The Design and Construction of Ships

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Peter the Great was a man with a single-minded approach to problems and with passionate and lifelong interests in matters scientific, military and above all maritime. The unusual and dominating rule of his vast lands brought about the age of Russian enlightenment, and ensured that his country became one of the most powerful states in Europe.

Peter's interest in ships and shipbuilding started in his childhood; c. 1687 he had an old English-built day sailing boat repaired and launched, and on it he learned the rudiments of sailing and navigation. This craft (still preserved in St Petersburg) became known as the "Grandfather of the Russian Navy". In the years 1688 to 1693 he established a shipyard on Lake Plestsheev and then began his lifelong study of shipbuilding by visiting and giving encouragement to the industry at Archangelsk on the White Sea and Voronezh in the Sea of Azov. In October 1696, Peter took Azov from the Turks, and the Russian Fleet ever since has regarded that date as their birthday. Setting an example to the young aristocracy, Peter travelled to Western Europe to widen his experience and contacts and also to learn the trade of shipbuilding. He worked in the shipyards of Amsterdam and then at the Naval Base of Deptford on the Thames.

The war with Sweden concentrated his attention on the Baltic and, to establish a base for trading and for the Navy, the City of St Petersburg was constructed on marshland. The Admiralty was built in the city and many new shipyards in the surrounding countryside, one being the Olonez yard which in 1703 built the frigate Standart, the first for the Baltic Fleet, which Peter himself commanded on its first voyage. The military defence of St Petersburg was effected by the construction of Kronstadt, seawards of the city.

Throughout his life Peter was involved in ship design and it is estimated that one thousand ships were built during his reign. He introduced the building of standard ship types and also, centuries ahead of its time, the concept of prefabrication, unit assembly and the building of part hulls in different places. Officially he was the designer of the ninety-gun ship Lesnoe of 1718, and this may have influenced him in instituting Rules for Shipbuilders and for Seamen. In 1716 he commanded the joint fleets of the four naval powers: Denmark, Britain, Holland and Russia.

He established the Marine Academy, organized and encouraged exploration and scientific research, and on his edict the St Petersburg Academy of Science was opened. He was not averse to the recruitment of foreigners to key posts in the nation's service. Peter the Great was a remarkable man, with the unusual quality of being a theorist and an innovator, in addition to the endowments of practicality and common sense.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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At the conclusion of his apprenticeship at the Royal Dockyard, Portsmouth, Biles entered the Royal School of Naval Architecture, South Kensington, London; as it was absorbed by the Royal Naval College, he graduated from Greenwich to the Naval Construction Branch, first at Pembroke and later at the Admiralty. From the outset of his professional career it was apparent that he had the intellectual qualities that would enable him to oversee the greatest changes in ship design of all time. He was one of the earliest proponents of the revolutionary work of the hydrodynamicist William Froude.

In 1880 Biles turned to the merchant sector, taking the post of Naval Architect to J. \& G. Thomson (later John Brown \& Co.). Using Froude's Law of Comparisons he was able to design the record-breaking City of Paris of 1887, the ship that started the fabled succession of fast and safe Clyde bank-built North Atlantic liners. For a short spell, before returning to Scotland, Biles worked in Southampton. In 1891 Biles accepted the Chair of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow. Working from the campus at Gilmorehill, he was to make the University (the oldest school of engineering in the English-speaking world) renowned in naval architecture. His workload was legendary, but despite this he was admired as an excellent lecturer with cheerful ways which inspired devotion to the Department and the University. During the thirty years of his incumbency of the Chair, he served on most of the important government and international shipping committees, including those that recommended the design of HMS Dreadnought, the ordering of the Cunarders Lusitania and Mauretania and the lifesaving improvements following the Titanic disaster. An enquiry into the strength of destroyer hulls followed the loss of HMS Cobra and Viper, and he published the report on advanced experimental work carried out on HMS Wolf by his undergraduates.

