Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 17931815
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 and with Napoleonic Europe.
Roger Morriss was a curator at the National Maritime Museum in London between 1979 and 1995. From 1997, he taught maritime and naval history at the University of Exeter and at the Greenwich Maritime Institute, University of Greenwich. Between 2000 and 2013, he was General Editor of the Navy Records Society. He has published eight other books on naval history.
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Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 17931815
Samuel Bentham and the Royal Dockyards
Roger Morriss
https://www.routledge.com/history/series/RSMBH
Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 17931815
Samuel Bentham and the Royal Dockyards
Roger Morriss
First published 2021
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Contents
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 and with Napoleonic Europe.
Samuel Bentham was at the heart of these technological and cultural changes. He was a champion of the use of science, a Utilitarian motivated by the objective of improvement and a passionate advocate of technological innovation, but he met objections, obstacles and criticism in almost every field of dockyard management. The arguments propounded by both Bentham and his opponents principally the Navy Board, dockyard officers and contractors are important in themselves for greater understanding of contemporary beliefs in shipbuilding, naval ordnance, civil and mechanical engineering. His projects and campaigns reveal the nature of dockyard operations and management. They also throw light on the politics of Admiralty and Navy Board administration. Indeed, the support of Bentham at the Board of Admiralty until 1805 generated enemies and hatred for his alternative ideas. He was regarded as a maverick, as an outsider, even in the words of his friend, the Mechanist, Simon Goodrich a strange creature. After 1805, he was reviled by the naval officers at the Admiralty. In 1808, he was obliged to become the Civil Architect and Engineer at the Navy Board, a post that was abolished in 1812.
Nevertheless, Bentham had great influence, both in the short- and long-term development of dockyard management. His technological innovations had a direct impact on naval shipbuilding and on yard operations at Portsmouth. His criticisms of employment and payment in the dockyards gave rise to a succession of measures which reformed the industrial culture of the yards. Attitudes were changed. This was partly the product of the introduction of what may be called scientific reasoning; partly the product of the interest and publicity generated by the reconstruction and mechanisation of facilities at Portsmouth. Yet it was also the consequence of deliberate policies, encouraged by Bentham, to reward expertise, to enhance incentives for industry and to use civil and mechanical engineering to the greatest advantage of the navy. Bentham was not alone in pursuing these policies. The Commissioners for revising and digesting the civil affairs of the navy, appointed in 1805, wanted to make the dockyards operate as parts of one great machine. It was an ambition realised by the Navy Board after 1812 when, with the support of the Admiralty, the board possessed both the instruments of central control and a new confidence in the performance of the yards.
This book examines the work of Samuel Bentham as Inspector General of Naval Works, investigates the motivations and consequences of his appointment and presents the influences of the dockyards changing technological culture on their performance. The royal dockyards themselves have laboured under the reputation of being backward and lagging behind the rest of industrial Britain. Yet that reputation has to be revised for the Napoleonic War, when the technological culture of the civil departments of the navy steadily overhauled that of industrial Britain. Indeed, this book reveals the irony of Benthams denigration after 1807 at the very time the technology, for the installation of which he was primarily responsible, was influencing naval opinion and contributing to the administrative power of the British navy. Here, therefore, is presented a new and important reason for the power of the British navy during the last half of the Napoleonic War, and a principal cause of the ability of Britain to continue after the war as the worlds dominant naval power.
