SS Archimedes was a steamship built in Britain

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...

 in 1839. She is notable for being the world's first steamship to be driven by a screw propeller.

Archimedes had considerable influence on ship development, encouraging the adoption of screw propulsion by the 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...

, in addition to her influence on commercial vessels. She also had a direct influence on the design of another innovative vessel, Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS , was a British civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges...

's , then the world's largest ship and the first screw-propelled steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

.

Background

The principle of moving water with a screw has been known since the invention of the Archimedes screw, named after Archimedes of Syracuse who lived in the 3rd Century BC. It was not until the 18th century however, and the invention of the steam engine

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...

, that a practical means of delivering effective power to a marine

Marine (ocean)

Marine is an umbrella term. As an adjective it is usually applicable to things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology...

 screw propulsion system became available, but initial attempts to build such a vessel met with failure.

In 1815, the world's first commercially successful steam-powered vessel, Robert Fulton

Robert Fulton

Robert Fulton was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat...

's North River Steamboat

North River Steamboat

The North River Steam Boat or Clermont was the first commercially successful steamship of the paddle steamer design. It operated on the Hudson River between New York and Albany...

, made its debut. As this vessel was powered by paddlewheels rather than a propeller, the paddlewheel thereby became the de facto early standard for steamship propulsion. Experimentation with screw propulsion continued in some quarters however, and between 1750 and the 1830s numerous patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

s for marine propellers were taken out by various inventors, though few of these inventions were pursued to the testing stage, and those that were proved unsatisfactory for one reason or another.

Ericsson and Smith

In 1835, two inventors in Britain, John Ericsson

John Ericsson

John Ericsson was a Swedish-American inventor and mechanical engineer, as was his brother Nils Ericson. He was born at Långbanshyttan in Värmland, Sweden, but primarily came to be active in England and the United States...

 and Francis Pettit Smith

Francis Pettit Smith

Sir Francis Pettit Smith was an English inventor and, along with Frédéric Sauvage and John Ericsson, one of a number of people with a claim to having been the inventor of the screw propeller...

, began working separately on the problem. Smith, a farmer by trade who had entertained a lifelong fascination with screw propulsion, was first to take out a screw propeller patent on 31 May, while Ericsson, a gifted Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 engineer then working in Britain, filed his patent six weeks later.

Smith quickly built a small model boat to test his invention, which was demonstrated first on a pond at his Hendon

Hendon

Hendon is a London suburb situated northwest of Charing Cross.-History:Hendon was historically a civil parish in the county of Middlesex. The manor is described in Domesday , but the name, 'Hendun' meaning 'at the highest hill', is earlier...

 farm, and later at the Royal Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where it was seen by the Secretary of the Navy, Sir William Barrow. Having secured the patronage of a London banker named Wright, Smith then built a 30-foot, 6-horsepower

Horsepower

Horsepower is the name of several units of measurement of power. The most common definitions equal between 735.5 and 750 watts.Horsepower was originally defined to compare the output of steam engines with the power of draft horses in continuous operation. The unit was widely adopted to measure the...

 canal boat of six tons burthen called the Francis Smith, which was fitted with a wooden propeller of his own design and demonstrated on the Paddington Canal from November 1836 to September 1837. By a fortuitous accident, the wooden propeller of two turns was damaged during a voyage in February 1837, and to Smith's surprise the broken propeller, which now consisted of only a single turn, doubled the boat's previous speed, from about four miles an hour to eight. Smith would subsequently file a revised patent in keeping with this accidental discovery.

In the meantime, Ericsson was conducting his own experiments. In 1837, he built a 45-foot screw propelled steamboat, Francis B. Ogden, named after his patron, the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 consul to Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

. In the summer of 1837, Ericsson demonstrated his boat on the Thames River to senior members of the British Admiralty, including Surveyor of the Navy

Surveyor of the Navy

The Surveyor to the Navy was a civilian officer in the Royal Navy. He was a member of the Navy Board from the inauguration of that body in 1546, and held overall responsibility for the design of British warships, although until 1745 the actual design work for warships built at each Royal Dockyard...

