Before the Ironclad: Warship Design and Development 1815 - 1860

by D.K. Brown

A history of the Royal Navy's transition from sail to steam and the factors governing technical changes in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Genres: Maritime

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1990

About the author

David K. Brown (1928–2008) was a noted British naval architect. After joining the Admiralty he became a member of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors, rising through the ranks to become the Deputy Chief Naval Architect before retiring in 1988.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before the Ironclad covers ship design in the Royal Navy from the end of the Napoleonic Wars through to the building of HMS Warrior, the first iron-hulled ocean-going warship. Written by a naval architect with a strong knowledge of the history of the design, construction and operation of warships, it’s hard to think of a better way of covering what the book does in 200 pages. Most of the book is dedicated to the development of the warships, as well as the institutions that supported this (such as the Royal Dockyards and the First School of Naval Architecture), although there is one chapter on the Russian War (commonly known as the Crimean War) that gives some insight into the use for the navy produced during the period.

The style of writing is easy to read, but it’s important to bear in mind it uses many maritime and naval architecture terms, and while it’s not inaccessible, per se, it would be a bit hard-going (lots of looking up terms and concepts) if read as a “first naval history book”. However, for readers with a basic grounding in the terminology and concepts, it’s written in a way as to make it accessible for the non-naval architect. The quality of editing is high, with only one grammatical issue, and a few typos in dates and name spellings.

The production values for the 2015 hardback edition that I read were high – glossy pages with numerous illustrations, including paintings, photographs, draughts/plans, maps and pictures of ship models. The images are well-chosen, and combined with the text do a very good job of conveying the technical developments of the period. While there is no bibliography, there are notes throughout the book and recommendations for further reading on particular topics (such as Andrew Lambert’s books on the steam battlefleet). There is a fairly comprehensive index. There are also a number of appendices that cover selected matters in more detail – such as the strength of wooden and iron warships, or the yards that built the Russian War gunboat fleet.

All up, it’s an excellent discussion of the topic in question, and an easy recommendation for anyone interested in the development of the ships of the Royal Navy between 1815 and 1861, or in the development of ships in this period, or more broadly.

[Mark Merritt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly a unique book, covering the “boring” years after the Napoleonic Wars (about 1815) till the introduction of the HMS Warrior in 1860. This was the period at the end of the classical “sailing ship” that had been the norm for centuries, and the introduction of steam power. Initially, steam was an occasional propulsive force, but, as technology advanced, steam engines became more reliable and economical and virtually all warships launched in Britain after 1850 had steam propulsion, but, they also used sail.

Iron hulls we’re introduced in the the 1830s but we’re found to be unsatisfactory, but, the Warrior changed that and after HMS Warrior almost all ships of the line were iron hulled.

This is not battle book (although battles are discussed, but in the terms of whether or not the new technologies were effective), but more of a history of warship development. The first of several by the author to cover the Royal Navy up to the modern period.

Detailed but accessible, highly recommended.

[Ari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first volume (chronologically) in Browns series on Royal Navy warship design. It has the usual Brown premise of “my predecessors have been unfairly maligned and we’re better at their jobs than people think.”

Hear several points with Brown wants to challenge a previous conventional wisdom :

Royal Navy ships were not at all inferior to their counterparts at any point; all of this stuff about scientific testing of ships lines was pointless, given the constraints of 18th century ship building. None of these ships go fast enough for hull shape to matter hydrodynamically. The shape matters for structural reasons. And the royal navy had considerably more robust ships than their competition.

The navy was not slow to adopt iron ships. There was an effort at iron ships in the 1830s (several were built) that was abandoned. The wrought-iron of the time was a terrible structural material that gets dangerously brittle at North Atlantic temperatures. Also, marine compasses are distorted by the ships magnetism and this required correction. And the Navy worked quite hard at this.

In general I was impressed how scientific the service was at the time. There are lots of model trials, full scale trials, scientific and experimental work of all kinds. These people very much had the spirit of the enlightenment.