(naval+architect)

shipbuilder

(на дървени кораби) shipwright

(проектант) a naval architect

инженер корабостроител a naval constructor

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корабостроѝтел,

м., -и shipbuilder; (на дървени кораби) shipwright; ( проектант) naval architect; инженер \корабостроител naval constructor.

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shipbuilder; naval architect (конструктор)

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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 early education at Cupar in Fife, Meek commenced training as a naval architect, taking the then popular sandwich apprenticeship of alternate half years at the University of Glasgow (with a Caird Scholarship) and at a shipyard, in his case the Caledon of Dundee. On leaving Dundee he worked for five years with the British Ship Research Association before joining Alfred Holt \& Co., owners of the Blue Funnel Line. During his twenty-five years at Liverpool, he rose to Chief Naval Architect and Director and was responsible for bringing the cargo-liner concept to its ultimate in design. When the company had become Ocean Fleets, it joined with other British shipowners and looked to Meek for the first purpose-built containership fleet in the world. This required new ship designs, massive worldwide investment in port facilities and marketing to win public acceptance of freight containers, thereby revolutionizing dry-cargo shipping. Under the houseflag of OCL (now POCL), this pioneer service set the highest standards of service and safety and continues to operate on almost every ocean.

In 1979 Meek returned to the shipbuilding industry when he became Head of Technology at British Shipbuilders. Closely involved in contemporary problems of fuel economy and reduced staffing, he held the post for five years before his appointment as Managing Director of the National Maritime Institute. He was deeply involved in the merger with the British Ship Research Association to form British Maritime Technology (BMT), an organization of which he became Deputy Chairman.

Marshall Meek has held many public offices, and is one of the few to have been President of two of the United Kingdom's maritime institutions. He has contributed over forty papers to learned societies, has acted as Visiting Professor to Strathclyde University and University College London, and serves on advisory committees to the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Transport and Lloyd's Register of Shipping. While in Liverpool he served as a Justice of the Peace.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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A son of the manse, Russell was originally destined for the Church and commenced studies at the University of St Andrews, but shortly afterwards he transferred to Glasgow, graduating MA in 1825 when only 17 years old. He began work as a teacher in Edinburgh, working up from a school to the Mechanics Institute and then in 1832 to the University, where he took over the classes in natural philosophy following the death of the professor. During this period he designed and advised on the application of steam power to road transport and to the Forth and Clyde Canal, thereby awakening his interest in ships and naval architecture.

Russell presented papers to the British Association over several years, and one of them, The Wave Line Theory of Ship Form (although now superseded), had great influence on ship designers of the time and helped to establish the formal study of hydromechanics. With a name that was becoming well known, Russell looked around for better opportunities, and on narrowly missing appointment to the Chair of Mathematics at Edinburgh University he joined the upand-coming Clyde shipyard of Caird \& Co., Greenock, as Manager in 1838.

Around 1844 Russell and his family moved to London; following some business problems he was in straitened circumstances. However, appointment as Secretary to the Committee setting up the Great Exhibition of 1851 eased his path into London's intellectual society and allowed him to take on tasks such as, in 1847, the purchase of Fairbairn's shipyard on the Isle of Dogs and the subsequent building there of I.K. Brunel's Great Eastern steamship. This unhappy undertaking was a millstone around the necks of Brunel and Russell and broke the health of the former. With the yard failing to secure the order for HMS Warrior, the Royal Navy's first ironclad, Russell pulled out of shipbuilding and for the remainder of his life was a designer, consultant and at times controversial, but at all times polished and urbane, member of many important committees and societies. He is remembered as one of the founders of the Institution of Naval Architects in 1860. His last task was to design a Swiss Lake steamer for Messrs Escher Wyss, a company that coincidentally had previously retained Sir William Fairbairn.