In 1906 he became Consultant Naval Architect to the India Office, having already set up his own consultancy organization, which exists today as Sir J.H.Biles and Partners. His writing was prolific, with over twenty-five papers to professional institutions, sundry articles and a two-volume textbook.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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After graduating in 1935 from the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture, New York, Henry served in different government agencies until 1938 when he joined the fast expanding US Maritime Commission. He assisted in the design and construction of troop-carrying vessels, Cl cargo ships, and he supervised the construction of two wartime attack transports. At the end of hostilities, he set up as a consultant naval architect and by 1951 had incorporated the business as J.J.Henry \& Company Inc. The opportunities that consultancy gave him were grasped eagerly; he became involved in the conversion of war-built tonnage to peaceful purposes (such as T2 tankers to ore carriers), the development of the new technologies of the carriage of liquefied gases at cryogenic temperatures and low pressures and, possibly the greatest step forward of all, the development of containerization. Containerization and the closely related field of barge transportation were to provide considerable business during the 1960s and the 1970s. The company designed the wonderful 33-knot container ships for Sea-Land and the auspicious Sea-bee barge carriers for the Lykes Brothers of New Orleans. James Henry's professional achievements were recognized internationally when he was elected President of the (United States) Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers in 1969. By then he had served on many boards and committees and was especially honoured to be Chairman of the Board of Trustees of his graduating college, the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture of New York.

SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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Alleyne was the heir to a baronetcy created in 1769, which he succeeded to on the death of his father in 1870. He was educated at Harrow and at Bonn University, and from 1843 to 1851 he was Warden at Dulwich College, to the founder of which the family claimed to be related.

Alleyne's business career began with a short spell in the sugar industry at Barbados, but he returned to England to enter Butterley Iron Works Company, where he remained for many years. He was at first concerned with the production of rolled-iron girders for floors, especially for fireproof flooring, and deck beams for iron ships. The demand for large sections exceeded the capacity of the small mills then in use at Butterley, so Alleyne introduced the welding of T-sections to form the required H-sections.

In 1861 Alleyne patented a mechanical traverser for moving ingots in front of and behind a rolling mill, enabling one person to manipulate large pieces. In 1870 he introduced his major innovation, the two-high reversing mill, which enabled the metal to be passed back and forth between the rolls until it assumed the required size and shape. The mill had two steam engines, which supplied the motion in opposite directions. These two inventions produced considerable economies in time and effort in handling the metal and enabled much heavier pieces to be processed.

During Alleyne's regime, the Butterley Company secured some notable contracts, such as the roof of St Paneras Station, London, in 1868, with the then-unparalleled span of 240 ft (73 m). The manufacture and erection of this awe-inspiring structure was a tribute to Alleyne's abilities. In 1872 he masterminded the design and construction of the large railway bridge over the Old Maas at Dordrecht, Holland. Alleyne also devised a method of determining small quantities of phosphorus in iron and steel by means of the spectroscope. In his spare time he was a skilled astronomical observer and metalworker in his private workshop.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Taylor's first years were spent on a farm in Virginia, but at the age of 13 he went to RandolphMacon College, graduating in 1881, and from there to the US Naval Academy, Annapolis. He graduated at the head of his class, had some sea time, and then went to the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, England, where in 1888 he again came top of the class with the highest-ever marks of any student, British or overseas.

On his return to the United States he held various posts as a constructor, ending this period at the Mare Island Navy Yard in California. In 1894 he was transferred to Washington, where he joined the Bureau of Construction and started to interest the Navy in ship model testing. Under his direction, the first ship model tank in the United States was built at Washington and for fourteen years operated under his control. The work of this establishment gave him the necessary information to write the highly acclaimed text The Speed and Power of Ships, which with revisions is still in use. By the outbreak of the First World War he was one of the world's most respected naval architects, and had been retained as a consultant by the British Government in the celebrated case of the collision between the White Star Liner Olympic and HMS Hawke.

