PHILOSOPHICAL 
TRANSACTIONS. 
I. On the great strength given to Ships of IV ar by the application 
of Diagonal Braces. By Robert Seppings, Esq. F.R.S. 
Read November 27, 1817. 
Since the time that I first suggested the principle of ap- 
plying a diagonal frame-work to ships of war, which was 
first partially and successfully adopted in the Kent, a seventy- 
four gun ship, in the year 1805, my mind has been conti- 
nually and anxiously turned to this important subject ; and 
it was not until the utility of the experiment had been fully 
established in the opinion of most naval officers, that I ven- 
tured to present to the Royal Society, a paper on the appli- 
cation of this well known principle to the construction of 
large ships of war, but which, as far as my knowledge 
extends, never had before that time been so applied, either 
theoretically or practically, in this, or any other maritime 
country ; and I am well assured, that no such application, or 
suggestion, appears in any of the Continental writers on 
naval architecture. I merely mention this, because it has 
been pretty broadly insinuated, that the idea was borrowed 
from the French. The propriety of a different disposition of 
MDCCCXVIII. B 
