if the Bismarck broken out into the Atlantic after fighting the battle of the Denmark straight what type of measures would the British take with their convoy escorts how much damage with the Bismarck and flicked on Adelaide shipping and what type scram of battles the Bismarck fight 139
you mentioned that iron-hulled craft for fresh water applications had already existed for quite a while before the solution to the issue of being unable to copper plate iron-hulled ships for salt water was discovered. Did anybody during this window build an iron-hulled river gunboat/monitor? since they wouldn't be subjected to the same issues. and (operating off the logic of the previous question) if the Rush-Bagot Treaty had somehow fell through or never demilitarized the great lakes, what do you think the chances would have been for them to be the the spot where the first iron-hulled warships would be deployed?
Which WWII capital ship sent back to WWI would be the most useful for their respective navies? Assume that the WWI navies are able to physically operate and supply the ships and that the carriers have pilots on them.
My vote for Drachism of the Day: "...which very quickly would leave you with no hull, which is generally held to be a disadvantage in the whole Staying Afloat Department."
I'm picturing a version of the classic Wil-E-Coyote running straight off a cliff and only realizing he's hovering in midair a couple of seconds later, then plummeting down off the screen. But with ships.🤣
I used to live on a wrought-iron canal icebreaker built in the 1850's (and only retired in the early 1960's). The canals were a fairly benign environment and her hull is still in excellent shape. We were told by the surveyor that wrought iron of that era contained a lot of carbon inclusions, these helped to limit the development of corrosion pits. Thankfully, we rarely encountered 32 pounders on the Oxford Canal.
The ductile-brittle transition was note with steel with cracking of Liberty ships and some WWII tankers. Constance Tippett worked on the issue and determined it was the steel used that was the problem. Also, the transition temperature is dependent on the quality of the steel and the specific alloy. The test is called the Charpy V-notch. You can actually see the difference in a ductile and brittle fracture and when there is a mixed fracture each area will be very distinctive. Brittle fractures are faceted as the fracture occurs along the grain boundaries. Ductile fractures are mottled and have no discernible structure
wasnt there a video about it recently-ish where the greatest accident rates of Liberty ships cracking were during the winter? So during testing in the summer the steel they used was fine but in cold weather in the winter it became brittle. thats what you get for doing a rapid development and design program i suppose
@@Pilvenuga Given that even with the huge numbers of Liberty ships built, some 2700 of the things, the USA was *still* short of merchant shipping one can understand the short development and design cycle, as well as the corners cut in construction. I suspect it was a conscious decision made by the relevant US authorities. Accept the risks involved with some flaws in construction for the hugely increased rate of construction offered. Given how important merchant ship tonnage was to the war effort its hard to criticise them over much for that decision, as it was probably the right call.
D.K. Brown's "Before the Ironclad", which I'm sure Drach has read, is an excellent history of the technological developments, heartbreaks and problems (and their solutions) that led to the permanent introduction of the full-size iron warship.
Yeah, all the books on the development of the english warships by D. K. Brown are a fantastic pool of knowledge... He knew it... He was an naval engineer himself! (If there are people here in the comments, who do not know them already!) -Before the Ironclad -Warrior to Dreadnought -The Grand Fleet and last but definitely not least: -Nelson to Vanguard He also wrote other stuff but these are the most essential books to get.
I recall that contamination by small amounts of Phosphorus in the iron can make it 'cold short' and even more brittle when cold. Presumably, the amount of Phosphorus would depend on wherever the ore was sourced from and the techniques used in creation of the iron.
Sulfur is also really nasty for iron/steel characteristics too, isn't it? I'm not sure if they'd switched from charcoal to coked coal for iron production yet, but if the coking procedure wasn't fully dialed in, that might have also hurt.
@@Alsadius Sulphur contamination makes the iron 'hot short' and it becomes crumbly if raised to red heat, thus fairly useless for most purposes. As you say, that's exactly why using coal instead of charcoal was a bad idea before the discovery of coking. Significant sulphur contamination would definitely be detected while trying to make uniform sheets of iron. I looked into a bit, and apparently phosphorus contamination of iron in hotter climates is quite useful - being hotter, it rarely gets below the ductile/brittle line, so that shortcoming is mitigated, but it also forms phosphorus compounds on the surface that resist corrosion. The 'Iron Pillar of Delhi', which has survived centuries in the open air being an example.
@onenote6619 the later tests showed SS Great Britain's hull went into brittle behaviour at 40 degrees C, Warriors at 20, so while there was improvement, there was still a fair way to go.
@onenote6619 Yeah, I'm envisioning something like them being able to remove 99% of the sulfur, but a small amount remaining and causing milder versions of those issues. But I'm a long way from beyond a metallurgy expert, so this is wild speculation.
@@Drachinifel I suppose it is very easy to say: 'Was this not obvious, why did they not figure it out?' with 20/20 hindsight. And then you look at the Mk14 torpedo, decades later, and think: 'Yeah, could have been worse'.
As a former half failed student of Engineering, but this was one of the classes I really got.The summary is in the title. We studied this, in microscopes, to understand the physics behind our calculations.
Protect the Rum! I was seeking a PDF copy of the HMS Excellent reports, I found the 1849 edition which included the recommendation that "the spirit rooms need equal protection (as the magazines) against the explosive effects of shells fired horizontally, or at low angles, and a space for the spirits should be partitioned off in the after hold, amidships, before, but separate from the after magazine." I realize that there are real concerns about storing large quantities of flammable liquid in the age of exploding shells, but this does strike me as funny.