 Sir William Symonds. In spite of the boat achieving a speed of 10 miles an hour, comparable with that of existing paddle steamer

Paddle steamer

A paddle steamer is a steamship or riverboat, powered by a steam engine, using paddle wheels to propel it through the water. In antiquity, Paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, where the first uses were wheelers driven by animals or humans...

s, Symonds and his entourage were unimpressed. The Admiralty maintained the view that screw propulsion would be ineffective in ocean-going service, while Symonds himself believed that screw propelled ships could not be steered efficiently. Following this rejection, Ericsson built a second, larger screw-propelled boat, the Robert F. Stockton, and had her sailed in 1839 to the United States, where he was soon to gain fame as the designer of the U.S. Navy's first screw-propelled warship, .

Apparently aware of the Navy's view that screw propellers would prove unsuitable for seagoing service, Smith determined to prove this assumption wrong. In September 1837, he took his small vessel (now fitted with an iron propeller of a single turn) to sea, steaming from Blackwall, London

Blackwall, London

Blackwall is an area of the East End of London, situated in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets on the north bank of the River Thames.The district around Blackwall Stairs was known as Blackwall by at least the 14th century. This presumably derives from the colour of the river wall, constructed in...

 to Hythe, Kent

Hythe, Kent

Hythe , is a small coastal market town on the edge of Romney Marsh, in the District of Shepway on the south coast of Kent. The word Hythe or Hithe is an Old English word meaning Haven or Landing Place....

, with stops at Ramsgate

Ramsgate

Ramsgate is a seaside town in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century and is a member of the ancient confederation of Cinque Ports. It has a population of around 40,000. Ramsgate's main attraction is its coastline and its main...

, Dover

Dover

Dover is a town and major ferry port in the home county of Kent, in South East England. It faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel, and lies south-east of Canterbury; east of Kent's administrative capital Maidstone; and north-east along the coastline from Dungeness and Hastings...

 and Folkestone

Folkestone

Folkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...

. On the way back to London on the 25th, Smith's craft was observed making headway in stormy seas by officers of the Royal Navy. The Admiralty's interest in the technology was revived, and Smith was encouraged to build a full size ship to more conclusively demonstrate the technology's effectiveness. He was able to attract a number of investors to provide the necessary capital, including the banker Wright and the engineering firm of J. and G. Rennie, who together formed a new company called the Ship Propeller Company. The company's proposed vessel was initially tentatively named Propeller, but the name eventually adopted for the ship was Archimedes, after the 3rd century Greek inventor.

Design and construction

Archimedes was built 1838, by Henry Wimshurst

Henry Wimshurst

Henry Wimshurst was a 19th-century British shipbuilder.Wimshurst was in business at Ratcliffe Cross Dock in east London. He is remembered primarily as the builder of , the world's first propeller-driven steamship....

 in London. According to F. P. Smith himself, the ship was constructed of English oak, but a later entry in Lloyd's Register

Lloyd's Register

The Lloyd's Register Group is a maritime classification society and independent risk management organisation providing risk assessment and mitigation services and management systems certification. Historically, as Lloyd's Register of Shipping, it was a specifically maritime organisation...

 indicates that parts of the keel at least were of Baltic

Baltic region

The terms Baltic region, Baltic Rim countries, and Baltic Rim refer to slightly different combinations of countries in the general area surrounding the Baltic Sea.- Etymology :...

 fir

Fir

Firs are a genus of 48–55 species of evergreen conifers in the family Pinaceae. They are found through much of North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa, occurring in mountains over most of the range...

. The ship was 125 feet long, 22½ feet wide, and 237 tons burthen. Built to a schooner pattern, with classic hull lines and a slender, raking funnel and masts, she was considered by contemporaries to be a beautiful vessel.

Machinery

Smith initially had some difficulty sourcing suitable engines for the ship, as screw propulsion presented some unfamiliar technical challenges. Eventually the leading engineering firm of J. & G. Rennie agreed to design and supply the engines, and the Rennies themselves were persuaded to take a financial interest in the ship and its technology.