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engineer

инженер агроном an agricultural engineer

инженер корабостроител a naval architect

инженер конструктор designer; builder

инженер проектант a designing engineer, designer

инженер химик a chemical technologist/engineer

електрон an electrical engineer

жп. инженер a railway engineer

минен инженер a mining engineer

пътен инженер a bridge and road engineer

строителен инженер a civil engineer, a building-/construction-engineer

инженер по водното строителство a water power engineer

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инженѐр,

м., -и engineer; електро\инженер electrical engineer; жп \инженер railway engineer; \инженер агроном agricultural engineer; \инженер конструктор designer; builder; \инженер консултант consulting engineer; \инженер корабостроител naval constructor/architect; \инженер металург metallurgical engineer; \инженер монтажник installation engineer; \инженер по водното строителство water power engineer; \инженер по системите за управление control engineer; \инженер по техническото обслужване maintenance engineer; \инженер проектант designing engineer, designer; \инженер химик chemical technologist/engineer; корабен \инженер marine engineer; машинен \инженер mechanical engineer; минен \инженер mining engineer; пътен \инженер bridge and road engineer; строителен \инженер civil engineer, building-/construction-engineer.

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machinist (машинен)

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Chapman was born on the west coast of Sweden and was the son of a British naval officer serving in the Swedish Navy. In 1738 he followed in his father's footsteps by joining the naval dockyards as a shipbuilding apprentice. Subsequent experience was gained in other shipyards and by two years (1741–3) in London. His assiduous note taking and study of British shipbuilding were noticed and he was offered appointments in England, but these were refused and he returned to Sweden in 1744 and for a while operated as a ship repairer in partnership with a man called Bagge. In 1749 he started out on his own. He began with a period of study in Stockholm and in London, where he worked for a while under Thomas Simpson, and then went on to France and the Netherlands. During his time in England he learned the art of copper etching, a skill that later stood him in good stead. After some years he was appointed Deputy Master Shipwright to the Swedish Navy, and in 1760 he became Master Shipwright at Sveaborg (now Suomenlinna), the fortress island of Helsinki. There Chapman excelled by designing the coastal defence or skerry fleet that to this day is accepted as beautiful and fit for purpose. He understood the limitations of ship design and throughout his life strove to improve shipbuilding by using the advances in mathematics and science that were then being made. His contribution to the rationalization of thought in ship theory cannot be overemphasized.

In 1764 he became Chief Shipbuilder to the Swedish Navy, with particular responsibility for Karlskrona and for Stockholm. He assisted in the new rules for the classification of warships and later introduced standardization to the naval dockyards. He continued to rise in rank and reputation until his retirement in 1793, but to the end his judgement was sought on many matters concerning not only ship design but also the administration of the then powerful Swedish Navy.

His most important bequest to his profession is the great book Architectura Navalis Mercatoria, first published in 1768. Later editions were larger and contained additional material. This volume remains one of the most significant works on shipbuilding.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Elgar enjoyed a fascinating professional life, during which he achieved distinction in the military, merchant, academic and political aspects of his profession. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed as a shipwright to the Royal Dockyard at Portsmouth but when he was in his late teens he was selected as one of the Admiralty students to further his education at the Royal School of Naval Architecture at South Kensington, London. On completion of the course he was appointed to Birkenhead, where the ill-fated HMS Captain was being built, and then to Portsmouth Dockyard. In 1870 the Captain was lost at sea and Francis Elgar was called on to prepare much of the evidence for the Court Martial. This began his life-long interest in ship stability and in ways of presenting this information in an easily understood form to ship operators.

