User talk:The Land/Wooden steam warship

Vulnerability of Paddle Wheels

I was at a seminar at the Institute for Historical Research in the late 1980s, where the person giving the seminar made the point that whilst contemporaries believed paddle wheels were very vulnerable to enemy gunfire, combat experience in the Russian/Crimean War showed that they continued to function well when damaged (just less efficiently on the side with the damaged wheel). Her conclusion was that the vulnerability of paddle wheel ships had been over-estimated.--Toddy1 06:26, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to incorporate that into the article if you have a reference - I wonder what the experience in the American Civil War was? The Land 08:59, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are now saying that paddle wheels & their machinery were more vulnerable than masts. Is this really true? --Toddy1 22:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lambert (who is my main source for all of this) seems to think so. Or thinks that people at the time thought so. ;)

I can see the case for it: perhaps this is a Royal Navy POV - you fire your broadside into the enemy ship to kill the crew, smash the guns and prepare for boarding. If you're the RN, you ignore the masts and rigging: shooting at them takes away from your main objective. However, firing straight into the hull means you hit the engines and paddle wheels as well as killing people. The Land 22:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would be helpful if you put in footnotes giving references for these point.--Toddy1 05:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Believe me, it's on my to-do list! The Land 11:19, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Construction

You have a statement: "Wooden steam warships combined the new technology of steam power with very traditional wooden construction. Most of the larger steamers combined their steam engines with a sailing rig."

I take issue with "very traditional wooden construction". British warship design and construction was not static during the first half of the 19th Century.

The beginning of the century saw the gradual introduction of wooden diagonal cross-bracing. This enabled smaller and therefore cheaper pieces of wood to be used in the frame, and produced stronger ships.
In the 1830s saw introduction of iron for the diagonal cross-bracing, which had the advantage of saving space, thus increasing the volume of stores that could be carried.
There were changes to hull, bow and stern design.

--Toddy1 06:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, you're right :) The Land 09:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Paddlewheel ships a dead end

Steam-powered paddlewheel ships were a step towards steam-powered screw ships. Eventually they became a dead-end, but they were not initially.

Paddlewheel propulsion has a lot of advantages, which is why it lasted for some applications into the 20th Century.--Toddy1 22:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, the paddle steamer was an auxiliary ship. Because of the vulnerability of the wheels (and engine), the consequences of damage to them, and the reduced broadside space no paddle-steamer would ever have been able to serve in the line of battle and, really, no paddle-frigate would have been able to hold its own against a sailing frigate. That left the paddle-steamer as a tugboat, or as an assault ship (like the British paddle frigates in the Crimea - plenty of space for marines and ships' boats, large-caliber guns well suited for shore bombardment), or for work intercepting or protecting merchant shipping. However, they could never replace the ship of the line or the frigate, which occupied a dominant place; so in that sense they were a dead end. For military reasons, not for technical reasons.

If you can think of a better form of words, though, go for it! The Land 22:37, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As I wrote this I forgot we'd started to have the discussion at the top of the page. The Land 22:42, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

they could never replace the ship of the line or the frigate If screw propulsion had not worked, it is possible they might have. It is possible to imagine a paddle version of the turret-ship--Toddy1 05:18, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]