I was reading an account of the building of Sea Shadow, the first testbed for stealth technology on ships. The US Navy insisted that it have a paint locker, because all Navy ships had to have a paint locker. This despite the entire vessel being coated with radar-absorbing material that could not be repaired at sea.
@onenote6619Wouldn’t it still need paints for its interior surfaces & something to cover damaged areas of the hull while at sea to prevent corrosion? Like sure it can’t carry the special Stealth coating, but I doubt the ladders and bulkheads were covered in it, and exposed hull is already not stealthy.
I've been watching since I got the recommendation for your Mark 14 Torpedo failures video. One of the best sources on UA-cam for Naval history content.
I've heard a bunch of historians argue that most significant innovations (especially in the context of warfare) are essentially a two step process. I.e. it first pops up somewhere, then at a later point in history gets picked up by someone else who makes it much better for its intended purpose, from which then comes the widespread use of whatever it is. Gunpowder weapons are the textbook example of what I'm basically talking about. edit: A good example from outside the context of military history would be the steam engine. Compare the old atmospheric engine of Newcomen to the later multiple expansion engines we usually think of when talking steam engines.
Most scientific and engineering progress is iterative. Revolutionary concepts do occur, but they are relatively rare. Most progress is essentially improving on what is already in place, either directly or indirectly (such as new uses for materials in the latter case). Methinks the Historians should have just asked a scientist or engineer, as we have been aware of this for quite some time. We could settle that argument for them fairly swiftly :P.
@@alganhar1 This is not discounting the smaller details of anything and is, as should be obvious, looking at the wider image. As is explicit it is only talking about major changes. The kind of major change I referenced in those two examples.
My literary version of this is the biblical denigration of idols: "they have eyes but see not, they have ears but hear not" to the spoken peroration "none so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not hear."
Splinters from wooden hulls that can cause injury to the crew are called "shivers" - which is where the piratesque phrase "shiver me timbers" comes from. The more trivia you know...the better you'll be as a bartender...
The loss of the Western Reserve, a steel steamer, on Lake Superior in a summer storm showed this effect where the cold water introduced a stiffening and hence brittle factor to the hull, the ship snapping during what wasn't a really severe storm.
I had a good laugh when you got to the Kamptuclion. I hadn't heard of it before. Picturing flamey rubber&cork shrapnel bouncy balls flying around the compartment....
As always, amazing photos, narration and overall production values. I'm no expert or historical guru by any means (and only have a passing interest)...but so much appreciate how you bring these subjects to life. Thank you so much. :-)
I love the mentioning of Admiral Cockburn means you can put up that Picture, One of my favourite portrait ever, of him standing in fount of that burning building. That building that was painted white to cover up all the scorch marks. Wonder what happen to that building?
It became a symbol of resistance and a source of strength for the American people. I will never understand the fascination with this, and I am Canadian. It's like the Star Spangled Banner - it is about a battle that the Americans lost.
@michaelstanley5215 americans like to stand proud in the face of defeat, and to avenge things. Whenever they lose a battle they like to remember it, and hit back harder. Think of events like the attack on Pearl Harbor or the Alamo, whenever they suffer a catastrophic defeat it just pisses them off, then they usually get back up and beat the enemy to death.
The mass production of sheet iron was rapidly changing technologies in shipping, manufacturing weaponry, and changing modern armies and navies. Important history about human development.
@@Bird_Dog00 No, the real problem lies with the crews for sailing into combat and not avoiding the shots fired at them. If the ship's crews were properly trained and led by their officers, they would avoid the shots, therefore, the armor we, at BuOrd provided, would work just fine.
Well, i've never been this early to one of your videos. Great timing as well as i recently watched a video of your's going over the history of metal armor which also touches on this a bit.
This is a superb overview of the iron ship revolution and its impact on naval warfare. The historical context you provided really adds depth to the engineering aspects.
I don't remember the cut offs..but the weight vs. Size of boats is actually pretty easy to find. Wood drops out of the running pretty quickly..steel being the lightest overtakes fiberglass smaller than most would expect. Concrete hangs in pretty far, and I suspect it could be viable with the new(er) fiberglass reinforcement and even morso with the graphite. Of course, this holds true with resins and graphite also. Like any design, it comes down to price and practicality for the chosen material. Currently for small craft fiberglass is the choice, easy to mass produce, and cost-effective for small boats.
I've been working on a mid 1800s tech level fantasy setting for d&d and this is exactly what I needed because it's going to be a navy focused campaign. The stand out part of my setting is the world is tidally locked making one side warmer than the other. So,this video is a perfect reference for how ships in my setting would be built.
@VainerCactus0 not necessarily, there is a sweet spot around a star that won't vaporizer all the water on one side and freeze it all on the other. Also in my setting it hasn't been locked for much more than a thousand years it was slowed down fast enough to cause damage but not so fast it killed everything. It's also a world made up of achaplagos and Islands not much bigger than the British or Japanese isle. Drach's video here gives me a better reason for why iron warships are rare some nations in my setting could just believe that iron hauls aren't much better than wooden haul for different reasons.
I cooked this last night for Christmas lunch (well lunch always begins in the evening on Christmas Day) I really like the parboiled and dunked sprouts oiled (I added crushed garlic to the pan too). The sauce is really nice if you’re eating it on its own (if you have a sprout thing, which I do). I didn’t have dried cranberries so I added some frozen blueberries, which worked too. Not sure how the dressing would go with a gravy though?!
Yeah, I had already heard Drach mention this numerous times. But this is the most in depth I've heard him speak of it. And to be honest, I didn't think it needed such a long & drawn out explanation. But there it is!!!