In 1883 he accepted the John Elder Chair of Naval Architecture at Glasgow University, an appointment which formalized the already well-established teaching of this branch of engineering at Glasgow. However, after only three years he returned to public service in the newly created post of Director of Royal Dockyards, a post that he held for a mere six years but which brought about great advances in the speed of warship construction, with associated reductions in cost. In 1892 he was made Naval Architect and Director of the Fairfield Shipbuilding Company in Glasgow, remaining there until he retired in 1907. The following year he accepted the post of Chairman of the Birkenhead shipyard of Cammell Laird \& Co.; this was a recent amalgamation of two companies, and he retained this position until his death. Throughout his life, Elgar acted on many consultative bodies and committees, including the 1884 Ship Load Line Enquiry. His work enabled him to keep abreast of all current thinking in ship design and construction.

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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: Ports and shipping

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McNeill was born in Clydebank just outside Glasgow, and was to serve that town for most of his life. After education at Clydebank High School and then at Allan Glen's in Glasgow, in 1908 he entered the shipyard of John Brown \& Co. Ltd as an apprentice. He was encouraged to matriculate at the University of Glasgow, where he studied naval architecture under the (then) unique Glasgow system of "sandwich" training, alternately spending six months in the shipyard, followed by winter at the Faculty of Engineering. On graduating in 1915, he joined the Army and by 1918 had risen to the rank of Major in the Royal Field Artillery.

After the First World War, McNeill returned to the shipyard and in 1928 was appointed Chief Naval Architect. In 1934 he was made a local director of the company. During the difficult period of the 1930s he was in charge of the technical work which led to the design, launching and successful completion of the great liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. Some of the most remarkable ships of the mid-twentieth century were to come from this shipyard, including the last British battleship, HMS Vanguard, and the Royal Yacht Britannia, completed in 1954. From 1948 until 1959, Sir James was Managing Director of the Clydebank part of the company and was Deputy Chairman by the time he retired in 1962. His public service was remarkable and included chairmanship of the Shipbuilding Conference and of the British Ship Research Association, and membership of the Committee of Lloyd's Register of Shipping.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Despite being one of the youngest entrants to the South Kensington School of Naval Architecture, Purvis obtained both a Whitworth Exhibition and a Scholarship. Upon graduating he commenced a career in shipbuilding that involved him in military, civil and research work in Scotland, England and Japan. Initially he worked in Robert Napier's shipyard on the River Clyde, and then in the London drawing offices of Sir Edward Reed, before joining the staff of the Admiralty, where he assisted William Froude in his classic ship experiments at Torquay. After a short spell with Sir William Pearce at Govan, Purvis joined William Denny and Bros and with his recently gained knowledge of hydrodynamics helped set up the world's first commercial ship model tank at Dumbarton. His penultimate appointment was that of Shipbuilding Partner in the Scottish shipyard of Blackwood and Gordon.

In 1901 he became Professor of Naval Architecture at the Imperial University of Tokyo (succeeding Percy Hillhouse, who had become Naval Architect of Fairfield and later became Professor at Glasgow University) and it was in this role that Purvis was to achieve distinction through developing a teaching course of the highest order. It is accepted that his influence on the Japanese shipbuilding industry was profound. After nineteen years of service he retired to the United Kingdom.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Yourkevitch came from an academic family, but one without any experience or tradition of sea service. Despite this he decided to become a naval architect, and after secondary education at Moscow and engineering training at the St Petersburg Polytechnic, he graduated in 1909. For the following ten years he worked designing battleships and later submarines, mostly at the Baltic Shipyard in St Petersburg. Around 1910 he became a full member of the Russian Naval Constructors Corps, and in 1915 he was a founder member and first Scientific Secretary of the Society of Naval Engineers.

Using the published data of the American Admiral D.W. Taylor and taking advantage of access to the Norddeutscher Lloyd Testing Tank at Bremerhaven, Yourkevitch proposed a new hull form with bulbous bow and long entrances and runs. This was the basis for the revolutionary battleships then laid down at St Petersburg, the "Borodino" class. Owing to the war these ships were launched but never completed. At the conclusion of the war Yourkevitch found himself in Constantinople, where he experienced the life of a refugee, and then he moved to Paris where he accepted almost any work on offer. Fortunately in 1928, through an introduction, he was appointed a draughtsman at the St Nazaire shipyard. Despite his relatively lowly position, he used all his personality to persuade the French company to alter the hull form of the future record breaker Normandie. The gamble paid off and Yourkevitch was able to set up his own naval architecture company, BECNY, which designed many well-known liners, including the French Pasteur.

