George Wightwick Rendel
Encyclopedia
George Wightwick Rendel (6 February 1833 - 9 October 1902) was a British
engineer
, and naval architect. He was closely associated with the Tyneside
industrialist and armaments manufacturer, William George Armstrong.
, a lifelong friend of his father. He was educated at Harrow
, but ran away in 1849. His siblings included Alexander Meadows Rendel
, Hamilton Rendel and the Liberal MP Stuart Rendel, 1st Baron Rendel
.
George Rendel married Harriet, daughter of Joseph Simpson, the British vice-consul at Kronstadt
, on 13 December 1860. They had five sons before her death in 1878. He met his second wife, Lucinia Pinelli, in Rome, while serving on a design committee of the Italian Ministry of Marine. They married in 1880 and had three sons and a daughter. His son George went on to become the distinguished diplomat Sir George William Rendel
.
for three years before completing his engineering education at his father's London office. His father died in 1856 and the brothers George, Stuart and Hamilton all joined Armstrong's company, while Alexander took over the family business.
. Armstrong had been appointed as Engineer of Rifled Ordnance to the War Department
, and to avoid a conflict of interests, he had no financial interest in the new company. George Rendel was one of three partners in the business, along with George Cruddas and Richard Lambert. Armstrong had been helped in his early career by James Rendel
, and treated his son as a protégé. In 1864 the Elswick Ordnance Company was merged with Armstrong’s original company to form Sir W G Armstrong and Company. George Rendel was one of seven partners in the new company, and was in joint charge of the ordnance departments, together with Captain Andrew Noble.
as well as for Italy, Brazil and Chile. The first of these was HMS Staunch, delivered in 1868.
yard became well known for its construction of cruiser
s, and Rendel designed many of these. He designed a series of 1,350 ton unarmoured 16 knot cruisers for the Chinese (Chaoyong and Yangwei
) and Chilean navies.
. The Japanese navy in particular took several Rendel-designed cruisers, with which they defeated the Russian navy at the Battle of Tsushima
in 1905.
pioneered the use of forced-draught fans in boiler rooms, significantly increasing the power of marine steam engines at minimal cost in weight or volume.
, which was able to have 38-ton guns fitted, instead of the 35-ton guns originally planned. His hydraulic systems were subsequently used in all Royal Navy
ships as well as the ships of several foreign navies.
In 1871 Rendel was appointed a member of the British government committee on warship design. He played a major role in the 1877 design of the innovative 11,880 tons displacement HMS Inflexible
, which was notable for being the first major warship to depend in part for the protection of her buoyancy by a horizontal armoured deck below the water-line rather than armoured sides along the waterline. She was packed with other new features: her guns weighed 80 tons each; she carried the thickest armour ever to have been carried by a British warship, at 24 inches (61 cm); great attention was paid to her damaged stability to ensure she could absorb damage and remain upright and buoyant.
, near Naples in Italy. In 1900 Armstrong died, and Andrew Noble succeeded him as chairman of the company, now known as Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd
. After Armstrong’s death, the old acrimony between the Rendels and Andrew Noble came to the fore, with George and his brothers criticising Noble’s management of the company. The dispute between the two sides was not resolved until several years after George’s death.
in 1879, and became vice-president in 1882.
, Isle of Wight
. He used a wheelchair for the last two years of his life. He died at home on 9 October 1902 and, although not a Roman Catholic, was at his own request buried at the St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery
at Kensal Green
in London.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
, and naval architect. He was closely associated with the Tyneside
Tyneside
Tyneside is a conurbation in North East England, defined by the Office of National Statistics, which is home to over 80% of the population of Tyne and Wear. It includes the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Metropolitan Boroughs of Gateshead, North Tyneside and South Tyneside — all settlements on...
industrialist and armaments manufacturer, William George Armstrong.
Family
George was the third (of five) sons of the civil engineer James Meadows Rendel and his wife Catherine Harris. He was named after George WightwickGeorge Wightwick
George Wightwick was an architect and possibly the first architectural journalist.In addition to his architectural practice, he developed his skills and the market for architectural journalism...
, a lifelong friend of his father. He was educated at Harrow
Harrow School
Harrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...
, but ran away in 1849. His siblings included Alexander Meadows Rendel
Alexander Meadows Rendel
Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel was a British civil engineer.Rendel was born in Plymouth. He was the eldest son of the engineer James Meadows Rendel and his wife Catherine Harris...
, Hamilton Rendel and the Liberal MP Stuart Rendel, 1st Baron Rendel
Stuart Rendel, 1st Baron Rendel
Stuart Rendel, 1st Baron Rendel was a British industrialist, philanthropist and Liberal politician. He sat Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire between 1880 and 1894 and was recognised as the leader of the Welsh MP's...