Why are the comment sections of these videos always so overwhelmed by bots??? Really interesting and relevant video to some of the research I've been doing on the transition of sailing ships.
@thereddye I purge them wherever possible but blocking doesn't work as they have new aliases each time, so I have to wait for them to post and then manually delete.
@@Drachinifel Linus Tech Tips did a video on an application someone makes that allows identification of spam by a variety of different means -- user name, message text, fonts -- to do a find and bulk-delete. It was, he said, amazingly successful. I think the video was about three years ago, and given the state of UA-cam search, I recommend doing a search for "Linus Tech Tips bot blocking" "Linus Tech Tips bot removal", and if that fails, contact LTT directly on that subject as a fellow creator.
In which the Royal Navy discovers that it's hard to design robust metal hulls without a solid understanding of metallurgy. It's interesting how close they came to composite armor. It's also interesting to wonder if, had they realized what was happening, the Royal Navy would have adopted iron hulls earlier specifically for service in tropical climates.
I love that first image of a brig. It appeared to be unloading on the strand in order to avoid harbour charges but the rigging is awry and the foremast seems a trifle short. Maybe she was heading there anyway and has made it onto the shore in that gale. She seems a tough tub anyway.
While Kamptulicon was a complete failure, it's interesting that experiments were being done with what is effectively a primitive spall liner back in 1850.
I would argue that Brunells first ship, Great Western was the worlds first ocean liner. It's not remembered as well as his other two as it was a quite conservative design (wooden paddle steamer)
Aye. There's been a project looking into building a replica of her in Bristol, the last time I checked. If I was a millionaire with some spare quid, reconstitution of both of the SS Great Britain's siblings ala-replica would be a satisfying public service to maritime history 😌👌 . (though the Great Eastern would go to London as a home port, as the latter built her originally [the largest vessel ever built on the Thames, despite them also building an Orion class Battleship in the following century 😆])
@jimtaylor294 yep,though replica Great Eastern quite probably could bankrupt it's builder just as original did. Great western on the other side if mentioned at all is usually only remembered as the ship that lost to Sirius...
They're called "Kelvin's Balls", named after the 19th century Scottish physicist Lord Kelvin, who invented them as a way to compensate approximately for the magnetic effects of an iron or steel hull on a ship's compass. Other smaller magnets within the binnacle (the structure holding the compass) can be adjusted to provide more precise correction.
They're fortunate they rigorously tested it, you can imagine the disaster of if we adopted it too early for our cold water navy. Also, 'iron' comes as both elemental iron and 'cast iron' cast iron has a huge quantity of carbon. My assumption was they were using cast iron, extremely high carbon 'steel' that is very brittle. Was that incorrect? Do you know the carbon content of the iron? Both kinds of iron were a relatively new product, steels were the result of 'iron age' manufacture. Similarly poorly named is the 'bronze age' which should be called the copper age, or very least brass age. I loved your video on the later adoption, too- and your videos on the later forging techniques for differentially tempered steel hulls. Have you considered combing these into a comprehensive, full length documentary? Or perhaps a book? It's an interesting topic in my view. And while there are few naval architects in the world, i don't think there is quite a resource like it. Delving into titanium, aluminium and composite is certainly a possibility from here, though i'm not sure how much experimentation is on public record.
historically, 'iron' refers to wrought iron, which is a close to elemental iron as they could acheive. Cast Iron was more brittle, but where it was used it was in large blocks, not sheet. it also has a ductile-brittle transition of over 300 degree C, and even its ductile state is rather more brittle that wrought iron.
There is a scifi book series by David Weber, the Safehold series, where naval tech is essentially going through this period at a rapid pace. He had one of the characters, a shore-based engineering admiral, make the point that comprehensive shot/shell/armor/weapon effects testing was not performed on Earth until well into the late 19th/early 20th-century. I didn't know the details behind that until this Drach episode.
It went through a rapid pace because when you move a city back into the early industrial revolution, the issues are already known. Working around the issues was adapting to the tech base and upgrading said base. A lot of the solutions were already available but not on a commercial/industrial scale. Assuming we are talking about the same series of books, this is actually a reoccurring theme in fiction, so it's hard to say.
@@duanesamuelson2256 You're thinking of "Ring of Fire" by Eric Flint, etc. But you're right, the basic principle is the same. Quite a few good scifi series are based in this early Industrial Age nexus, with all sorts of niche weapon/tech designs getting a "second chance" to be seen/used.
@MM22966 then the series where the church limits tech but one of the original crew was downloaded into an android? Very much based on the early British empire, including iron clads, steam power etc. Lol there are to many I remember titles but not authors really.
@@duanesamuelson2256 That doesn't ring any bells for me. Another one worth reading is a stand-alone book Peshawar Lancers by S. M. Stirling; a huge asteroid hits Earth in the 1880's, wrecking civilization across the northern hemisphere. The British Empire rebuilds itself in India, and by the 2000's has regained a level of tech at about the same level. Airships, swords, repeating rifles, lots of swashbuckling adventure.
The weirdest part of this is that even though I know nothing about metallergy, or ships, or thermal dynamics in any way, shape or form, I actually knew this and I don't know how.
2:20 what is that thing in the middle left-hand side that looks like some megalithic skyscraper sunken into the ocean with a spotlight going off behind it? What is that supposed to be?
The last 20 years were the 21st century. No, the experiments i believe he refers are the royal navy experiments covered on this channel before in the development of dreadnaughts and steel ships. If only I had Drac's memory- a new steel process (rather several) were developed that allowed them to develop steel with the preferred ductility. Certainly by ww2 these issues were 'ironed out' hur hur.
