Scottish Shipbuilding Innovations
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The steamship paddle wheel: Patrick Miller (1731-1815)
The steam boat: William Symington (1763-1831)
Europe's first passenger steamboat: Henry Bell (1767-1830)
The first iron-hulled steamship: Sir William Fairbairn (1789-1874)
The first practical screw propeller: Robert Wilson (1803-1882)
Marine engine innovations: James Howden (1832-1913)
Other Scottish shipbuilding
firsts:
•
The first all-steel ship
• The first steel ship to cross the Atlantic
• The first paddle steamer to cross the Atlantic
• The first ship to cross the Atlantic in less than a week
• The first all-welded ship
• The first merchant ship to run on oil
• The first set of triple-expansion engines for a twin-screw steamer
• The first ship to be fitted with two engines
• The first steam whaler
• The first steel ship to cross the Atlantic
• The first paddle steamer to cross the Atlantic
• The first ship to cross the Atlantic in less than a week
• The first all-welded ship
• The first merchant ship to run on oil
• The first set of triple-expansion engines for a twin-screw steamer
• The first ship to be fitted with two engines
• The first steam whaler
Patrick Miller of Dalswinton
The banker Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, just north of Dumfries, was a shareholder in the Carron Company engineering works and an enthusiastic experimenter in ordnance and naval architecture, including double or triple hulled pleasure boats propelled by cranked paddlewheels placed between the hulls.
On seeing a steam-carriage model made by the engineer William Symington (or on the suggestion of Symington's friend James Taylor), he got Symington to build his patent steam engine with its drive into a twin hulled pleasure boat. This was successfully tried out on Dalswinton Loch near Miller's house on the 14th October, 1788. The next year a larger engine was fitted to a 60 ft (18 m) long twin hull paddle boat and tried on the Forth and Clyde Canal. After initial problems of paddle wheels breaking up on 2nd December, on 26th and 27th December 1789 the vessel travelled some distance along the canal at a "motion of nearly seven miles an hour". Miller had been complaining about the cost of the venture, and he then abandoned the project. Ten years later Lord Dundas restarted Symington's work on a steamboat, leading to the famous paddle steamer Charlotte Dundas.
William
SymingtonWilliam Symington (1764-1831) was a Scottish engineer and inventor, and the builder of the first practical steamboat.
Symington was born in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire, Scotland to a family he described as being "respectable but not wealthy." His father worked as a practical mechanic at the Leadhills mines.
Although his parents intended for him to enter the ministry, he intended to use his good education to make a career as an engineer. So, in 1785, he joined his brother George in his attempts to build a steam engine at Wanlockhead, Dumfriesshire. While there, he impressed the manager of a local mining company, Gilbert Meason, so much that he was sent to the University of Edinburgh in 1786 to spend a few months attending science lectures.
By the time William joined his brother, George had already succeeded in building the second engine using James Watt's design to be built in Scotland.
Improvements to Watt's Design
Dalswinton Steamboat
The Canal Steamboat
Mines and Mills
More Steamboats
The Charlotte Dundas
Symington the Colliery Manager
Last Years
Improvements to Watt's Design
William Symington quickly saw a way to marry the efficiency of the Watt engine with the simplicity of that devised by Thomas Newcomen. Encouraged by Gilbert Meason, Symington demonstrated the practicality of his idea and his improved atmospheric engine was patented in 1787. When Watt sent someone to make a sketch of how this new engine worked, he discovered that the steam was condensed under a second piston and this was then pushed down when fresh steam entered the cylinder, forcing out the condensate. The power piston worked by the atmospheric pressure acting on the vacuum created by the condensing steam.
After its completion, Symington drew up a prospectus outlining the advantages of his invention, and this was circulated by Meason and his influential friends.
Dalswinton Steamboat
Later, Symington intended to carry out a trial in order to show than an engine would work on a boat without the boat catching fire. The vessel chosen for this experiment had been built in 1785 as a pleasure boat. It was agreed that Symington would install an engine and connect it to the wheels.
The trial finally took place on a loch near Dumfries on October 14, 1788. The trial was said to have been a success. Later accounts would say that the boat went at 5mph and that Robert Burns was on board. However, if Burns was present, he failed to mention it in a letter he wrote on that day or in any of his verse. Certainly, the local minister and his son were on board and the latter reported the trial to Robert Cleland of Glasgow, who wrote that the trial failed and the boat had to be helped by hand cranks. The experiment did ultimately demonstrate, however, that a steam engine would work on a boat.
The Canal Steamboat
After the successful demonstration of a steam engine on a boat, a larger engine was commissioned that would be tried in a boat on the Forth and Clyde Canal.