.
George Rendel married Harriet, daughter of Joseph Simpson, the British vice-consul at Kronstadt
Kronstadt
Kronstadt , also spelled Kronshtadt, Cronstadt |crown]]" and Stadt for "city"); is a municipal town in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia, located on Kotlin Island, west of Saint Petersburg proper near the head of the Gulf of Finland. Population: It is also...
, on 13 December 1860. They had five sons before her death in 1878. He met his second wife, Lucinia Pinelli, in Rome, while serving on a design committee of the Italian Ministry of Marine. They married in 1880 and had three sons and a daughter. His son George went on to become the distinguished diplomat Sir George William Rendel
George William Rendel
Sir George William Rendel was a British diplomat. Rendel, the son of the engineer George Wightwick Rendel was educated at Downside School and at Queen's College, Oxford, graduating in Modern History in 1911....
.
Engineering apprenticeship
Working for his father, at first on the Great Grimsby Royal docks, then in company with his elder brother Lewis Rendel on the eastern breakwater and new Admiralty pier at Holyhead, he was well prepared for an apprenticeship to his father's great friend, Sir William Armstrong, at his Elswick works. He lived with Armstrong at his house in JesmondJesmond
Jesmond is a residential suburb and is split into two electoral wards just north of the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The population is about 12,000. It is adjacent to, and to the east of, the Town Moor, providing pedestrian and cycle paths to Spital Tongues and the city's two Universities...
for three years before completing his engineering education at his father's London office. His father died in 1856 and the brothers George, Stuart and Hamilton all joined Armstrong's company, while Alexander took over the family business.
Elswick Ordnance Company
In 1859 Sir William Armstrong formed the Elswick Ordnance Company in order to supply guns for the British ArmyBritish Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
. Armstrong had been appointed as Engineer of Rifled Ordnance to the War Department
War Department (UK)
The War Department was the United Kingdom government department responsible for the supply of equipment to the armed forces of the United Kingdom and the pursuance of military activity. In 1857 it became the War Office...
, and to avoid a conflict of interests, he had no financial interest in the new company. George Rendel was one of three partners in the business, along with George Cruddas and Richard Lambert. Armstrong had been helped in his early career by James Rendel
James Meadows Rendel
James Meadows Rendel FRS was a British civil engineer.-Early life & career:Rendel, the son of a farmer and surveyor, was born near Okehampton, Devon, in 1799. He was initiated into the operations of a millwright under an uncle at Teignmouth, while from his father he learnt the rudiments of civil...
, and treated his son as a protégé. In 1864 the Elswick Ordnance Company was merged with Armstrong’s original company to form Sir W G Armstrong and Company. George Rendel was one of seven partners in the new company, and was in joint charge of the ordnance departments, together with Captain Andrew Noble.
Rendel gunboats
In 1867 Armstrong signed an agreement with a local shipbuilder, Dr. Charles Mitchell, whereby Mitchell’s shipyard would build warships and Armstrong’s company would provide the armaments. George Rendel was put in charge of the new venture and he designed the early ships produced by it. These were the Rendel gunboats (or "flat-iron gunboats" after their physical similarity to a contemporary flat iron) produced for the British AdmiraltyAdmiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...
as well as for Italy, Brazil and Chile. The first of these was HMS Staunch, delivered in 1868.
Unarmoured cruisers
Armstrong’s ElswickElswick, Tyne and Wear
Elswick is a ward of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, in the western part of the city, bordering the river Tyne. One of the earliest references to the coal mining industry of the north east occurs in 1330, when it was recorded that the Prior of Tynemouth let a colliery, called Heygrove, at...
yard became well known for its construction of cruiser
Cruiser
A cruiser is a type of warship. The term has been in use for several hundreds of years, and has had different meanings throughout this period...
s, and Rendel designed many of these. He designed a series of 1,350 ton unarmoured 16 knot cruisers for the Chinese (Chaoyong and Yangwei
Chinese cruiser Yangwei
Yangwei was a cruiser in the Qing Dynasty Beiyang Fleet. Its sister ship was the Chaoyong, the lead ship of the class, and the Tsukushi built for Japan was of the same model....
) and Chilean navies.
Protected cruisers
Following this, together with Armstrong, he designed the world’s first protected cruiser, the prototype being the Esmeralda. The design had an arched steel protective deck running from stem to stern just below the waterline. All of the vital parts of the ship were placed below the protective deck. The ship also had cork-filled cellular compartments to aid with buoyancy. The Esmeralda was built for Chile, but was bought by the Japanese and became the IzumiJapanese cruiser Izumi
The was a 2nd class protected cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy, designed and built by the Newcastle upon Tyne-based Armstrong Whitworth shipyards at Elswick in the United Kingdom...