@@mandowarrior123 Actually in WW2 ductile to brittle transition still had a nasty bite because of the steel used in some of the Liberty ships and tankers built during WW2.
I do remember seeing videos of tests on Titanic's steel. Plates and rivets. The ductility test with the swinging weight they where anything but ductile. This was on the old real history History channel.
6:40 there was a confectionery battle? I am so sorry. How was the icing and can you elaborate on the icing breakers and nutcrackers? I can’t imagine the teeth casualties
I assume this is a coincidence, but this week's episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage was about elasticity, and mentioned how the Titanic's steel hull in the North Atlantic was below its brittle to ductile transition / glass transition.
12:50 “Paint me in front of a quaint little town, but I want the whole town to be on fire! Like, all at the same time! The whole town burning at once, lots of smoke!…”
Hey longtime viewer. I’ve been wondering recently about shell transport logistics. I.E. the ways shells/powder make their way from magazine to gun thoughtout history.
@Drachinifel ha, I am mad at myself for getting this wrong. Quickly find fault with the Great Britain... the propeller debacle... god Brunel is over rated lol Nailed it.
You weren't that wrong. Brunel had to build a new dock on the Avon at Bristol to build Great Britain. His real problem as a shipwright was his refusal to allow his ships to be built and launched stern first from a slipway.
11:08 😳😨 WHERE DID THESE COMPUTER ILLUSTRATIONS COME FROM?!?! 😱🤯 does the channel now have an illustration budget?!?! 😳 (😉😋😄😆 I’m joking but this does seem to be a new thing 😃🙂)
Interesting that Capt Chads didn't bother to continue his series of experiments to see just how thick an iron plate would have to be to resist/reject 32 lb and 64 lb solid shot. Perhaps he simply didn't have anyone who could make iron plating thicker than 5/8". On a side note, regarding the ductility of iron and influence of temperature and fraction of impurities within it- seems like the iron manufacturing companies and railroad companies would've had some data on performance of iron at varied temperature and at varied impurity content... were these not tapped to help inform the Chads or other individuals who investigated use of iron in warships?
Pinned post for Q&A :)
if the Bismarck broken out into the Atlantic after fighting the battle of the Denmark straight what type of measures would the British take with their convoy escorts how much damage with the Bismarck and flicked on Adelaide shipping and what type scram of battles the Bismarck fight 139
you mentioned that iron-hulled craft for fresh water applications had already existed for quite a while before the solution to the issue of being unable to copper plate iron-hulled ships for salt water was discovered. Did anybody during this window build an iron-hulled river gunboat/monitor? since they wouldn't be subjected to the same issues.
and (operating off the logic of the previous question) if the Rush-Bagot Treaty had somehow fell through or never demilitarized the great lakes, what do you think the chances would have been for them to be the the spot where the first iron-hulled warships would be deployed?
Which WWII capital ship sent back to WWI would be the most useful for their respective navies? Assume that the WWI navies are able to physically operate and supply the ships and that the carriers have pilots on them.
Sorry Drach, 2:42 - what were the measures used? I'm struggling to make sense of it.
Was lack of sufficient wood a factor in the switch to Iron from wood also? Was Iron easier to source or was the correct type of wood easier to source?
My vote for Drachism of the Day: "...which very quickly would leave you with no hull, which is generally held to be a disadvantage in the whole Staying Afloat Department."
I'm picturing a version of the classic Wil-E-Coyote running straight off a cliff and only realizing he's hovering in midair a couple of seconds later, then plummeting down off the screen. But with ships.🤣
What will you do for Christmas? The history of icebreakers?
Would love to see that.
The history of animal powered ships?
Or maybe the flight of RUDOLPH Hess.
Or the history the Iceberg Watch
USS Bowdoin would be cool
that's surely just for meeting new people
I used to live on a wrought-iron canal icebreaker built in the 1850's (and only retired in the early 1960's). The canals were a fairly benign environment and her hull is still in excellent shape. We were told by the surveyor that wrought iron of that era contained a lot of carbon inclusions, these helped to limit the development of corrosion pits.
Thankfully, we rarely encountered 32 pounders on the Oxford Canal.
"Rarely encountered"
Caught a volley somewhere near Lower Heyford or something?
The ductile-brittle transition was note with steel with cracking of Liberty ships and some WWII tankers. Constance Tippett worked on the issue and determined it was the steel used that was the problem. Also, the transition temperature is dependent on the quality of the steel and the specific alloy. The test is called the Charpy V-notch. You can actually see the difference in a ductile and brittle fracture and when there is a mixed fracture each area will be very distinctive. Brittle fractures are faceted as the fracture occurs along the grain boundaries. Ductile fractures are mottled and have no discernible structure
wasnt there a video about it recently-ish where the greatest accident rates of Liberty ships cracking were during the winter? So during testing in the summer the steel they used was fine but in cold weather in the winter it became brittle.
thats what you get for doing a rapid development and design program i suppose
@@Pilvenuga Actually photos from ships breaking in half while in port in the winter.
Charpy impact testing is fun!
@@Pilvenuga Given that even with the huge numbers of Liberty ships built, some 2700 of the things, the USA was *still* short of merchant shipping one can understand the short development and design cycle, as well as the corners cut in construction.
I suspect it was a conscious decision made by the relevant US authorities. Accept the risks involved with some flaws in construction for the hugely increased rate of construction offered. Given how important merchant ship tonnage was to the war effort its hard to criticise them over much for that decision, as it was probably the right call.
Yup, the issue was that welding helped the crack travel through the welds, unlike a riveted design.