In December 1914 Taylor became a Rear-Admiral and was appointed Chief Constructor of the US Navy. His term of office was extremely stressful, with over 1,000 ships constructed for the war effort and with the work of the fledgling Bureau for Aeronautics also under his control. The problems were not over in 1918 as the Washington Treaty required drastic pruning of the Navy and a careful reshaping of the defence force.

Admiral Taylor retired from active service at the beginning of 1923 but retained several consultancies in aeronautics, shipping and naval architecture. For many years he served as consultant to the ship-design company now known as Gibbs and Cox. Many honours came his way, but the most singular must be the perpetuation of his name in the David Taylor Medal, the highest award of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers in the United States. Similarly, the Navy named its ship test tank facility, which was opened in Maryland in 1937, the David W. Taylor Model Basin.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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From 1844 until 1962, the Clyde shipyard of William Denny and Brothers, Dumbarton, produced over 1,500 ships, trained innumerable students of all nationalities in shipbuilding and marine engineering, and for the seventy-plus years of their existence were accepted worldwide as the leaders in the application of science to ship design and construction. Until the closure of the yard members of the Denny family were among the partners and later directors of the firm: they included men as distinguished as Dr Peter Denny (1821(?)–95), Sir Archibald Denny (1860–1936) and Sir Maurice Denny (1886– 1955), the main collaborator in the design of the Denny-Brown ship stabilizer.

One of the most influential of this shipbuilding family was William Denny, now referred to as William 3! His early education was at Dumbarton, then on Jersey and finally at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, before he commenced an apprenticeship at his father's shipyard. From the outset he not only showed great aptitude for learning and hard work but also displayed an ability to create good relationships with all he came into contact with. At the early age of 21 he was admitted a partner of the shipbuilding business of William Denny and Brothers, and some years later also of the associated engineering firm of Denny \& Co. His deep-felt interest in what is now known as industrial relations led him in 1871 to set up a piecework system of payment in the shipyard. In this he was helped by the Yard Manager, Richard Ramage, who later was to found the Leith shipyard, which produced the world's most elegant steam yachts. This research was published later as a pamphlet called The Worth of Wages, an unusual and forward-looking action for the 1860s, when Denny maintained that an absentee employer should earn as much contempt and disapproval as an absentee landlord! In 1880 he initiated an awards scheme for all company employees, with grants and awards for inventions and production improvements. William Denny was not slow to impose new methods and to research naval architecture, a special interest being progressive ship trials with a view to predicting effective horsepower. In time this led to his proposal to the partners to build a ship model testing tank beside the Dumbarton shipyard; this scheme was completed in 1883 and was to the third in the world (after the Admiralty tank at Torquay, managed by William Froude and the Royal Netherlands Navy facility at Amsterdam, under B.J. Tideman. In 1876 the Denny Shipyard started work with mild-quality shipbuilding steel on hulls for the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, and in 1879 the world's first two ships of any size using this weight-saving material were produced: they were the Rotomahana for the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand and the Buenos Ayrean for the Allan Line of Glasgow. On the naval-architecture side he was involved in Denny's proposals for standard cross curves of stability for all ships, which had far-reaching effects and are now accepted worldwide. He served on the committee working on improvements to the Load Line regulations and many other similar public bodies. After a severe bout of typhoid and an almost unacceptable burden of work, he left the United Kingdom for South America in June 1886 to attend to business with La Platense Flotilla Company, an associate company of William Denny and Brothers. In March the following year, while in Buenos Aires, he died by his own hand, a death that caused great and genuine sadness in the West of Scotland and elsewhere.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Waymouth had initial training in shipbuilding at one of the Royal Dockyards before going on to work at a privately owned shipyard. With this all-round experience he was accepted in 1854 by Lloyd's Register of Shipping as a surveyor, and was to serve the Society well during a period of great change in ship design. In 1864 he was charged with the task of framing the Rules for the Construction of Composite Built Vessels, i.e. ships with main structural members such as keel, frames and deck beams of iron and with the hull sheathing or planking of timber. Although long superseded, these rules were of considerable consequence at the time and they were accompanied by beautiful drawings executed by Harry J.Cornish, who became Chief Ship Surveyor of Lloyd's from 1900 until 1909. In 1870 revolutionary proposals were made for iron ships that led to the adoption of a new form of rules where the scantlings or size of individual parts were related to the overall dimensions of the vessel. The symbol 100A1 was then adopted for the first time.