. The Japanese navy in particular took several Rendel-designed cruisers, with which they defeated the Russian navy at the Battle of Tsushima
Battle of Tsushima
The Battle of Tsushima , commonly known as the “Sea of Japan Naval Battle” in Japan and the “Battle of Tsushima Strait”, was the major naval battle fought between Russia and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War...
in 1905.
Forced draught
Rendel and Alfred YarrowAlfred Yarrow
Sir Alfred Fernandez Yarrow, 1st Baronet, of Homestead was a British shipbuilder who started a shipbuilding dynasty, Yarrow Shipbuilders.-Life and career:...
pioneered the use of forced-draught fans in boiler rooms, significantly increasing the power of marine steam engines at minimal cost in weight or volume.
Naval guns
Rendel worked on the design of large naval guns, using hydraulics to reduce the number of men required to work the guns and the space required. This was first tried on HMS ThundererHMS Thunderer (1872)
HMS Thunderer was a British Royal Navy Devastation-class battleship.Thunder was an ironclad turret ship designed by Edward James Reed with revolving turrets, launched in 1872...
, which was able to have 38-ton guns fitted, instead of the 35-ton guns originally planned. His hydraulic systems were subsequently used in all Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
ships as well as the ships of several foreign navies.
HMS Inflexible
HMS Inflexible (1876)
HMS Inflexible was a Victorian ironclad battleship carrying her main armament in centrally placed turrets. The ship was constructed in the 1870s for the Royal Navy to oppose the perceived growing threat from the Italian Regia Marina in the Mediterranean.The Italian Navy had started constructing a...
, which was notable for being the first major warship to depend in part for the protection of her buoyancy by a horizontal armoured deck below the water-line rather than armoured sides along the waterline. She was packed with other new features: her guns weighed 80 tons each; she carried the thickest armour ever to have been carried by a British warship, at 24 inches (61 cm); great attention was paid to her damaged stability to ensure she could absorb damage and remain upright and buoyant.
Resignation
Rendel resigned from Armstrong’s company in 1882, when Armstrong decided to make Andrew Noble sole manager of the Ordnance Department. In fact, Rendel loathed Noble, as did his brothers, who also worked for Armstrong.Civil Lord of the Admiralty
He was invited to become an extra-professional Civil Lord of the Admiralty in 1882, but retired from this post due to ill-health in 1885.Italy
He was persuaded to rejoin Armstrongs in 1888, in order to manage a new armaments factory, built as a subsidiary, at PozzuoliPozzuoli
Pozzuoli is a city and comune of the province of Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. It is the main city of the Phlegrean peninsula.-History:Pozzuoli began as the Greek colony of Dicaearchia...
, near Naples in Italy. In 1900 Armstrong died, and Andrew Noble succeeded him as chairman of the company, now known as Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd
Armstrong Whitworth
Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd was a major British manufacturing company of the early years of the 20th century. Headquartered in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, Armstrong Whitworth engaged in the construction of armaments, ships, locomotives, automobiles, and aircraft.-History:In 1847,...
. After Armstrong’s death, the old acrimony between the Rendels and Andrew Noble came to the fore, with George and his brothers criticising Noble’s management of the company. The dispute between the two sides was not resolved until several years after George’s death.
Honours and awards
In 1863 he was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the following year his paper "Gun carriages and mechanical appliances for working of heavy ordnance" was awarded the Watt medal. He was awarded the Spanish Order of Charles III in 1871, and the order of the Cross of Italy in 1876. He was elected as a member of the Institution of Naval ArchitectsRoyal Institution of Naval Architects
The Royal Institution of Naval Architects is an international organisation representing naval architects. It is an international professional institution whose members are involved world-wide at all levels in the design, construction, repair and operation of ships, boats and marine...
in 1879, and became vice-president in 1882.
Death
Rendel retired to "Broadlands", his home in SandownSandown
Sandown is a seaside resort town and civil parish on the southeast coast of the Isle of Wight, England, neighbouring the town of Shanklin to the south. Sandown Bay is the name of the bay off the English Channel which both towns share, and it is notable for its long stretch of easily accessible...
, Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
. He used a wheelchair for the last two years of his life. He died at home on 9 October 1902 and, although not a Roman Catholic, was at his own request buried at the St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery
St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery
St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery is located at Kensal Green in London, and has its own .-History:Established in 1858, the 29 acre site was built next door to the much larger Anglican & Non-Conformist Kensal Green Cemetery...
at Kensal Green
Kensal Green
Kensal Green, also referred to as Kensal Rise is an area of London, England. It is located on the southern edge of the London Borough of Brent and borders the City of Westminster to the East and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the South....
in London.