The parts for the engine were ordered and an engine similar to that used previously, but a lot larger, was erected on another twin hull paddle boat. It was 60ft long. The first trial, on December 2, 1789, was unsuccessful because the paddle wheels were not up to the task and began to break up when an increase in speed was attempted.
However, Patrick Miller, the patron of the venture, did sanction repairs and, on December 26 and 27, more successful trials were done.
Mines and Mills
Although Symington is best remembered for his contribution to steam powered vessels, he also built successful engines for mines and mills.
The first of these was built on a mine in Wanlockhead in 1790. This was followed by engines in Sanquhar, and then in London. In 1792, he built a large pumping engine that James Watt was also considered for. In the same year, he built an engine for the colliery of James Bruce. This marked a move to live near Falkirk and, later, a place as engine consultant for Carron Company.
In 1793, he developed a crank drive with a crosshead above the cylinder, and built such an engine to wind coal from one of Bruce's pits. his engine proved very successful and about fifteen were built.
In all, there are firm references to thirty-two engines built by Symington up until 1808, and passing mention of several more.
More Steamboats
It was Thomas, Lord Dundas who would motivate further steamboat trials. This was because he had extensive business interests on the east and west coasts and was governor of the Forth and Clyde Canal Company. Therefore, the canal was essential to his business, and steam power could speed up the movement of vessels through the canal. It helped progress that the Dundas family were one of the most powerful families of the late 18th century.
At a meeting of company directors on June 5, 1800, Dundas brought up the idea of having a Captain Schank boat worked by a steam engine provided by Symington. The directors immediately agreed that this was a good idea.
A diagram of Symington's engine recently came to light and it showed an engine driving a forward wheel (or two wheels, one on either side) within the hull. The boat was built by Alexander Hart at Grangemouth and was tested on the River Carron in June 1801, when it moved with ease. However, it was less successful on the canal and was rejected by the committee.
By 1800, Watt's patent had expired, so Symington set about the task of building a horizontal engine. He got a patent for his design in 1801. This design was ahead of its time because other engineers believed that it would not work. It was not widely accepted until 1825.
The Charlotte Dundas
Since the Canal Company had not been satisfied
with the first boat,
Lord Dundas gave Symington his suppoort for the building of a second
boat. Therefore, a model of the new boat was shown to Dundas and was
named after one of his daughters in an attempt to secure his interest.
The hull of the boat was made by John Allan to Symington's direction
and the Carron Company made the engine.The Charlotte Dundas was first sailed on January 4, 1803, with Lord Dundas and some of his friends and relatives on board. The crowd were pleased with what they saw, but Symington wanted to make improvements and another more ambitious trial was made on March 28. On this occasion, the steamboat towed two loaded vessels through the canal, covering 18 1/2 miles in 9 1/2 hours.
The Charlotte Dundas therefore became the first boat to do more than just move itself, but the Canal Company – to Symington's disappointment – did not wish to pursue the construction of another vessel. Symington was further upset when a scheme to build tug boats for the Duke of Bridgewater collapsed when the Duke died a few days before the trial was due to take place.
Symington the Colliery Manager
As well as an engine builder, Symington was a colliery manager, also known as a 'viewer'. His first appointment in this capacity was in 1794 when the Trustees asked him to take over on James Bruce's death. His salary for this was £100 per annum and a house on the estate. This appointment ended in 1800 when Symington took over management of the Grange colliery near Bo'ness. William Cadell was behind Symington at this job.
In 1804, he joined a local businessman in a partnership intended to manage the Callendar colliery at Falkirk. A new pump was needed there and this allowed Symington to develop what he called a 'lifting engine'. He may have built one of these for the Wanlockhead mines in 1819.
The Callendar venture ended badly, however, and, in a dispute at the High Court in Edinburgh that lasted until 1810, Symington lost.
Last Years
Due to Patrick Miller's unwillingness to pursue the potential of the 1789 trial, the loss of interest from Lord Dundas and the proceedings at the High Court, Symington was left out of pocket.
In 1829, in ill health and in debt, Symington and his wife moved to London to live with their daughter and her husband. Symington died in 1831 and was buried in St. Botulph's churchyard. In 1890, a bust was unveiled in Edinburgh, in what is now the National Museum, in memory of the great engineer.
Henry BellHenry Bell (April 7, 1767 - November 14, 1830) achieved fame by having the paddle steamer PS Comet built and in 1812 beginning a passenger steamboat service on the River Clyde in Scotland, between Glasgow and Greenock, the first commercially successful service in Europe.