D.K. Brown's "Before the Ironclad", which I'm sure Drach has read, is an excellent history of the technological developments, heartbreaks and problems (and their solutions) that led to the permanent introduction of the full-size iron warship.
Yeah, all the books on the development of the english warships by D. K. Brown are a fantastic pool of knowledge... He knew it... He was an naval engineer himself!
(If there are people here in the comments, who do not know them already!)
-Before the Ironclad
-Warrior to Dreadnought
-The Grand Fleet
and last but definitely not least:
-Nelson to Vanguard
He also wrote other stuff but these are the most essential books to get.
@@AlexeyPiet After Nelson to Vanguard comes Rebuilding the Royal Navy, co-written with George Moore.
@@Ensign_Cthulhu yes, that's right: 'Rebuilding the Royal Navy after 1945' I even have this as an E-Book but still forgot about. Thx for reminder
Waiting for the @Drachinifel narrated audiobooks
I recall that contamination by small amounts of Phosphorus in the iron can make it 'cold short' and even more brittle when cold. Presumably, the amount of Phosphorus would depend on wherever the ore was sourced from and the techniques used in creation of the iron.
Sulfur is also really nasty for iron/steel characteristics too, isn't it? I'm not sure if they'd switched from charcoal to coked coal for iron production yet, but if the coking procedure wasn't fully dialed in, that might have also hurt.
@@Alsadius Sulphur contamination makes the iron 'hot short' and it becomes crumbly if raised to red heat, thus fairly useless for most purposes. As you say, that's exactly why using coal instead of charcoal was a bad idea before the discovery of coking. Significant sulphur contamination would definitely be detected while trying to make uniform sheets of iron. I looked into a bit, and apparently phosphorus contamination of iron in hotter climates is quite useful - being hotter, it rarely gets below the ductile/brittle line, so that shortcoming is mitigated, but it also forms phosphorus compounds on the surface that resist corrosion. The 'Iron Pillar of Delhi', which has survived centuries in the open air being an example.
@onenote6619 the later tests showed SS Great Britain's hull went into brittle behaviour at 40 degrees C, Warriors at 20, so while there was improvement, there was still a fair way to go.
@onenote6619 Yeah, I'm envisioning something like them being able to remove 99% of the sulfur, but a small amount remaining and causing milder versions of those issues.
But I'm a long way from beyond a metallurgy expert, so this is wild speculation.
@@Drachinifel I suppose it is very easy to say: 'Was this not obvious, why did they not figure it out?' with 20/20 hindsight. And then you look at the Mk14 torpedo, decades later, and think: 'Yeah, could have been worse'.
As a former half failed student of Engineering, but this was one of the classes I really got.The summary is in the title. We studied this, in microscopes, to understand the physics behind our calculations.
The gradual evolution of naval technology is absolutely captivating. Great video!
Protect the Rum! I was seeking a PDF copy of the HMS Excellent reports, I found the 1849 edition which included the recommendation that "the spirit rooms need equal protection (as the magazines) against the explosive effects of shells fired horizontally, or at low angles, and a space for the spirits should be partitioned off in the after hold, amidships, before, but separate from the after magazine." I realize that there are real concerns about storing large quantities of flammable liquid in the age of exploding shells, but this does strike me as funny.
I was reading an account of the building of Sea Shadow, the first testbed for stealth technology on ships. The US Navy insisted that it have a paint locker, because all Navy ships had to have a paint locker. This despite the entire vessel being coated with radar-absorbing material that could not be repaired at sea.
@onenote6619Wouldn’t it still need paints for its interior surfaces & something to cover damaged areas of the hull while at sea to prevent corrosion?
Like sure it can’t carry the special Stealth coating, but I doubt the ladders and bulkheads were covered in it, and exposed hull is already not stealthy.
@onenote6619 Radar absorbent paint to at least somewhat patch sections of damaged "proper" absorber?
@@tz8785 Emergency cans of sprayfoam.
Thanks for making another overlooked subject interesting and entertaining! I dont know what subject Drach couldn't make a good video on
The Chieftain (tank history UA-cam channel) has done a quite entertaining video on watching paint dry...
I love the technical stuff - can watch videos about obscure 19th century gunnery testing all day
I've been watching since I got the recommendation for your Mark 14 Torpedo failures video. One of the best sources on UA-cam for Naval history content.
I've heard a bunch of historians argue that most significant innovations (especially in the context of warfare) are essentially a two step process. I.e. it first pops up somewhere, then at a later point in history gets picked up by someone else who makes it much better for its intended purpose, from which then comes the widespread use of whatever it is. Gunpowder weapons are the textbook example of what I'm basically talking about.
edit: A good example from outside the context of military history would be the steam engine. Compare the old atmospheric engine of Newcomen to the later multiple expansion engines we usually think of when talking steam engines.
Most scientific and engineering progress is iterative. Revolutionary concepts do occur, but they are relatively rare. Most progress is essentially improving on what is already in place, either directly or indirectly (such as new uses for materials in the latter case).
Methinks the Historians should have just asked a scientist or engineer, as we have been aware of this for quite some time. We could settle that argument for them fairly swiftly :P.
@@alganhar1 This is not discounting the smaller details of anything and is, as should be obvious, looking at the wider image. As is explicit it is only talking about major changes. The kind of major change I referenced in those two examples.
My literary version of this is the biblical denigration of idols: "they have eyes but see not, they have ears but hear not" to the spoken peroration "none so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not hear."
Splinters from wooden hulls that can cause injury to the crew are called "shivers" - which is where the piratesque phrase "shiver me timbers" comes from.