The twin engines supplied by the Rennies each had two 37-inch cylinders

Cylinder (engine)

A cylinder is the central working part of a reciprocating engine or pump, the space in which a piston travels. Multiple cylinders are commonly arranged side by side in a bank, or engine block, which is typically cast from aluminum or cast iron before receiving precision machine work...

 with a three-foot stroke, delivering a combined nominal horsepower of about 80, and an actual horsepower of about 60. The engines ran at 26 rpm, which through gearing drove the propeller shaft at about 140 rpm. The boilers operated at a pressure of 6 psi

Pounds per square inch

The pound per square inch or, more accurately, pound-force per square inch is a unit of pressure or of stress based on avoirdupois units...

. The engines were installed in early 1839, following the ship's launch in October 1838.

The gearing provided some additional technical problems. Smith geared the engines to the propeller via spur-wheels and pinions, the largest of which was toothed with hornbeam

Hornbeam

Hornbeams are relatively small hardwood trees in the genus Carpinus . Though some botanists grouped them with the hazels and hop-hornbeams in a segregate family, Corylaceae, modern botanists place the hornbeams in the birch subfamily Coryloideae...

 (a white timber traditionally used for gearing in windmill

Windmill

A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...

s). The gearing arrangement proved to be very noisy, and the ship's stern was subject to considerable vibration in operation. Smith planned to reduce the noise by the use of spiral gears, but it is unclear whether this modification was ever carried out.

The propeller itself was of sheet iron, 5 feet 9 inches in diameter and about 5 feet long, and consisted of a full 360° screw, single threaded and of a single turn in keeping with Smith's revised 1836 patent. Following the ship's entry into service, the propeller would subsequently undergo a number of modifications, the most important of which were an alteration to a double threaded/half turn format, and a division of the original 360° screw into two separate blades. The propeller had the unusual feature of being fully retractable in order to reduce drag when the ship was under sail—a task that took about 15 minutes.

Service history

Archimedes made her maiden voyage, from London to Sheerness

Sheerness

Sheerness is a town located beside the mouth of the River Medway on the northwest corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 12,000 it is the largest town on the island....

 near the mouth of the Thames, commencing 2 May 1839. On the 15th, she commenced her first sea voyage, from Gravesend

Gravesend, Kent

Gravesend is a town in northwest Kent, England, on the south bank of the Thames, opposite Tilbury in Essex. It is the administrative town of the Borough of Gravesham and, because of its geographical position, has always had an important role to play in the history and communications of this part of...

 to Portsmouth

Portsmouth

Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...

, which was completed at the unexpectedly high speed of 10 knots. At Portsmouth, Archimedes was successfully trialed against one of the swiftest vessels then in Royal Navy service, HMS Vulcan, in the presence of some senior Navy officials, who were impressed by Archimedes performance.

Breakdowns and propeller redesign

After this initial trial Archimedes embarked on a return voyage to London, but while in transit the ship's boiler—which lacked either a gauge or a safety valve—exploded, killing the second engineer and scalding several others. The vessel was then laid up for five months for repairs at Wimshurst's shipyard.

On resuming service, Smith received an invitation from the Dutch government to bring the vessel to Holland for a demonstration, which he accepted. On the voyage to the Texel

Texel

Texel is a municipality and an island in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the biggest and most populated of the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea, and also the westernmost of this archipelago, which extends to Denmark...

 however, Archimedes broke her crankshaft

Crankshaft

The crankshaft, sometimes casually abbreviated to crank, is the part of an engine which translates reciprocating linear piston motion into rotation...

 and was forced to return to England for further repairs, which on this occasion were effected by the firm of Miller, Ravenhill & Co. It was during this refit that the original full helix, single turn, single threaded propeller was replaced by a double-threaded, half turn propeller with two distinct blades. The new propeller had the advantage of considerably reducing the ship's vibration at the stern.

Dover trials

Following these repairs, the British Admiralty arranged with Smith to undertake a new series of trials for Archimedes at Dover

Dover

Dover is a town and major ferry port in the home county of Kent, in South East England. It faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel, and lies south-east of Canterbury; east of Kent's administrative capital Maidstone; and north-east along the coastline from Dungeness and Hastings...

