Archibald, The Wooden Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy, 1968, p. Masson, La Puissance maritime et navale au XX e siècle, 2002, p. 143.ġ1 Philippe Masson taught strategy and history for thirty years at the Centre d’Enseignement Supérieur de la Marine, then called Ecole de Guerre Navale.ġ2 P. 43.ĩ Brian Lavery, The Ship of the Line, vol. 194.Ĩ The Nautical Magazine, June 1833, p. See introduction on marine engineering in Glasgow and the West of Scotland.Ħ C. 10.Ĥ Denis Griffiths, Steam at Sea, 1997, p. 9-23,Ģ My grateful thanks go to Capitaine de Vaisseau Lepeu, Commandant du Centre d’Enseignement Supérieur de la Marine, and Capitaine de Frégate Barrère, Chef d’Etat-Major, CESM, for enabling me to draw upon the resources of the CESM library, Ecole Militaire, Paris.ģ P. However, when the Surveyor was actually entrusted with building the first steamers for the government, obstinacy did not abate, proof of this being that no accounts were kept of the trials in 1833 ofġ P. This handicap must have weighed heavily in the minds of the Admiralty and they believed that Codrington’s eighty-nine sail plus forty-one transports used at the Battle of Navarino were the norm.ġ2 The Admiralty also claimed that since the construction of steam-vessels did not come within the province of the Surveyor of the Navy, sail was justified on long expensive voyages. and for a time, not so much as the names of the despised novelties appeared on the official Navy List 7 ”.ġ1 Such steam-powered vessels required vast amounts of fuel at a time when there still existed no widespread establishment of bunkering stations that naval officers could rely on. “The Admiralty although they adopted them did so half-heartedly and with a bad grace. It should be noted that as far back as 1788 the Scots had been in the vanguard and This was all the more surprising as the work of pioneers like Jouffroy d’Abbans, Thomas Newcomen, Robert Fulton and James Watt was no longer limited to industry ashore. So this is a first paradox which leads us to a much more disturbing one.Ħ While Britain was leading revolutions such as inventing the railway, developments in naval architecture were quite slow in the Royal Navy. Any visitor at the Royal Academy that had watched the Téméraire, being towed to her last moorings by a steamer spewing soot and smoke on the River Thames would have read the allegory as follows Victoria’s age was ushering in the triumph of speed and efficiency relying on steam alone.ĥ A survey of the historical data relating to the Royal Navy clearly emphasizes that the former reading is valid for its realism whereas the allegorical interpretation either denotes a layman’s wishful thinking or, at best, Turner’s amazing gift for anticipating the future of the Senior Service at the turn of the twentieth century. He may have wanted to immortalize the poignant passing of an era, that of the Battle of the Nile, of Trafalgar, in which the Téméraire had behaved most valiantly or even the demise of the sailing ship. Either Turner had wanted to act as a reporter taking a picture of the routine work of the London to Margate steam shuttle or there was more to it than met the eye. The Fighting Temeraire (1838) on her last voyageĤ Two readings are possible. She had to be dismantled after thirty-three years of naval war service. She was on her last voyage of destruction, her own. The artist represented Nelson’s mighty yet ghost-like vessel deprived of sails and rotting at the seams. What was the layman’s view of the situation, was conservatism a lesser evil than common sense, can a hermaphrodite vessel rule the waves?ģ Two years had barely elapsed since Victoria ascended the throne when Joseph Mallord William Turner exhibited The Fighting Téméraire at the Royal Academy in 1839. Three main questions will be raised to provide tentative explanations to the attitude and decisions of the Senior Service. 2 My grateful thanks go to Capitaine de Vaisseau Lepeu, Commandant du Centre d’Enseignement Supérieur (.)Ģ Confronted with such lavish material, I 2 shall merely endeavour to assess the state of the Royal Navy at the time of the Pax Britannica, laying particular emphasis on the years slightly preceding and the decade following Victoria’s coronation.
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