The more trivia you know...the better you'll be as a bartender...
The loss of the Western Reserve, a steel steamer, on Lake Superior in a summer storm showed this effect where the cold water introduced a stiffening and hence brittle factor to the hull, the ship snapping during what wasn't a really severe storm.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Western_Reserve
I had a good laugh when you got to the Kamptuclion. I hadn't heard of it before. Picturing flamey rubber&cork shrapnel bouncy balls flying around the compartment....
Very instructive piece of work there, Drach !
It makes you realise what amazing materials many types of wood are….. when used right and not overly exploited.
As always, amazing photos, narration and overall production values. I'm no expert or historical guru by any means (and only have a passing interest)...but so much appreciate how you bring these subjects to life. Thank you so much. :-)
I love the mentioning of Admiral Cockburn means you can put up that Picture, One of my favourite portrait ever, of him standing in fount of that burning building. That building that was painted white to cover up all the scorch marks. Wonder what happen to that building?
It eventually became "the trump mansion" for 4 years.
Would that be the house that was burned in 1814?
A moment in history most Britons & Canadians still grin at the mention of 😂
It became a symbol of resistance and a source of strength for the American people. I will never understand the fascination with this, and I am Canadian.
It's like the Star Spangled Banner - it is about a battle that the Americans lost.
@michaelstanley5215 americans like to stand proud in the face of defeat, and to avenge things. Whenever they lose a battle they like to remember it, and hit back harder. Think of events like the attack on Pearl Harbor or the Alamo, whenever they suffer a catastrophic defeat it just pisses them off, then they usually get back up and beat the enemy to death.
Thanks
A video on the opium wars would be interesting
The mass production of sheet iron was rapidly changing technologies in shipping, manufacturing weaponry, and changing modern armies and navies. Important history about human development.
I love that razor sharp wit you have Drac.
1930s/40s US BuOrd would be horrified at the waste of gunpowder and canonballs in all that testing.
They would call for those conducting the tests to be punished.
"The iron plates work fine. The problem lays soley with the testing."
@@Bird_Dog00 No, the real problem lies with the crews for sailing into combat and not avoiding the shots fired at them.
If the ship's crews were properly trained and led by their officers, they would avoid the shots, therefore, the armor we, at BuOrd provided, would work just fine.
Perhaps. By comparison, by the 1850s, Lt. John Dahlgren, USN, was doing plenty of tests with powder, shot, and shell at targets on the Potomac.
@@CommissionerSleer Yes, it worked out on the drawings. There's no need to test this new technology.
Sincerely
BuOrd.
Excellent - as always. Merry Christmas to you and yours and thanks so much for all you do Drach!
Pete from Canada
Well, i've never been this early to one of your videos. Great timing as well as i recently watched a video of your's going over the history of metal armor which also touches on this a bit.
This is a superb overview of the iron ship revolution and its impact on naval warfare. The historical context you provided really adds depth to the engineering aspects.
My neighbor and friend had a steel sailboat that was made in the 1960's. She was gorgeous and apparently sailed amazingly well.
I don't remember the cut offs..but the weight vs. Size of boats is actually pretty easy to find. Wood drops out of the running pretty quickly..steel being the lightest overtakes fiberglass smaller than most would expect. Concrete hangs in pretty far, and I suspect it could be viable with the new(er) fiberglass reinforcement and even morso with the graphite.
Of course, this holds true with resins and graphite also.
Like any design, it comes down to price and practicality for the chosen material.
Currently for small craft fiberglass is the choice, easy to mass produce, and cost-effective for small boats.
Yooo..that intro scene and music is actually 🔥. I was blasting it 💯 a few times in a row to heard the guns firing in beat lol..Great video.
Very interesting to hear the engineering methods of the time for a pretty important set of considerations
Educating as ever, and sometimes really funny... thank you.
I wonder what would have happened if the Battle of Hampton Roads was fought in December/January?
I've been working on a mid 1800s tech level fantasy setting for d&d and this is exactly what I needed because it's going to be a navy focused campaign. The stand out part of my setting is the world is tidally locked making one side warmer than the other. So,this video is a perfect reference for how ships in my setting would be built.
If the world is tidally locked, wouldn't it be uninhabitable aside from a small band around the day/night terminator?
@VainerCactus0 not necessarily, there is a sweet spot around a star that won't vaporizer all the water on one side and freeze it all on the other. Also in my setting it hasn't been locked for much more than a thousand years it was slowed down fast enough to cause damage but not so fast it killed everything. It's also a world made up of achaplagos and Islands not much bigger than the British or Japanese isle. Drach's video here gives me a better reason for why iron warships are rare some nations in my setting could just believe that iron hauls aren't much better than wooden haul for different reasons.
16:08 Oh thank heavens Birkenhead was kept from danger. The thought of something happening to her is like a drill through the heart…
I cooked this last night for Christmas lunch (well lunch always begins in the evening on Christmas Day) I really like the parboiled and dunked sprouts oiled (I added crushed garlic to the pan too). The sauce is really nice if you’re eating it on its own (if you have a sprout thing, which I do). I didn’t have dried cranberries so I added some frozen blueberries, which worked too. Not sure how the dressing would go with a gravy though?!
Yeah, I had already heard Drach mention this numerous times. But this is the most in depth I've heard him speak of it. And to be honest, I didn't think it needed such a long & drawn out explanation. But there it is!!!
Why are the comment sections of these videos always so overwhelmed by bots???
Really interesting and relevant video to some of the research I've been doing on the transition of sailing ships.
I'm no bot a go bot maybe 😅
@thereddye I purge them wherever possible but blocking doesn't work as they have new aliases each time, so I have to wait for them to post and then manually delete.