. Captain Edward Chappell, RN, was appointed by the Admiralty to oversee the trials and write a report. From April to May 1840, Archimedes was tested against the Navy's fastest Dover-Calais

Calais

Calais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....

 mail packets, the paddlewheelers Ariel, Beaver, Swallow and Widgeon.

The most telling of these trials were against Widgeon, which was not only the fastest of the mail packets, but also the closest ship in size and horsepower to Archimedes. Widgeon proved to be slightly faster than Archimedes in smooth seas, but Chappell concluded that as the latter had a lower horsepower-to-weight ratio, the screw propeller as a means of propulsion had proven "equal, if not superior, to that of the ordinary paddle-wheel." This finding was more decisive than it may appear, because from a naval perspective, screw propulsion had only to prove itself approximately equal in efficiency to paddlewheel propulsion as paddlewheels had well recognized shortcomings in military use. These included the exposure of the paddlewheel and its engines to enemy fire, as well as the reduction of space available for the placement of cannon which impinged upon a warship's broadside

Broadside

A broadside is the side of a ship; the battery of cannon on one side of a warship; or their simultaneous fire in naval warfare.-Age of Sail:...

 firepower. Chappell's report would later lead to the adoption of screw propulsion by the Navy (see Legacy section below).

Circumnavigation of Britain and other voyages

With the conclusion of the Dover trials, Archimedes was placed at the disposal of Captain Chappell for a circumnavigation of Britain, which took place in July 1840. This voyage presented an opportunity to not only conduct further tests, but also to allow inspection of the technology by shipowners, engineers and scientists in ports throughout the country. Archimedes completed the 2006-mile voyage at an average speed in excess of 7 mph, and a maximum speed under ideal conditions of 10.9 mph.

With the completion of this voyage, Archimedes made a passage from Plymouth to Oporto, Portugal in the record time of 68½ hours. The ship subsequently made further voyages to Antwerp, to Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 via the North Holland Canal, and to various other ports on the continent, everywhere exciting interest in the new propulsion method.

Loan to Brunel

Upon the return of Archimedes to England, Smith agreed to loan Archimedes for several months to the Great Western Steamship Company

Great Western Steamship Company

The Great Western Steam Ship Company operated the first regular transatlantic steamer service from 1838 until 1846. Related to the Great Western Railway, the company's directors expected their new enterprise to achieve the position that was ultimately secured by the Cunard Line...

, which was in the process of constructing the world's largest steamship, the . Great Western's principal engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS , was a British civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges...

, took advantage of the loan to test Archimedes with a variety of different propellers in an attempt to find the most efficient design, which was eventually determined to be a new four-bladed model submitted by Smith.

Brunel's experiments led him to recommend to his employers the adoption of screw propulsion for the Great Britain. The advantages of screw propulsion listed by Brunel can be summarized as follows:

• Screw propulsion machinery was lighter in weight, thus improving fuel economy;
• Screw propulsion machinery could be kept lower in the hull, reducing the ship's centre of gravity and making it more stable in heavy seas;
• By taking up less room, propeller engines would allow more cargo to be carried;
• Elimination of bulky paddle-boxes would lessen resistance through the water, and also allow the ship to manoeuvre more easily in confined waterways;
• The depth of a paddlewheel is constantly changing, depending on the ship's cargo and the movement of waves, while a propeller stays fully submerged and at full efficiency at all times;
• Screw propulsion machinery was cheaper.

By these arguments, Brunel in December 1840 was able to persuade the Great Western Steamship Company to adopt screw propulsion for the Great Britain, thus making her the world's first screw-propelled transatlantic steamer. Unfortunately, instead of using Smith's proven design, Brunel later decided to install a six-bladed "windmill" propeller designed by himself. Brunel's design was to prove a costly failure for the company.

Later career

Smith and his fellow investors had originally hoped to sell Archimedes to the Royal Navy, but when this did not eventuate, the Ship Propeller Company sold the vessel into commercial service. The company, which is estimated to have lost a total of about £50,000 on the Archimedes venture, was subsequently wound up.