Waymouth was more than a theoretical naval architect: in the late 1860s he was commissioned by the shipbuilders Walter Hood to design the famous Aberdeen Clipper Thermopylae. This was one of the fastest sailing ships of the nineteenth century and, along with its Clyde-built counterpart Cutty Sark, proved the efficacy of composite construction for these specialist vessels.

Waymouth was appointed Principal Surveyor of Lloyd's in 1870 and was Secretary of the Society from 1872 until his death at work in 1890. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Tonnage and of the Enquiry into the loss of HMS Atlanta, and at the time of his death was Vice-President of the Institution of Naval Architects.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Trevithick's father was a tin-mine manager, and Trevithick himself, after limited formal education, developed his immense engineering talent among local mining machinery and steam-engines and found employment as a mining engineer. Tall, strong and high-spirited, he was the eternal optimist.

About 1797 it occurred to him that the separate condenser patent of James Watt could be avoided by employing "strong steam", that is steam at pressures substantially greater than atmospheric, to drive steam-engines: after use, steam could be exhausted to the atmosphere and the condenser eliminated. His first winding engine on this principle came into use in 1799, and subsequently such engines were widely used. To produce high-pressure steam, a stronger boiler was needed than the boilers then in use, in which the pressure vessel was mounted upon masonry above the fire: Trevithick designed the cylindrical boiler, with furnace tube within, from which the Cornish and later the Lancashire boilers evolved.

Simultaneously he realized that high-pressure steam enabled a compact steam-engine/boiler unit to be built: typically, the Trevithick engine comprised a cylindrical boiler with return firetube, and a cylinder recessed into the boiler. No beam intervened between connecting rod and crank. A master patent was taken out.

Such an engine was well suited to driving vehicles. Trevithick built his first steam-carriage in 1801, but after a few days' use it overturned on a rough Cornish road and was damaged beyond repair by fire. Nevertheless, it had been the first self-propelled vehicle successfully to carry passengers. His second steam-carriage was driven about the streets of London in 1803, even more successfully; however, it aroused no commercial interest. Meanwhile the Coalbrookdale Company had started to build a locomotive incorporating a Trevithick engine for its tramroads, though little is known of the outcome; however, Samuel Homfray's ironworks at Penydarren, South Wales, was already building engines to Trevithick's design, and in 1804 Trevithick built one there as a locomotive for the Penydarren Tramroad. In this, and in the London steam-carriage, exhaust steam was turned up the chimney to draw the fire. On 21 February the locomotive hauled five wagons with 10 tons of iron and seventy men for 9 miles (14 km): it was the first successful railway locomotive.

Again, there was no commercial interest, although Trevithick now had nearly fifty stationary engines completed or being built to his design under licence. He experimented with one to power a barge on the Severn and used one to power a dredger on the Thames. He became Engineer to a project to drive a tunnel beneath the Thames at Rotherhithe and was only narrowly defeated, by quicksands. Trevithick then set up, in 1808, a circular tramroad track in London and upon it demonstrated to the admission-fee-paying public the locomotive Catch me who can, built to his design by John Hazledine and J.U. Rastrick.

In 1809, by which date Trevithick had sold all his interest in the steam-engine patent, he and Robert Dickinson, in partnership, obtained a patent for iron tanks to hold liquid cargo in ships, replacing the wooden casks then used, and started to manufacture them. In 1810, however, he was taken seriously ill with typhus for six months and had to return to Cornwall, and early in 1811 the partners were bankrupt; Trevithick was discharged from bankruptcy only in 1814.