@@Drachinifel Linus Tech Tips did a video on an application someone makes that allows identification of spam by a variety of different means -- user name, message text, fonts -- to do a find and bulk-delete. It was, he said, amazingly successful. I think the video was about three years ago, and given the state of UA-cam search, I recommend doing a search for "Linus Tech Tips bot blocking" "Linus Tech Tips bot removal", and if that fails, contact LTT directly on that subject as a fellow creator.
By the time I get around to watching the bots are history. Thanks for the hard work Drach
@@johndanger8717 You're right!
In which the Royal Navy discovers that it's hard to design robust metal hulls without a solid understanding of metallurgy. It's interesting how close they came to composite armor.
It's also interesting to wonder if, had they realized what was happening, the Royal Navy would have adopted iron hulls earlier specifically for service in tropical climates.
Neat. Fantastic explanation, learned a lot from this.
Drach, you are a gem.
'...generally held to be a disadvantage in the whole staying afloat department...!'
Help! 😂🤣😁
I love that first image of a brig. It appeared to be unloading on the strand in order to avoid harbour charges but the rigging is awry and the foremast seems a trifle short. Maybe she was heading there anyway and has made it onto the shore in that gale. She seems a tough tub anyway.
The Sixth Experiment with Kamptulicon in intent very much foreshadows modern spall liner
Refit Birkenhead to a troopship to keep her out of danger. That's a damn tough bullet to chew.
Fascinating , especially the small range of temps on irons ductility ! Explains a lot as it is a key component of blood Fe HemoG
12:21 name drop just hit the video. HMS Excellence captained bySir Chad?
While Kamptulicon was a complete failure, it's interesting that experiments were being done with what is effectively a primitive spall liner back in 1850.
The best ship in this video is the amazing scholarship!
I would argue that Brunells first ship, Great Western was the worlds first ocean liner. It's not remembered as well as his other two as it was a quite conservative design (wooden paddle steamer)
Aye. There's been a project looking into building a replica of her in Bristol, the last time I checked.
If I was a millionaire with some spare quid, reconstitution of both of the SS Great Britain's siblings ala-replica would be a satisfying public service to maritime history 😌👌 .
(though the Great Eastern would go to London as a home port, as the latter built her originally [the largest vessel ever built on the Thames, despite them also building an Orion class Battleship in the following century 😆])
@jimtaylor294 yep,though replica Great Eastern quite probably could bankrupt it's builder just as original did. Great western on the other side if mentioned at all is usually only remembered as the ship that lost to Sirius...
Oh yes it is…
Those engineering videos are my favorite. 😊👍
There are dozens of us. Dozens!
You do such amazing work!
You said the 2 ferrous metal spheres by the compass were developed to allow it to be used on an iron ship. What are they called and how do they work?
They're called "Kelvin's Balls", named after the 19th century Scottish physicist Lord Kelvin, who invented them as a way to compensate approximately for the magnetic effects of an iron or steel hull on a ship's compass. Other smaller magnets within the binnacle (the structure holding the compass) can be adjusted to provide more precise correction.
Can you do a video on the IJN Fuso and Ise armour protection please?
Probably lots of cleaning and paint or tar/pitch? 🤷♂️
@stargazer5784
Is UA-cam drunk and putting comment where they don't belong again?
They're fortunate they rigorously tested it, you can imagine the disaster of if we adopted it too early for our cold water navy.
Also, 'iron' comes as both elemental iron and 'cast iron' cast iron has a huge quantity of carbon. My assumption was they were using cast iron, extremely high carbon 'steel' that is very brittle.
Was that incorrect? Do you know the carbon content of the iron?
Both kinds of iron were a relatively new product, steels were the result of 'iron age' manufacture. Similarly poorly named is the 'bronze age' which should be called the copper age, or very least brass age.
I loved your video on the later adoption, too- and your videos on the later forging techniques for differentially tempered steel hulls. Have you considered combing these into a comprehensive, full length documentary? Or perhaps a book? It's an interesting topic in my view. And while there are few naval architects in the world, i don't think there is quite a resource like it.
Delving into titanium, aluminium and composite is certainly a possibility from here, though i'm not sure how much experimentation is on public record.
historically, 'iron' refers to wrought iron, which is a close to elemental iron as they could acheive. Cast Iron was more brittle, but where it was used it was in large blocks, not sheet. it also has a ductile-brittle transition of over 300 degree C, and even its ductile state is rather more brittle that wrought iron.
You can't cast iron in huge sheets like you'd need for shipbuilding.
Intensly interesting video. Thanks for making this!
I'm kind of surprised that there wasn't some blacksmith somewhere who had figured out the ductile-brittle transition and said something.
It’s possible some blacksmith did, but due to the class system no communication occurred.
@Sashazur is probably not as stated. It was more what worked not necessary the reason behind it.
Well done engineering dissertation.
I sounds like they should have put their energy in metalurgy. Thanks for the class.
Some of the original slo-mo video of the cannon shot effects on early iron ships should have been included.
This was really interesting, thanks!
2:40 I dont think anyone would consider ending up in france as lucky
I totally agree
Drach have you done a 5 minute guide on HMS Birkenhead or any othe video on her sinking and the Birkenhead drill.
@@alanclague2333 not yet
Oceanliner Designs has a good video on the Birkenhead Drill that is available to watch in the meantime.
The History Guy has one too.