Born in Torphichen, West Lothian, Scotland, after school he spent 3 years learning to be a stonemason, then was apprenticed to his uncle, a mill-wright. After this he went to Borrowstounness (Bo'ness) to learn ship modelling, then was employed in engineering mechanics in Glasgow, then went to London, where he worked and studied under the Scottish engineer John Rennie. In 1790 he returned to Glasgow to work as a carpenter, his mind "a chaos of extraordinary projects" nearly all of which were never completed.
He became interested in steam propelled boats, and corresponded with Robert Fulton. In 1800 and 1803 Bell tried to get the British Admiralty to support experiments, but they declined his proposals. He was apparently often on board William Symington's boats, intruded himself among the patternmakers and constructors of Symington's steamboat machinery in the Carron Ironworks, and repeatedly examinined the Charlotte Dundas after it was laid up in a backwater of the canal. In 1808 Bell and his wife moved to Helensburgh on the Firth of Clyde where they bought the public baths and hotel. She became superintendent of the public baths while he continued with his favourite project. He would have learned of Fulton's successful introduction of a steamboat service at New York in 1807.
In 1811 Bell got John Wood, shipbuilder in Port Glasgow, to agree to build a paddle steamer, and in 1812 the Comet began a passenger steamboat service on the River Clyde between Glasgow, Greenock and Helensburgh. This inspired a host of competitors. Bell briefly took the Comet on the Firth of Forth, then had the Comet lengthened and re-engined and from September 1819 ran a service to Oban and Fort William, but in 1820 the Comet was shipwrecked near Oban. Although he built a second "Comet" this was not a success. Bell, not good at managing his finances, became poor and in 1830 he died in Helensburgh at the age of 63.
William FairbairnSir William Fairbairn, 1st Baronet (February 19, 1789 - August 18, 1874) was a Scottish engineer.
Born in Kelso to a local farmer, Fairbairn showed an early mechanical aptitude and served as an apprentice mill-wright in Newcastle upon Tyne where he befriended the young George Stephenson. He moved to Manchester in 1813 to work for Adam Parkinson and Thomas Hewes. In 1817, he launched his mill-machinery business with James Lillie.
Fairbairn was a life-long learner and joined the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1830. In the early years of the following decade, he and Eaton Hodgkinson conducted a search for an optimal cross-section for iron-beams. Thus, in the 1840s, when Robert Stephenson, the son of his youthful friend George, conceived the novel tubular design for the Britannia Bridge, connecting Anglesey to mainland Britain, he retained both Fairbairn and Hodgkinson as consultants. A similar design was used at Conway but ultimately proved too costly a concept for widespread use.
When the cotton industry fell into recession, Fairbairn diversified into the manufacture of boilers for locomotives and into shipbuilding. Fairbairn drew on his experience with the Britannia and Conway tubular bridges to pioneer the construction of iron-hulled ships. Perceiving a ship as a floating tubular beam, he criticised existing design standards dictated by Lloyds of London and proved his ideas at his Millwall shipyard with the Lord Dundas.
Faibairn developed the Lancashire boiler in 1844. In 1861, at the request of the UK Parliament and again parallelling work by Hodgkinson, he conducted early research into metal fatigue, raising and lowering a 3 tonne mass onto a wrought iron cylinder 3,000,000 times before it fractured and showing that a static load of 12 tonne was needed for such an effect.
Robert WILSON Born: 1803, Dunbar Died:1882
Developed the first practical screw propeller
He developed early version of screw propeller in 1827. Managed James Nasmyth's Bridgewater Foundry near Manchester. Perfected Nasmyth's steam hammer, constructed double acting hammer at Woolwich Arsenal. His double action screw propeller was used in torpedoes.
James HOWDEN: Marine engine innovations
Born: 1832, Prestonpans Died: 1913
Pioneered development of forced draught boilers
giving increased steam
output through more efficient use of the combustion process.
Established a business manufacturing engines and boilers and
established James Howden & Co in 1862.James Howden & Co was established in 1862, initially to manufacture marine engines and boilers. The firm's success owed much to the inventiveness of founder James Howden (1832-1913), who registered a vast number of patents in many fields of engineering. The best known was the forced draught system, introduced in the 1880s, which used waste gases to heat the air in a boiler's combustion chamber and which was adopted by shipbuilders around the world.
Howden's range of activities was extended in the early 20th century to high-speed engines and turbines for land use, chiefly for the supply of electrical power. The firm supplied the boring machines used to excavate the Channel Tunnel, which opened in 1994. The Howden Group continues to manufacture a wide range of industrial machinery.