1861 Queen’s Regulations
In 1861, Royal Navy regulations updated the Captain’s responsibilities. Centralized management control of the technical system continued to grow. Regulations now prevented Captains from modifying the ship. Many new standard report forms were required to be routed to superior offices in the bureaucracy.
Many rules from the 1717 and 1731 regulations were kept, for example: managing ship surveys, tracking repair costs, written communications with the dockyard about defects and their status, and periodic caulking.
New Requirements and their Standard Forms
The 1861 regulations did not change the Carpenter’s responsibilities much from the previous 200 years. The Carpenter had been required to write a report of defects on return from sea since the early 1600s. Following the theme of increasing bureaucratic standardization, this report now had a pre-printed format in the appendix of the new regulations. New responsibilities for boilers and machinery were given to both the Engineer and the Captain.
The Captain
The Captain’s permission was required to light the boilers, and the Captain was responsible for managing the combination of steam and sail for maximum fuel economy.
Captains were required to attempt repairs with their own crew, explicitly to prevent extra workload on the dockyards. Hiring outside repair contractors remained prohibited in most circumstances because it did not use the crew to the maximum extent. If repairs and hull cleaning in foreign ports were unavoidable, there were special requirements for approval and reporting.
The Captain was required to visit the engine room every day, and review the engine room logs after noon. The engine-room log or register recorded hourly fuel consumption and important engine parameters every four hours. Abnormal consumptions of consumable stores like lubricants were required to be noted and explained in the register. The register was eventually forwarded to the Comptroller of the Navy.
The Engineer
Continuous training was also a new requirement. The Chief Engineer was required to train junior officers in boilers, engines, and machinery for 1-2 hours a week, and rate their progress in their semi-annual performance evaluations.
There was a new requirement for periodic inspection of internal spaces. Whitewashing the hold was required every six months. The pumpwell was to be cleaned and dried frequently, but an interval was not made specific.
A failure report was required by Chapter 20, Article 13. If a machinery problem required the ship to pull into any port for repairs, the senior Engineer Officer was to make a statement explaining the repair and why it could not be made at sea. This report had to be forwarded up the chain of command.
The ship’s chief Engineer was to monitor the boiler water multiple times a day, keeping the total salinity within two specific operating parameters “so as to prevent the possibility of permanent injury to the boilers.” (p. 405) The chief Engineer was responsible for keeping boilers clean, and dry when not in use. There were new articles about preventing external corrosion of the boilers caused by leaks of water from the upper deck. Storing combustible materials in contact with the boiler was now prohibited. The management of boiler maintenance management in the 19th century is a significant topic that should be treated separately from other naval systems.
Quarterly and Annual Reports
The quarterly machinery report asked the Captain and Engineer to forecast how soon the next major in-port repair would be needed:
The Captain is to be very careful that the quarterly report of the state of the hull and machinery contains all the information required in the form; and as it is most desirable that specific information should be given of the probable time during which the efficient working of the machinery and boilers may be depended on without having recourse to a shore establishment for repairs, the word uncertain is on no account to be used with regard to such particulars, but the closest approximation is to be made that the Captain’s knowledge, after consulting the Chief Engineer, will admit of. If the time be dependent on accidental circumstances, such explanation should be added as may enable the Admiralty to draw their own conclusions.
The Expenditure of Engineers’ stores is to be correctly inserted, and a separate statement made of all coals, oil, tallow, &c., supplied to other Ships, or for other purposes than the machinery or boilers.
Several maintenance and reliability concepts are included in this regulation, evidenced by the words “probable,” “depended on,” and “recourse to…repairs.” This availability prediction was based on experience and opinion; no method of estimation was specified. Officers were very proficient in geometry due to celestial navigation: in fact, part of the performance review for officers rated their familiarity with Euclid and skill in trigonometry. However, an officer’s education included “elementary” algebra. The field of probability was being developed in these decades, so the senior officers were unlikely to have any relevant analytical tools. (However, one of the first known use of Design of Experiment had been in 1747, at sea by a Royal Navy surgeon studying scurvy.) Nevertheless, for the squadron and Admiralty, receiving this quarterly estimate every quarter from every ship would allow senior managers to understand the physical health of the afloat assets while also estimating the future workload and priorities for ashore repair facilities.
The 1861 regulations also included a form to record the results of the Annual report. Similar to the quarterly report, line items received a basic assessment of condition, time estimate for repair, and durability. Even though many ships had unique engine and machinery arrangements, the annual report used a standardized list of equipment, essentially, a generic equipment breakdown structure or asset classification system. This added to the Admiralty’s ability to compare relative conditions and risk between assets with different configurations.
Maintenance Auditing
The 1861 regulations added an “Inspector of Machinery Afloat.” This officer operated at the squadron level to provide oversight of the steam machinery. A ship’s Chief Engineer reported to the Captain, but the Inspector reported to the squadron’s Admiral. The Inspector reviewed data and Engineering logs received from the ships in the squadron. The Inspector was to visit each steam vessel every quarter and formally report the state of the machinery using a standard form. The form was to be routed to the Controller of the navy. This was an external auditing program related to the maintenance of steam machinery…the Inspector reported to the admiral in charge of the Captain, minimizing undue influence. The Inspector’s other responsibilities included conducting investigations of major failures, advising on major repairs, and rating the advancement potential of the ship’s Engineer officers.
