Admiralty some improvements in the construction of ships, which, though not approved of at the time, have been since adopted. In a letter to a friend he says, – “I formerly proposed to the Admiralty to fill in between the timbers, and make all solid, and to caulk inside and outside before the plank was put on, and then not to plank the inside, but to lay riders fore and aft diagonal;” the diagonal riders, the vertical timbers, and the horizontal planks forming a series of triangles. It may not be amiss in this place to insert the following copy of a document presented to his late Majesty, when Prince Regent, by Mr. (now Sir Robert) Seppings, dated Mar. 1st, 1819:–
“The humble Memorial of Robert Seppings, one of the
Surveyors of His Majesty’s Navy:
“Sheweth, – That your Royal Highness’s memorialist, on the 26th August, 1800, proposed an alteration to be made in the braces and pintles, or mode of hanging ships’ rudders, to remedy the inconvenience, and to prevent the expence, arising in consequence of the wearing away of their crowns by the action of the rudder, which was immediately adopted, and generally introduced in His Majesty’s dock-yards per Navy Board warrant dated 28th August, 1800.
“That your Royal Highness’s memorialist, on the 1st January, 1801, proposed a plan for removing blocks from under ships in dock, to enable the workmen to remedy defects in ships’ keels, to make additions thereto, or to caulk the garboard or lower seams of the bottom, without lifting the ships. – The advantages of this plan in the saving of expence and labor were so obvious that the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, by their letter dated 5th February, 1803, ordered it to be generally introduced in His Mijesty’s yards, and as a reward for this invention, your Royal Highness’s memorialist was presented with 1000l. by Government, and a gold medal from the Society of Arts.
“That your Royal Highness’s memorialist, on the 13th February, 1806, proposed a plan for scarphing strait timber to obtain a compass form, by the adoption of which the Warspite, of 74 guns, (which although ordered to be built many years could not be proceeded with for the want of compass timber) was completed in twenty-one months, including six months for seasoning: the other advantages arising from the adoption of this plan, are that of giving a ship’s frame an equal degree of seasoning, which was heretofore unavoidably composed of a mixture of seasoned and unseasoned materials, by which the timber in the same ship had different periods of durability, and that which was seasoned was affected by that which was in a green state, thereby occasioning rapid decay. – The importance of this