The later career of Archimedes is sketchy. The ship ran aground at Beachy Head

Beachy Head

Beachy Head is a chalk headland on the south coast of England, close to the town of Eastbourne in the county of East Sussex, immediately east of the Seven Sisters. The cliff there is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, rising to 162 m above sea level. The peak allows views of the south...

 in 1840. In 1845, she disappeared from Lloyd's Register

Lloyd's Register

The Lloyd's Register Group is a maritime classification society and independent risk management organisation providing risk assessment and mitigation services and management systems certification. Historically, as Lloyd's Register of Shipping, it was a specifically maritime organisation...

, but appeared again in 1847 following an overhaul. Her engines and machinery were removed on an unspecified date at Sunderland, after which she continued in service as a sailing ship. In 1852, her sails and rigging were renewed, but she disappeared from the Register again a year or two later.

Archimedes reportedly grounded on a sandbar and sank in the mouth of the Meuse River

Meuse River

The Maas or Meuse is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea...

, Holland, while attempting to return to port in a storm on 1 March 1864. All her crew were rescued by local lifeguards.

Legacy

Although the adoption of the screw propeller was an historical inevitability given the work of John Ericsson and others, Archimedes considerably hastened acceptance of the technology. The Dover trials, carried out in April-May 1840, persuaded the Royal Navy to build a 900-ton steam sloop-of-war

Sloop-of-war

In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, this meant that the term sloop-of-war actually encompassed all the unrated combat vessels including the...

, , which was trialled from 1843-45 against HMS Alecto, a sister ship fitted with paddle propulsion. As a result of these trials, the Navy adopted the screw propeller as its preferred propulsion method. By 1855, 174 ships of the Royal Navy had been fitted with screw propulsion, including 52 ships-of-the-line, 23 frigate

Frigate

A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...

s, 17 corvette

Corvette

A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...

s, 55 sloops, and various other vessels.

Some merchants were also quick to adopt screw propulsion. In 1840, Wimshurst built a second propeller-driven vessel, the 300-ton Novelty, the first screw-propelled cargo ship and the first to make a commercial voyage. In 1841, a small passenger steamer fitted with Smith's patented propeller, Princess Royal, was built in the north of England, and in 1842, several more screw-propelled vessels were built or launched in Britain, including Bedlington, built at South Shields

South Shields

South Shields is a coastal town in Tyne and Wear, England, located at the mouth of the River Tyne to Tyne Dock, and about downstream from Newcastle upon Tyne...

, Bee, launched at Chatham

Chatham Dockyard

Chatham Dockyard, located on the River Medway and of which two-thirds is in Gillingham and one third in Chatham, Kent, England, came into existence at the time when, following the Reformation, relations with the Catholic countries of Europe had worsened, leading to a requirement for additional...

, and the largest ship built to that date in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, Great Northern, launched at Derry

Derry

Derry or Londonderry is the second-biggest city in Northern Ireland and the fourth-biggest city on the island of Ireland. The name Derry is an anglicisation of the Irish name Doire or Doire Cholmcille meaning "oak-wood of Colmcille"...

. From this point, screw-propelled merchant ships grew rapidly in number. By the time the Cunard Line

Cunard Line

Cunard Line is a British-American owned shipping company based at Carnival House in Southampton, England and operated by Carnival UK. It has been a leading operator of passenger ships on the North Atlantic for over a century...

 built the paddle steamer Persia for transatlantic service in 1856, the paddlewheel was already becoming an anachronism.

Though Smith's Archimedes had played an important role in the introduction of screw propulsion, Smith himself only lost money on the venture, and was forced to return to farming. He would later be recognized for his contribution however. In 1855, he was amongst five inventors awarded £4,000 each by the House of Commons for invention of the marine propeller. In 1858, a group of patrons arranged a testimonial dinner at which he was presented with a silver salver

Salver

A salver is a flat tray of silver or other metal used for carrying or serving glasses, cups and dishes at table or for the presenting of a letter or card by a servant...

, claret

Claret

Claret is a name primarily used in British English for red wine from the Bordeaux region of France.-Usage:Claret derives from the French clairet, a now uncommon dark rosé and the most common wine exported from Bordeaux until the 18th century...

-jug and subscription, with an aggregate value of £2,678. In 1860, Smith was appointed Curator of the Patent Office Museum in South Kensington

South Kensington

South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....

, and in 1871 he received a knighthood.