263 



slaves off the coast of Africa, and had nearly fallen a victim, in 

 common with the greatest part of his crew, to that pestilential cli- 

 mate. 



Sir Robert Seppings received his education as a shipwright under 

 the late Sir John Henslow, Surveyor of the Navy, and continued 

 in connexion with the important service of our dock-yards during a 

 period of fifty years. He was the author of many important im- 

 provements in our naval architecture, including his system of dia- 

 gonal bracing and trussing, which formed the subject of two memo- 

 rable Papers in our Transactions in the years 1814?* and 1818 f, and 

 which attracted an unusual amount of public attention. The great 

 principle of this method was such an arrangement of the principal 

 timbers as would oppose a powerful mechanical action to every 

 change of position of the ribs and other timbers in every part of 

 the ship ; thus firmly compacting together the entire fabric^ and 

 preventing that perpetual racking of beams and working of joints, 

 which, in the ancient system of ship-building, produced hogging, 

 creaking, leakage, and rapid decay ; and filling up likewise every 

 vacuity between the timbers, which were occasionally the unavoid- 

 able receptacles for foul air, filth, vermin, and various other 

 sources of rottenness and disease. 



These important improvements, though opposed to the inveterate - 

 prejudices of the older shipwrights, a body of men who have not 

 sufficiently valued and understood, in this country at least, the just 

 principles of mechanical action, in the practical operation of ship- 

 building, were universally adopted in the Navy under the enlight- 

 ened administration of Mr. Charles York, and the powerful advo- 

 cacy of Sir John Barrow :j: : and the merit of their author was ac- 

 knowledged by his appointment as Surveyor of the Navy, and by 

 the award of the Copley Medal of this Society. 



This was not the only important improvement which Sir Robert 

 Seppings introduced into our system of naval architecture. The 

 Admiralty presented him with £1000 as a reward for his simple 

 yet most useful invention of an improved block for supporting ves- 

 sels, by which their keels and lower timbers were much more easily 

 and promptly examined and repaired. His plan for lifting masts 

 out of the steps, which superseded the employment of sheer hulks 

 for that purpose, has been the means of saving much expense and 

 labour. His new mode of framing ships has led to a much more ex- 

 tensive use of short and small timbers, which were formerly of little 

 value ; but the most valuable of all the reforms of construction for 

 which the Navy of England is indebted to him, was the substitution 

 of round for flat sterns, which afford increased strength to the frame- 

 work of the ship, greater protection against pooping in heavy seas, 



* On a New Principle of Constructing His Majesty's Ships of War. — 

 Phil. Trans. 1814, p. 28. 



\ On the great strength given to Ships of ^War by the application of 

 Diagonal Braces. — Phil. Trans. 1818, p. 1. 



X In very able articles in the 24th and 43rd Numbers of the Quarterly 

 Review. 



c 