In 1939 he settled in North America, becoming a US citizen in 1945. On the night of the fire on the Normandie, he was in New York but was prevented from going close to the ship by the police, and the possibility of saving the ship was thrown away. He was involved in many projects as well as lecturing at Ann Arbor, Michigan, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He maintained connections with his technical colleagues in St Petersburg in the later years of his life. His unfulfilled dream was the creation of a superliner to carry 5,000 passengers and thus able to make dramatic cuts in the cost of transatlantic travel. Yourkevitch was a fine example of a man whose vision enabled him to serve science and engineering without consideration of inter-national boundaries.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Barnett studied naval architecture at the University of Glasgow and served an apprenticeship under the yacht designer George L. Watson. This was unusual as most undergraduates tended, then as now, to spend their initial years in the various departments of a shipyard, with concentration on the work of the drawing office. In 1904 Barnett succeeded Watson as Principal of the firm, and was simultaneously appointed Consulting Naval Architect to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), a post he held until his retirement in 1947. During this period many changes in lifeboat design brought increasing efficiency, better ranges of stability and improvements in operational safety. The RNLI recognized the great service of Barnett and his predecessor by naming two lifeboat types after them: the Watson and the Barnett.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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On leaving school in 1894, MacGregor was apprenticed to a famous local shipyard, the Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company of Jarrow-on-Tyne. After four years he was entered for the annual examination of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, coming out top and being nominated Queen's Prizeman. Shortly thereafter he moved around shipyards to gain experience, working in Glasgow, Hull, Newcastle and then Dunkirk. His mastery of French enabled him to obtain in 1906 the senior position of Chief Draughtsman at an Antwerp shipyard, where he remained until 1914. On his return to Britain, he took charge of the small yard of Dibbles in Southampton and commenced a period of great personal development and productivity. His fertile mind enabled him to register no fewer than ten patents in the years 1919 to 1923.

In 1924 he started out on his own as a naval architect, specializing in the coal trade of the North Sea. At that time, colliers had wooden hatch covers, which despite every caution could be smashed by heavy seas, and which in time of war added little to hull integrity after a torpedo strike. The International Loadline Committee of 1932 noted that 13 per cent of ship losses were through hatch failures. In 1927, designs for selftrimming colliers were developed, as well as designs for steel hatch covers. In 1928 the first patents were under way and the business was known for some years as MacGregor and King. During this period, steel hatch covers were fitted to 105 ships.

In 1937 MacGregor invited his brother Joseph (c. 1883–1967) to join him. Joseph had wide experience in ship repairs and had worked for many years as General Manager of the Prince of Wales Dry Docks in Swansea, a port noted for its coal exports. By 1939 they were operating from Whitley Bay with the name that was to become world famous: MacGregor and Company (Naval Architects) Ltd. The new company worked in association with the shipyards of Austin's of Sunderland and Burntisland of Fife, which were then developing the "flatiron" colliers for the up-river London coal trade. The MacGregor business gained a great boost when the massive coastal fleet of William Cory \& Son was fitted with steel hatches.

In 1945 the brothers appointed Henri Kummerman (b. 1908, Vienna; d. 1984, Geneva) as their sales agent in Europe. Over the years, Kummerman effected greater control on the MacGregor business and, through his astute business dealings and his well-organized sales drives worldwide, welded together an international company in hatch covers, cargo handling and associated work. Before his death, Robert MacGregor was to see mastery of the design of single-pull steel hatch covers and to witness the acceptance of MacGregor hatch covers worldwide. Most important of all, he had contributed to great increases in the safety and the quality of life at sea.

