Wars and ConflictsΒ permalink
Admiral Rodney
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Message 1.Β
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Monday, 1st February 2010
I recently watched an interesting programme on the Beeb by Dan Snow, entitled 'Empire of the Seas'....
In it, the discussion was about the efforts made by Louis XVI to challenge Britain's naval supremacy, with an expenditure on building a fleet of his own to match Britain's. In the meantime, Britain were fairly complacent, and when the American War of Independence broke out, Britain was caught napping. The French entered the war on the side of the American colonies, and the French naval blockade helped the Americans to win the war.
An unsung hero named Middleton came up with the idea of copper-bottoming the ships, and that helped to revolutionise the nay considerably, making these ships much faster thru the seas. It was too late to save the colonies, but at the time the COmte deGrasse had his eyes set on conquering Britain's colonies in the Caribbean.
Admiral Rodney led a force that defeated deGrasse at the Battle of St Vincent, and saved the British West Indian colonies. As a result, statues were erected to Rodney in places like Jamaica, and these statues are still there today....
But what grabbed me is the economic importance of these islands, as emphasized by Snow. Apparently, George III said that the West Indian islands had to be defended at all costs, because of the financial importance of the sugar trade to Britain. Without the revenue from these colonies, Britain would not have been able to continue the war in the colonies. YOu almost got the impression that Britain, at the time, would've preferred to hold on to the West Indian islands over the American colonies, given the choice....
After all, that was a choice the French made in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War. During that conflict, they'd lost Quebec and the sugar islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. It seems that in the pece negotiations that followed, the French were given the choice of giving up Quebec or those two Caribbean islands. They chose to keep Martinique and Guadeloupe.... -
Message 2
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Monday, 1st February 2010
Yes, I was surprised by this revelation too.
Just to give credit where it is due - Dan Snow said that it was a Mr Fisher of Liverpool who had the brainy idea of copper-bottoming our naval ships and the Navy Board Controller Charles Middleton took the matter up with King George III, who saw the point and supported it.
It's a little dissatisfying to know that the determination Rodney showed when he attacked the French fleet was at least partly due to terror at sharing the fate of Admiral Byng (i.e. being court martialled and shot. -
Message 3
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Monday, 1st February 2010
I had heard that before about the relative wealth/importance of the American colonies v the Caribbean islands - I remember being surprised at the time as well.
I remember after the first episode that there was some fair critisism of the progamme on this MB - I wonder what people's opinions of it are now with three programmes gone. It's certainly cramming a lot in over four hours so there will have to be a lot missed out, but I have found it quite informative, learning a bit about the War of Jenkins' Ear, Admiral Byng, and the aforementioned Admiral Rodney with his copper bottoms! -
Message 4
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Monday, 1st February 2010
I missed the programme before this one on Rodney, Cook and Nelson....
The War of Jenkins' Ear, was it? I must try to watch it on i-player, if it's available.
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Message 5
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Monday, 1st February 2010
Shivan,
Just a quickie ... copper bottoms were not introduced to speed ships up (Dan Snow strikes again!). It was to prevent the infestation of the Toredo worm found in tropical waters which has a nasty habit of boring holes in the wooden bottoms of ships; although of course barnacles (a major factor in the poor performance of ships) cling less readily to copper than wood. Copper bottoms also meant less need for caulking and cleaning, and to clean the bottom of a wooden man-of-war was no easy feat! Hence the phrase 'copper bottomed' meaning a really safe deal!
Regards Spruggles. -
Message 6
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Monday, 1st February 2010
I'm no great fan of Snow, but to be fair, I think that's what he said, that copper bottoms were introduced to address the problem of ships rotting in harbour, and that it curiously led to ships being much faster thru the seas....
I presume that's the correct interpretation!
I'm watching the second episode now, and I must say, he's done a pretty good job of covering the War of Jenkins' Ear, and the ill-fated campaigns of Old Grog Vernon. Because this is a scanty overview, it didn't mention the role of the buccaneers in Port Royal, which operated in both war and peace, while the privateers generally operated in war. Also, he didn't mention that Jenkins himself was probably a conman who never lost his ear in the first place!
But I thought it was a fairly decent programme to introduce people like my daughter to the history of the era, and to get them to read more....
I'm on to the Seven Years' War now. -
Message 7
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Monday, 1st February 2010
To call Middleton an unsung hero is a bit of an exaggeration -- he ended his career as First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Barham. The Queen Elizabeth-class battleship HMS Barham was named after him.
Middleton did not invent copper sheating. What he championed was a method to make it affordable. The problem was that the Navy's ships were held together by iron bolts, and the combination of iron, copper and salt water caused electrolytic corrosion of the iron, sufficiently fast to threaten the structural integrity of the ships. Avoiding iron altogether in the construction of the underwater parts of new ships might solve the problem, but this was thought to be prohibitively expensive. Middleton advocated solving this problem by adding a layer of insulating material -- lacquered paper -- between the hull and the copper. His solution was not very effective in reality, but it was good enough to convince his superiors to go ahead with copper-plating the fleet.
As for the advantage of coppering, it did allow ships to stay at sea for much longer before they needed hull cleaning and repair, substantially increasing the serviceable strength of the Navy. And as the ship's bottom stayed cleaner, there was a substantial gain in speed, enough to be tactically decisive. The copper was also lighter than the traditional way of protecting the hull against attack by marine life, an extra layer of wood planking. -
Message 8
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Tuesday, 2nd February 2010
Middleton did not invent copper sheatingΒ
The programme didn't say he did. It mentioned a letter received by the Admiralty from a member of the public suggesting it. -
Message 9
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Tuesday, 2nd February 2010
shivfan,
Sorry but I thought that man had been misleading his public again (I haven't watched the series.)
Goods luck,
Regards Spruggs.
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