In the meantime he continued as a steam engineer and produced a single-acting steam engine in which the cut-off could be varied to work the engine expansively by way of a three-way cock actuated by a cam. Then, in 1813, Trevithick was approached by a representative of a company set up to drain the rich but flooded silver-mines at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, at an altitude of 14,000 ft (4,300 m). Low-pressure steam engines, dependent largely upon atmospheric pressure, would not work at such an altitude, but Trevithick's high-pressure engines would. Nine engines and much other mining plant were built by Hazledine and Rastrick and despatched to Peru in 1814, and Trevithick himself followed two years later. However, the war of independence was taking place in Peru, then a Spanish colony, and no sooner had Trevithick, after immense difficulties, put everything in order at the mines then rebels arrived and broke up the machinery, for they saw the mines as a source of supply for the Spanish forces. It was only after innumerable further adventures, during which he encountered and was assisted financially by Robert Stephenson, that Trevithick eventually arrived home in Cornwall in 1827, penniless.

He petitioned Parliament for a grant in recognition of his improvements to steam-engines and boilers, without success. He was as inventive as ever though: he proposed a hydraulic power transmission system; he was consulted over steam engines for land drainage in Holland; and he suggested a 1,000 ft (305 m) high tower of gilded cast iron to commemorate the Reform Act of 1832. While working on steam propulsion of ships in 1833, he caught pneumonia, from which he died.

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See also: Blenkinsop, John

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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After graduating from the Naval School Popoff served in the Russian Navy, ultimately commanding the cruiser Meteor. During the Crimean War he was Captain of a steamship and was later Manager of Artillery Supplies at Sevastopol. At the conclusion of the war he was appointed to supervise the construction of all steamships and so started his real career in naval procurement. For the best part of thirty years he oversaw the Russian naval building programme, producing many new ships at St Petersburg. Probably the finest was the battleship Petr Veliki (Peter the Great), of 9,000 tons displacement, built at Galernii Island in 1869. With some major refits the ship remained in the fleet until 1922. Two remarkable ships were produced at St Petersburg, the Novgorod and the Vice Admiral Popoff in 1874 and 1876, respectively. Their hull form was almost circular in the hope of creating stable and steady gun platforms and to lessen the required depth of water for their duties as defence ships in the shallow waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Despite support for the idea from Sir Edward Reed of the Royal Navy, the designs failed owing to unpleasant oscillations and poor manoeuvring qualities. One further attempt was made to find a successful outcome to this good idea in the construction of the Russian Imperial Yacht Livadia at Elder's Glasgow shipyard in 1880: for many reasons the Livadia never fulfilled her purpose. Despite their great advantages, the age of the Popoffkas was over. Popoff had a remarkable effect on Russian shipbuilding and warship design. He had authority, and used it wisely at a time when the Russian shipbuilding industry was developing quickly.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Born into comfortable circumstances, Burrell chose ship construction as his career. Ability aided by financial influence helped professional advancement, and by his early thirties he possessed a shipyard at Ratcliffe on the River Thames. Ship design was then unscientific, shrouded in mystique, and it required patience and perseverance to penetrate the conventions of the craft.