Inspection of Machinery Afloat – pg 79 report form. The left column has been cut off by the page scan, removing some important information.
Preserving Compound; Fouling of Iron Hull and Armor
New iron-hulled ships resulted in new preventive maintenance requirements:
Officers in command of iron ships are to take every opportunity of examining the conditions of the bottoms of such ships, and to be very careful that the plates are cleaned and coated with preserving composition as often as may be necessary, or as occasions shall offer for so doing; and they are to see that no injury be done by corrosion to the rivets or other parts, — that no copper articles, or copper filings be allowed to rest on the bottom in immediate contact with the iron, — and that every part be kept clean and preserved by coating with preserving composition, or by such other means as may from time to time be ordered. (QRAI p. 328)
This requirement implies that the navy had a coating that would slow corrosion of iron. Had the Royal Navy studied iron corrosion to such an extent that they had an effective preventive measure?
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute wrote a history of hull fouling that concluded “the use of shellac as a rust-preventive coating for ships’ bottoms reduced the corrosion of ships to such an extent that in 1861 Admiral Halsted stated that corrosion was no longer important.” There were about 300 patents in Great Britain for anti-fouling and anti-corrosion paint at the time, but even in 1861 they were seen as useless. One single coating type was useful as an anti-corrosion layer, but it was not patented until 1863, two years after the regulation was issued. (WHOI pg 217.) There are no details in the 1861 regulations about exactly what the “preserving composition” was.
Admiral Halsted’s comments from in 1861, the year the regulations were issued, were less conclusive than WHOI believed:
There are a dozen ways by which actual corrosion of the metal may be prevented; but the misfortune is that all these appliances have the effect of presenting such an enticing surface to marine substances and animals, that they carry on their little operations till there is no end of them, and in six months the surface of the bottom of your ship is destroyed in a great measure for all purposes of speed. (Ins. of Naval Arch. pg 56)
Halsted’s words on the matter don’t indicate that he was convinced that corrosion could be practically prevented. Theoretical solutions existed, but were impractical. In addition, copper sheathing and wood hulls were on the verge of no longer being militarily useful. The age of ironclads and rifled guns had arrived, and Halsted was especially interested in iron armor. Halsted made the case that Great Britain should prioritize building with iron. Halsted’s real focus was on which iron plate provided the best ballistic protection, and how to best fasten it to the ship’s skeleton. Halsted’s lecture contained 154 pages of discussion of ballistic tests on iron plating, but only two references to corrosion and fouling.
Halsted knew that anti-corrosion compounds promoted biological fouling of iron hulls. The growth was so bad that it reduced a ship’s speed significantly. Fouling could increase coal requirements by 30% over a year. This meant that steam ships could operate for a year or less, much shorter than sailing ships which spent years on remote overseas stations. It was apparent to Halsted that preventing corrosion of iron would take a ship out of service much faster than the corrosion itself. Fouling, not corrosion, was the real problem that needed immediate attention from the Institute of Naval Architects and the navy.
The authors of the Woods Hole history may have misinterpreted Halsted. Corrosion hadn’t been solved and Halsted knew it. Instead, Halsted preferred a fast, clean ship with a small corrosion problem to a slow, fouled ship covered in anti-corrosion paint. This was the same choice that the Royal Navy made after Sir Huphery Davy prevented corrosion of copper sheathing with sacrificial anodes: forgo the preventive measure because of the cost to mobility, and prioritize battle effectiveness.
The Royal Navy was managing a larger system and not myopically focused on preventing a specific failure mode.
References
1717: “The Oeconomy Of His Majesty’s Navy-Office: Containing The Several Duties Of The Commissioners And Principal Officers Thereof: Being The First Rules Establish’d For Them By His Royal Highness The Duke Of York, Then Lord High Admiral Of England And Ireland, Under King Charles Ii, And Continu’d In Force To This Day; With Several Letters Relating To The Same From His Said Royal Highness, To The Navy Board, By An Officer Of The Navy.”
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433009302484
Williams, W. J. Steam Manual for the British Navy. Portsea: W. Woodward, 1843.
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433008150850
Historical role of the Carpenter: https://www.philipkallan.com/single-post/ship-s-Carpenters
History of the role of warrant officers, including the Carpenter, and the evolution to the modern system: https://www.commsmuseum.co.uk/dykes/warrant/warrant1.htm
Great Britain. Admiralty. The Queen’s Regulations for the Royal Navy London, Harrison & Sons, 1862. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hl4q8n
A transcription that is easier to read, but does not include sidebars: https://www.pdavis.nl/Q20.htm
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, United States. Navy Dept. Bureau of Ships, Marine fouling and its prevention ; prepared for Bureau of Ships, Navy Dept., 1952, DOI:10.1575/1912/191, https://hdl.handle.net/1912/191
https://darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org/handle/1912/191
Reed, E.J., ed, Transactions Of The Institution Of Naval Architects, Vol II, London, 1861 https://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101050824711
Halsted, E. P. Iron-Cased Ships, A Series of Lectures Delivered Before the Royal United Service Institution, 1861 https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433008149654
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