Buckingham House, 1779. Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sir Charles Middleton, Controller of the Navy, were waiting to see the King. If they could win his support, then the government would surely have to find the huge sums of money they desperately needed. Their grand scheme was costly and extremely risky-but in their view it was vital for the defence of the realm: they wanted nothing less than to coat the bottom of every ship in the British fleet with copper.
THEY were accompanied by the Bellona. The model was not quite an exact replica of its larger namesake. Just before the royal inspection, she had undergone a hurried transformation. From bow to stern, the bottom of the ship was encased in a sheath of bright copper plates. One last rub with an aristocratic sleeve, and she was ready for her royal encounter.
The Royal Navy was in big trouble. The American War of Independence had been rumbling on since 1775, but was about to escalate. The Navy now faced the prospect of fighting four enemies at once. France had just joined the American cause, and Spain and the Netherlands were about to follow suit. The British fleet would be outnumbered and outclassed. The only way to improve its performance was to solve the problem of fouling, which slowed ships down, and shipworm, which kept them in port for lengthy repairs. Ships sent to the West Indies were especially vulnerable to the 鈥渨orm鈥�, which could reduce a ship to a leaking wreck in a few short months.
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The Navy had tried endless remedies, coating hulls with everything from lead plate to false hulls made from firwood lined with noxious mixtures of hair and tar. By the time the Bellona was set before the King, the Navy had already experimented with copper cladding. In 1761, ships returning from the Caribbean were so 鈥渞emarkably eat by the worm鈥� the Navy decided to run a trial on the frigate Alarm. After a two-year voyage, the hull was clean and its timbers sound: the poisonous copper had kept both weed and worm at bay. 鈥淯pon the whole we find that copper Sheathing with respect to preserving ships鈥� bottoms from the worms and from foulness has fully answered expectations,鈥� wrote the Admiralty.
Unfortunately, it had another, less welcome, effect. The iron bolts that held the ship together were almost eaten away. Although no one had any idea what electrolysis was, they did understand that the damage to the iron had something to do with the copper sheathing. Unable to solve the problem, the Navy gradually lost interest.
Ships鈥� captains liked copper on their ships: they sailed faster and handled better. But coppering a ship put a question mark over its seaworthiness. There was a very real risk that the bottom might drop out.
When war came, Middleton and Sandwich were convinced that the only way the Royal Navy would stand a chance was with copper-bottomed ships. Their captains wanted them, too. 鈥淔or God鈥檚 sake and our Country鈥檚,鈥� wrote one, 鈥渟end copper bottomed ships to relieve the foul and crippled ones.鈥�
They knew the risks, but brushed aside every objection. Besides, it took a couple of years for bolts to start falling apart- by which time the war could be over and the fleet safely home. And, claimed Middleton, a watertight seal between the copper and the planking would stop the rot. A Mr Dawson had found the very thing: a seal made of paper coated with tar, linseed oil, rosin, beeswax and tallow. It was untried, but Middleton insisted that it worked.
With the King on their side, Middleton and Sandwich got their way, and by the middle of 1779 a vast programme to copper the fleet began in earnest. Fortunately perhaps, the war was almost over before the full extent of the gamble began to show. And copper bottoms had made the difference between a trouncing and a limited amount of damage: Britain lost America but held onto its other colonies. But in 1782, as the war was coming to a close, four copper-bottomed ships sank in a storm off Newfoundland, with the loss of 3500 lives. Corroded bolts were blamed. The Navy was so appalled it considered stripping the copper off all its ships.
Hardened bolts
That was enough to trigger a flurry of innovation. The Navy had dabbled with various new types of copper bolts during the war. Pure copper bolts were too soft to drive home with a hammer and none of the alloys tried was ideal.
In the end, the bolt problem was solved by Welsh copper magnate Thomas Williams, spurred on by the prospect of losing his biggest contract. Williams hired the best technologists around, and they soon invented a method of hardening copper by drawing it through a set of grooved rollers. In less than a year, Williams was supplying new bolts for the entire Navy.
The technology was such a success that foreign spies were immediately despatched to discover the tricks of the trade. 鈥淭here was nothing difficult in getting a good view of English Manufactures,鈥� noted one pair of French spies. 鈥淥ne needs to know the language with facility, not show any curiosity and wait for the hour when punch is served . . .鈥�
Even with its secrets leaking, Britain鈥檚 Navy outclassed the French when they faced each other in the next two wars-the first against revolutionary France, the second against Napoleon.
And where the Navy led, commercial shipping was quick to follow. Faster ships meant bigger profits, and coppering could trim two months off a voyage to India-a boon to the growing tea trade. The biggest enthusiasts though were the slavers. The speed gained from a copper bottom meant more of their cargo reached the marketplace. For the slaves crammed into festering holds, it was the difference between life and death.