From the 1600s Burrell had been investing in the East India Company. In 1607 the Company decided to build ships in their own right, and Burrell was appointed as the first Master Shipwright, a post he held for nearly twenty years. The first ship, Trade's Increase, of 1,000-tons burthen, was the largest ship built in England until the eighteenth century, but following a mishap at launch and the ship's subsequent loss on its maiden voyage, the Company reassessed its policy and built smaller ships. Burrell's foresight can be gauged by his involvement in two private commercial undertakings in Ireland; one to create oak forests for shipbuilding, and the other to set up a small ironworks. In 1618 a Royal Commission was appointed to enquire into the poor condition of the Navy, and with the help of Burrell it was ruled that the main problems were neglect and corruption. With his name being known and his good record of production, the Royal Navy ordered no fewer than ten warships from Burrell in the four-year period from 1619 to 1623. With experience in the military and commercial sectors, Burrell can be regarded as an all-round and expert shipbuilder of the Stuart period. He used intuition at a time when there were no scientific rules and little reliable empiric guidance on ship design.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Kenneth Barnaby was an eminent naval architect, as were his father and grandfather before him: his grandfather was Sir Nathaniel Barnaby KGB, Director of Naval Construction, and his father was Sydney W.Barnaby, naval architect of John I. Thornycroft \& Co., Shipbuilders, Southampton. At one time all three were members of the Institution of Naval Architects, the first time that this had ever occurred with three members from one family.

Kenneth Barnaby served his apprenticeship at the Thornycroft shipyard in Southampton and later graduated in engineering from the Central Technical College, South Kensington, London. He worked for some years at Le Havre and at John Brown's shipyard at Clydebank before rejoining his old firm in 1916 as Assistant to the Shipyard Manager. In 1919 he went to Rio de Janeiro as a chief ship draughtsman, and finally he returned to Thornycroft, in 1924 he succeeded his father as Naval Architect, and remained in that post until his retirement in 1955, having been appointed a director in 1950.

Barnaby had a wide knowledge and understanding of ships and ship design and during the Second World War he was responsible for much of the development work for landing craft, as well as for many other specialist ships built at the Southampton yard. His experience as a deep-sea yachtsman assisted him. He wrote several important books; however, none can compare with the Centenary Volume of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects. In this work, which is used and read widely to this day by naval architects worldwide, he reviewed every paper presented and almost every verbal contribution made to the Transactions during its one hundred years.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Amos Ayre grew up on the Tyne with the stimulus of shipbuilding and seafaring around him. After an apprenticeship as a ship draughtsman and distinction in his studies, he held responsible posts in the shipyards of Belfast and later Dublin. His first dramatic move came in 1909 when he accepted the post of Manager of the new Employment Exchange at Govan, then just outside Glasgow. During the First World War he was in charge of fleet coaling operations on the River Forth, and later was promoted Admiralty District Director for shipyard labour in Scotland.

Before the conclusion of hostilities, with his brother Wilfrid (later Sir Wilfrid Ayre) he founded the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company in Fife. Setting up on a green field site allowed the brothers to show innovation in design, production and marketing. Such was their success that the new yard was busy throughout the Depression, building standard ships which incorporated low operating costs with simplicity of construction.

Through public service culminating in the 1929 Safety of Life at Sea Conference, Amos Ayre became recognized not only as an eminent naval architect, but also as a skilled negotiator. In 1936 he was invited to become Chairman of the Shipbuilding Conference and thereby virtual leader of the industry. As war approached he planned with meticulous care the rearrangement of national shipbuilding capacity, enabling Britain to produce standard hulls ranging from the legendary TID tugs to the standard freighters built in Sunderland or Port Glasgow. In 1939 he became Director of Merchant Shipbuilding, a position he held until 1944, when with typical foresight he asked to be released to plan for shipbuilding's return to normality.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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The first thirty years of Tideman's life followed the normal pattern for a naval architect: study at the Breda Military Academy, work in the Royal Dockyards of Vlissingen as a constructor and then experience in the United Kingdom "standing by" an armoured vessel being built for the Dutch at Birkenhead. Tideman took the opportunity to acquaint himself with current developments in British shipyards and to study the work of Macquorn Rankine at Glasgow University.

On his return to the Netherlands he was given the task of adapting the Royal Dockyard of Amsterdam for ironclad construction and from 1870 iron ships were built there. From 1868 until 1873 he taught shipbuilding at what was then the Delft Polytechnic, but resigned on his appointment as Chief Naval Constructor of Holland.