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See also: Ayre, Sir Amos Lowrey

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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1) General subject: marine architect, naval architect

2) Naval: naval constructor

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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Almost all of Watson's life was spent in or around the City of Glasgow; his formal education was at the city's High School and at the age of 16 he entered the yard and drawing offices of Robert Napier's Govan Shipyard. Three years later he crossed the River Clyde and started work in the design office of the Pointhouse Shipyard of A. \& J.Inglis, and there received the necessary grounding of a naval architect. Dr John Inglis, the Principal of the firm, encouraged Watson, ensured that he was involved in advanced design work and allowed him to build a yacht in a corner of the shipyard in his spare time.

At the early age of 22 Watson set up as a naval architect with his own company, which is still in existence 120 years later. In 1875, assisted by two carpenters, Watson built the 5-ton yacht Vril to his own design. This vessel was the first with an integral heavy lead keel and its success ensured that design contracts flowed to him for new yachts for the Clyde and elsewhere. His enthusiasm and increasing skill were recognized and soon he was working on the ultimate: the America's Cup challengers Thistle, Valkyrie II, Valkyrie III and Shamrock II. The greatest accolade was the contract for the design of the J Class yacht Britannia, built by D. \& W.Henderson of Glasgow in 1893 for the Prince of Wales.

The company of G.L.Watson became the world's leading designer of steam yachts, and it was usual for it to offer a full design service as well as supervise construction in any part of the world. Watson took a deep interest in the work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and was its technical consultant for many years. One of his designs, the Watson Lifeboat, was a stalwart in its fleet for many years. In public life he lectured, took an active part in the debates on yacht racing and was recognized as Britain's leading designer.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Following early education at Devonport, White passed the Royal Dockyard entry examination in 1859 to commence a seven-year shipwright apprenticeship. However, he was destined for greater achievements and in 1863 passed the Admiralty Scholarship examinations, which enabled him to study at the Royal School of Naval Architecture at South Kensington, London. He graduated in 1867 with high honours and was posted to the Admiralty Constructive Department. Promotion came swiftly, with appointment to Assistant Constructor in 1875 and Chief Constructor in 1881.

In 1883 he left the Admiralty and joined the Tyneside shipyard of Sir W.G. Armstrong, Mitchell \& Co. at a salary of about treble that of a Chief Constructor, with, in addition, a production bonus based on tonnage produced! At the Elswick Shipyard he became responsible for the organization and direction of shipbuilding activities, and during his relatively short period there enhanced the name of the shipyard in the warship export market. It is assumed that White did not settle easily in the North East of England, and in 1885, following negotiations with the Admiralty, he was released from his five-year exclusive contract and returned to public service as Director of Naval Construction and Assistant Controller of the Royal Navy. (As part of the settlement the Admiralty released Philip Watts to replace White, and in later years Watts was also to move from that same shipyard and become White's successor as Director of Naval Construction.) For seventeen momentous years White had technical control of ship production for the Royal Navy. The rapid building of warships commenced after the passing of the Naval Defence Act of 1889, which authorized directly and indirectly the construction of around seventy vessels. The total number of ships built during the White era amounted to 43 battleships, 128 cruisers of varying size and type, and 74 smaller vessels. While White did not have the stimulation of building a revolutionary capital ship as did his successor, he did have the satisfaction of ensuring that the Royal Navy was equipped with a fleet of all-round capability, and he saw the size, displacement and speed of the ships increase dramatically.

In 1902 he resigned from the Navy because of ill health and assumed several less onerous tasks. During the construction of the Cunard Liner Mauretania on the Tyne, he held directorships with the shipbuilders Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson, and also the Parsons Marine Turbine Company. He acted as a consultant to many organizations and had an office in Westminster. It was there that he died in February 1913.

