SCIENCE AS APPLIED TO NAVAL ARCHITECTURE AND 



SHIPBUILDING 



By Rear Admiral D. W. Taylor 

 Chief Constructor, U.S. Navy 



The application of science to the world inhabited by those who go 

 down to the sea in ships is a very large subject and I need hardly say 

 that I am not undertaking to cover it in detail. 



The production of a large ship, particularly of a vessel of war, requires 

 perhaps the co-ojperation of more arts and trades than the production 

 by man of any other single object. This fact is seldom realized by the 

 average man as may be illustrated by a peculiar situation. 



A number of years ago, in the City of Philadelphia and State of 

 Pennsylvania, a sailor from the U. S. Battleship Maine was arrested one 

 night for alleged intoxication — this was nearly twenty years ago. Next 

 morning the magistrate had planned to show leniency to the prisoner, 

 but before dismissing him asked him what he did on the battleship. 

 The sailor replied that he was the ship's bricklayer. Regarding this as 

 persiflage and as rather reflecting upon the intelligence of the court, the 

 magistrate promptly sentenced him to the limit of the law, but the poor 

 man had told the exact truth. The battleship to which he was attached 

 had a number of boilers of a new type involving the u^e of a large amount 

 of fire brick in the furnaces and continual patching ojf the same as the 

 old brick wore out, and this work took up the whole time of the prisoner. 



The art of shipbuilding is one of the oldest known of man. Its 

 origin is lost in the mists of antiquity but I understand that the earliest 

 record of a ship, as distinct from a boat, canoe or other small craft, is 

 found in Egyptian carvings dating some three thousand years or so before 

 Christ. 



The science of naval architecture, like so many other branches of 

 science, developed somewhat slowly and, although one nation after 

 another came to the front in this respect, we have to-day little infor- 

 mation concerning the methods and principles adopted by their master 

 shipbuilders. If we go back some thousand years before Christ we will 

 find that the Phoenicians were building the best ships and carrying the 

 commerce of the Mediterranean. Carthage later forged to the front 

 but the Romans in time learned to build superior ships and acquired 

 command of the Mediterranean. The Roman Liburnian galleys seem 

 to have been of a superior type. Later the Vikings of Denmark and 

 Scandinavia built most excellent ships. Tiny though they were as 

 judged by present day standards they were seaworthy in the exceptionally 



113 