Through representations to appropriate authority he assisted in founding the great shipyard Koninklijke Maatschappij "De Schelde" and in the setting up of Dutch ferry services across the North Sea. His interest in ship design and in the pioneering work of William Froude led to the founding of the world's second ship model test tank in 1876 in a sheltered part of the Royal Amsterdam Dockyard. The design was based on Froude's Torquay Tank.

As Scotland's first tank was not opened until 1883, he attracted work from the Clyde, including the testing of the Russian Imperial Yacht Livadia built by Elder's of Glasgow. This contract was so critical that it was agreed that a quartersize model be tested on Loch Lomond. Throughout his life he was respected as an all-round engineer and consultancy work flowed in, the vast bulk of it from Britain. Continual trying to improve standards, Tideman was working on a development plan for Dutch shipbuilding at the time of his death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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He was the son of a country lawyer who became legal advisor and travelling companion to certain rich Americans. At an early age Cousteau acquired a love of travel, of the sea and of cinematography: he made his first film at the age of 13. After an interrupted education he nevertheless passed the difficult entrance examination to the Ecole Navale in Brest, but his naval career was cut short in 1936 by injuries received in a serious motor accident. For his long recuperation he was drafted to Toulon. There he met Philippe Tailliez, a fellow naval officer, and Frédéric Dumas, a champion spearfisher, with whom he formed a long association and began to develop his underwater swimming and photography. He apparently took little part in the Second World War, but under cover he applied his photographic skills to espionage, for which he was awarded the Légion d'honneur after the war.

Cousteau sought greater freedom of movement underwater and, with Emile Gagnan, who worked in the laboratory of Air Liquide, he began experimenting to improve portable underwater breathing apparatus. As a result, in 1943 they invented the aqualung. Its simple design and robust construction provided a reliable and low-cost unit and revolutionized scientific and recreational diving. Gagnan shunned publicity, but Cousteau revelled in the new freedom to explore and photograph underwater and exploited the publicity potential to the full.

The Undersea Research Group was set up by the French Navy in 1944 and, based in Toulon, it provided Cousteau with the Opportunity to develop underwater exploration and filming techniques and equipment. Its first aims were minesweeping and exploration, but in 1948 Cousteau pioneered an extension to marine archaeology. In 1950 he raised the funds to acquire a surplus US-built minesweeper, which he fitted out to further his quest for exploration and adventure and named Calypso. Cousteau also sought and achieved public acclaim with the publication in 1953 of The Silent World, an account of his submarine observations, illustrated by his own brilliant photography. The book was an immediate success and was translated into twenty-two languages. In 1955 Calypso sailed through the Red Sea and the western Indian Ocean, and the outcome was a film bearing the same title as the book: it won an Oscar and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival. This was his favoured medium for the expression of his ideas and observations, and a stream of films on the same theme kept his name before the public.

Cousteau's fame earned him appointment by Prince Rainier as Director of the Oceanographie Institute in Monaco in 1957, a post he held until 1988. With its museum and research centre, it offered Cousteau a useful base for his worldwide activities.