White left a great literary legacy in the form of his esteemed Manual of Naval Architecture, first published in 1877 and reprinted several times since in English, German and other languages. This volume is important not only as a text dealing with first principles but also as an illustration of the problems facing warship designers of the late nineteenth century.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Since he had a long family connection with the naval base at Portsmouth, it is not surprising that Watts started to serve his apprenticeship there in 1860. He was singled out for advanced training and then in 1866 was one of three young men selected to attend the Royal School of Naval Architecture at South Kensington in London. On completing his training he joined the technical staff, then had a period as a ship overseer before going to assist William Froude for two years, an arrangement which led to a close friendship between Watts and the two Froudes. Some interesting tasks followed: the calculations for HM Armoured Ram Polyphemus; the setting up of a "calculating" section within the Admiralty; and then work as a constructor at Chatham Dockyard. In 1885 the first major change of direction took place: Watts resigned from naval service to take the post of General Manager of the Elswick shipyard of Sir W.G.Armstrong. This was a wonderful opportunity for an enthusiastic and highly qualified man, and Watts rose to the challenge. Elswick produced some of the finest warships at the end of the nineteenth century and its cruisers, such as the Esmeralda of the Chilean Navy, had a legendary name.

In 1902 he was recalled to the Navy to succeed Sir William White as Director of Naval Construction (DNC). This was one of the most exciting times ever in warship design and it was during Watts's tenure of the post that the Dreadnought class of battleship was produced, the submarine service was developed and the destroyer fleet reached high levels of performance. It has been said that Watts's distinct achievements as DNC were greater armament per ton displacement, higher speeds and better manoeuvring, greater protection and, almost as important, elegance of appearance. Watt retired in 1912 but remained a consultant to the Admiralty until 1916, and then joined the board of Armstrong Whitworth, on which he served until his death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Froude was educated at a preparatory school at Buckfastleigh, and then at Westminster School, London, before entering Oriel College, Oxford, to read mathematics and classics. Between 1836 and 1838 he served as a pupil civil engineer, and then he joined the staff of Isambard Kingdom Brunel on various railway engineering projects in southern England, including the South Devon Atmospheric Railway. He retired from professional work in 1846 and lived with his invalid father at Dartington Parsonage. The next twenty years, while apparently unproductive, were important to Froude as he concentrated his mind on difficult mathematical and scientific problems. Froude married in 1839 and had five children, one of whom, Robert Edmund Froude (1846–1924), was to succeed him in later years in his research work for the Admiralty. Following the death of his father, Froude moved to Paignton, and there commenced his studies on the resistance of solid bodies moving through fluids. Initially these were with hulls towed through a house roof storage tank by wires taken over a pulley and attached to falling weights, but the work became more sophisticated and was conducted on ponds and the open water of a creek near Dartmouth. Froude published work on the rolling of ships in the second volume of the Transactions of the then new Institution of Naval Architects and through this became acquainted with Sir Edward Reed. This led in 1870 to the Admiralty's offer of £2,000 towards the cost of an experimental tank for ship models at Torquay. The tank was completed in 1872 and tests were carried out on the model of HMS Greyhound following full-scale towing trials which had commenced on the actual ship the previous year. From this Froude enunciated his Law of Comparisons, which defines the rules concerning the relationship of the power required to move geometrically similar floating bodies across fluids. It enabled naval architects to predict, from a study of a much less expensive and smaller model, the resistance to motion and the power required to move a full-size ship. The work in the tank led Froude to design a model-cutting machine, dynamometers and machinery for the accurate ruling of graph paper. Froude's work, and later that of his son, was prodigious and covered many fields of ship design, including powering, propulsion, rolling, steering and stability. In only six years he had stamped his academic authority on the new science of hydrodynamics, served on many national committees and corresponded with fellow researchers throughout the world. His health suffered and he sailed for South Africa to recuperate, but he contracted dysentery and died at Simonstown. He will be remembered for all time as one of the greatest "fathers" of naval architecture.

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