Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 1793–1815 by Roger Morriss

Author:Roger Morriss [Morriss, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367472290
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

Models and plans

The dates of plans relating to the Portsmouth works, initially submitted to Bentham, indicate progress in the evolution of the principal features of his Portsmouth proposals. The plans reveal the extraordinary preparations and procedures that were necessary. After May 1796, the Inspector General had his own draughtsman, James Burr, and communication by plan was simplified. Even so, plans got lost and delays on decisions were normal. The Inspector General referred to one delay in the despatch of plan in an informal note to the Admiralty Secretary who replied that, ‘after having been a long time mislaid in the Admiralty, it was found about a month ago and laid out on your table to be sent to the Navy Board.10

Models of new facilities were used for demonstration purposes, probably at the Admiralty, the Navy Office and in Portsmouth dockyard. Bentham had never built a basin or docks before and he himself would have benefitted from seeing scale models of his own abstract conceptions. In January 1797, Bentham requested orders be given for making several models in Portsmouth yard at a scale of one quarter of an inch to one foot. He wanted a rough model of a dock according to the present construction, a model of a dock built in the way he proposed; and a rough block or solid of the largest ship in the British navy – whether built or building, the bottom alone, or as high as the gun deck.11

Bentham’s proposals came at the end of almost thirty years of piecemeal development. Between 1789 and 1795, a single dock, known as the New South Dock, was built south of the Great Basin and an old double dock. In 1793–4, it was intended to rebuild the double dock as a single dock, but in 1795 that intention was changed to the renovation and preservation of the double.12 At this point, Bentham’s scheme was adopted by which the double dock would be demolished and the basin extended to the south with two new internal docks. Thereafter, a series of plans indicate the way in which the works developed.

A plan of November 1795 already ignores the old double dock, inserting the proposed line of an extended basin and the new line of the harbour wall extending north from the New South Dock.13 Over the winter of 1795–6, Bentham finely adjusted this plan, settling the future shape of the extended basin.14 He also addressed the question of building materials.15 By March 1796, he was able to tell the Portsmouth yard officers that ‘nothing further in the way of improvement which I may have to offer… need at all impede the passage of the works according to the more correct plan’.16

That more correct plan does not appear to have survived. However, one for 22 April 1796 provides the shape of the proposed basin.17 A full plan of the yard in August 1796 shows the intended complete basin with the proposed new docks in red.18

By then the new harbour wall was well advanced.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.