In the 1980s Cousteau turned again to technological development. Like others before him, he was concerned to reduce ships' fuel consumption by harnessing wind power. True to form, he raised grants from various sources to fund research and enlisted technical help, namely Lucien Malavard, Professor of Aerodynamics at the Sorbonne. Malavard designed a 44 ft (13.4 m) high non-rotating cylinder, which was fitted onto a catamaran hull, christened Moulin à vent. It was intended that its maiden Atlantic crossing in 1983 should herald a new age in ship propulsion, with large royalties to Cousteau. Unfortunately the vessel was damaged in a storm and limped to the USA under diesel power. A more robust vessel, the Alcyone, was fitted with two "Turbosails" in 1985 and proved successful, with a 40 per cent reduction in fuel consumption. However, oil prices fell, removing the incentive to fit the new device; the lucrative sales did not materialize and Alcyone remained the only vessel with Turbosails, sharing with Calypso Cousteau's voyages of adventure and exploration. In September 1995, Cousteau was among the critics of the decision by the French President Jacques Chirac to resume testing of nuclear explosive devices under the Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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It is believed that Deane was born in Harwich, the son of a master mariner. When 22 years of age, having been trained by Christopher Pett, he was appointed Assistant Master Shipwright at Woolwich Naval Dockyard, indicating an ability as a shipbuilder and also that he had influence behind him. Despite abruptness and a tendency to annoy his seniors, he was acknowledged by no less a man than Pepys (1633–1703) for his skill as a ship designer and -builder, and he was one of the few who could accurately estimate displacements and drafts of ships under construction. While only 26 years old, he was promoted to Master Shipwright of the Naval Base at Harwich and commenced a notable career. When the yard was closed four years later (on the cessation of the threat from the Dutch), Deane was transferred to the key position of Master Shipwright at Portsmouth and given the opportunity to construct large men-of-war. In 1671 he built his first three-decker and was experimenting with underwater hull sheathing and other matters. In 1672 he became a member of the Navy Board, and from then on promotion was spectacular, with almost full responsibility given him for decisions on ship procurement for the Navy. Owing to political changes he was out of office for some years and endured a short period in prison, but on his release he continued to work as a private shipbuilder. He returned to the King's service for a few years before the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688; thereafter little is known of his life, beyond that he died in 1721.

Deane's monument to posterity is his Doctrine of Naval Architecture, published in 1670. It is one of the few books on ship design of the period and gives a clear insight into the rather pedantic procedures used in those less than scientific times. Deane became Mayor of Harwich and subsequently Member of Parliament. It is believed that he was Peter the Great's tutor on shipbuilding during his visit to the Thames in 1698.

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производство энергетического оборудования для судов
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[ http://www.eionet.europa.eu/gemet/alphabetic?langcode=en]

EN

marine engineering
The design, construction, installation, operation, and maintenance of main power plants, as well as the associated auxiliary machinery and equipment, for the propulsion of ships. (Source: MGH)
[http://www.eionet.europa.eu/gemet/alphabetic?langcode=en]

Тематики

• охрана окружающей среды

EN

• marine engineering

DE

• Schiffstechnik

FR

• génie marin

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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At the conclusion of his schooling in the South of England, Yarrow became an indentured apprentice to the Thames engine-builder Ravenhill. During this five-year period various incidents and meetings sharpened his interest in scientific matters and he showed the skills that in later years were to be so beneficial to shipbuilding. For two years he acted as London representative for Ravenhill before joining up with a Mr Hedley to form a shipyard on the Isle of Dogs. The company lasted from 1868 until 1875 and in that period produced 350 small launches and other craft. This massive output enabled Yarrow to gain confidence in many aspects of ship design. Within two years of setting out on his own he built his first ship for the Royal Navy: a torpedo boat, then at the cutting edge of technology.

In the early 1890s the company was building watertube boilers and producing destroyers with speeds in excess of 27 knots (50 km/h); it built the Russian destroyer Sokol, did pioneering work with aluminium and with high-tensile steels and worked on shipboard equipment to nullify vibrational effects. With the closure of most of the Thames shipyards and the run-down in skilled labour, Yarrow decided that the shipyard must move to some other part of the United Kingdom. After careful deliberation a green field site to the west of Glasgow was chosen, and in 1908 their first Clyde-built destroyer was launched. The company expanded, more building berths were arranged, boiler construction was developed and over the years they became recognized as specialists in smaller highspeed craft and in "knock down" ships for other parts of the world.

Yarrow retired in 1913, but at the commencement of the First World War he returned to help the yard produce, in four years, twenty-nine destroyers with speeds of up to 40 knots (74 km/h). At the end of hostilities he gave of his time and money to many charities, including those for ex-servicemen. He left a remarkable industrial organization which remains to this day the most prolific builder of surface craft for the Royal Navy.

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