merchant marine benefited from the greater regularity that
\noffered steam propulsion, making regular scheduled services possible. For the Navy lay
\nThe importance of steam propulsion in more effective maritime operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"post_flags":[],"class_list":["post-2355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deepening"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2355"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2358,"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355\/revisions\/2358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2355"},{"taxonomy":"post_flag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuffel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_flags?post=2355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}