There is a scifi book series by David Weber, the Safehold series, where naval tech is essentially going through this period at a rapid pace. He had one of the characters, a shore-based engineering admiral, make the point that comprehensive shot/shell/armor/weapon effects testing was not performed on Earth until well into the late 19th/early 20th-century. I didn't know the details behind that until this Drach episode.
It went through a rapid pace because when you move a city back into the early industrial revolution, the issues are already known. Working around the issues was adapting to the tech base and upgrading said base. A lot of the solutions were already available but not on a commercial/industrial scale. Assuming we are talking about the same series of books, this is actually a reoccurring theme in fiction, so it's hard to say.
@@duanesamuelson2256 You're thinking of "Ring of Fire" by Eric Flint, etc.
But you're right, the basic principle is the same. Quite a few good scifi series are based in this early Industrial Age nexus, with all sorts of niche weapon/tech designs getting a "second chance" to be seen/used.
@MM22966 then the series where the church limits tech but one of the original crew was downloaded into an android? Very much based on the early British empire, including iron clads, steam power etc.
Lol there are to many I remember titles but not authors really.
@@duanesamuelson2256 That doesn't ring any bells for me. Another one worth reading is a stand-alone book Peshawar Lancers by S. M. Stirling; a huge asteroid hits Earth in the 1880's, wrecking civilization across the northern hemisphere. The British Empire rebuilds itself in India, and by the 2000's has regained a level of tech at about the same level. Airships, swords, repeating rifles, lots of swashbuckling adventure.
@@MM22966 lord of the isles series by David drake
The weirdest part of this is that even though I know nothing about metallergy, or ships, or thermal dynamics in any way, shape or form, I actually knew this and I don't know how.
If you read science fiction bits and pieces of historical data are often included
More naval-engineering content, please(!)
Great video, very informative
So in the beginning iron barged on the scene?
When it got to reading all the naval reports, I nodded off three or four times. Would be great for insomnia.
Very interesting video!
More knowledge, ty Drach
Yeeeh! Naval material history!
God bless the engineers.
Well, that's fascinating. Thank you very much.
I think in the late 1850s steel refining process was invented at very high temperatures to produce high quality metal.
A very interesting video. Thank you!
2:20 what is that thing in the middle left-hand side that looks like some megalithic skyscraper sunken into the ocean with a spotlight going off behind it? What is that supposed to be?
Looks like a reflection, as if the image was taken of a photo covered by glass.
Were those twentieth century studies Titanic related? That sounds like one of the theories that was publicized in the last twenty or so years.
Actually some studies of the steel from the Titanic indicate this may have been a problem.
The last 20 years were the 21st century. No, the experiments i believe he refers are the royal navy experiments covered on this channel before in the development of dreadnaughts and steel ships. If only I had Drac's memory- a new steel process (rather several) were developed that allowed them to develop steel with the preferred ductility. Certainly by ww2 these issues were 'ironed out' hur hur.
@@mandowarrior123 Actually in WW2 ductile to brittle transition still had a nasty bite because of the steel used in some of the Liberty ships and tankers built during WW2.
I do remember seeing videos of tests on Titanic's steel. Plates and rivets. The ductility test with the swinging weight they where anything but ductile. This was on the old real history History channel.
*Drach,*
*what are you more impressed with:*
• *wooden battleships under sail power?*
*or*
• *Modern warships made of iron and steel*
I want to believe the Admiralty really had a file labeled "Unusual Submissions from Various Civilians".
A troopship named Birkenhead? How long was it in service?
6:40 there was a confectionery battle? I am so sorry. How was the icing and can you elaborate on the icing breakers and nutcrackers? I can’t imagine the teeth casualties
I assume this is a coincidence, but this week's episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage was about elasticity, and mentioned how the Titanic's steel hull in the North Atlantic was below its brittle to ductile transition / glass transition.
Compass - should have just build a few narrow boat canals from Liverpool to Boston ;)
Greetings and thankyou
Fascinating!
One is reminded of the plating of a certain very large ocean liner in the North Atlantic.
12:50 “Paint me in front of a quaint little town, but I want the whole town to be on fire! Like, all at the same time! The whole town burning at once, lots of smoke!…”
Longer U-boat vids please, type vii and such
Hey longtime viewer. I’ve been wondering recently about shell transport logistics. I.E. the ways shells/powder make their way from magazine to gun thoughtout history.
Maybe i miss somethig but why they did'nt try a iron plating inside a wooden hull
Love this story.
The SS great britain so big you can't get it in the harbour, good bit of design that... 👀
That would be the Great Eastern, Brunels next ship 😀
@Drachinifel ha, I am mad at myself for getting this wrong.
Quickly find fault with the Great Britain... the propeller debacle... god Brunel is over rated lol
Nailed it.
You weren't that wrong. Brunel had to build a new dock on the Avon at Bristol to build Great Britain. His real problem as a shipwright was his refusal to allow his ships to be built and launched stern first from a slipway.
11:08 😳😨 WHERE DID THESE COMPUTER ILLUSTRATIONS COME FROM?!?! 😱🤯 does the channel now have an illustration budget?!?! 😳 (😉😋😄😆 I’m joking but this does seem to be a new thing 😃🙂)
Not quite HI Sutton's work (Sutton does it all on paint, the madman) but it is certainly illustrative.
@@mandowarrior123I was thinking of Armoured Archives #compositecheesesandwich 😁 ua-cam.com/video/QN-XxbDOnAY/v-deo.htmlsi=riwxitSDU5QfO7cW
Do you have a video of asian wood ships history/disign?
Interesting that Capt Chads didn't bother to continue his series of experiments to see just how thick an iron plate would have to be to resist/reject 32 lb and 64 lb solid shot. Perhaps he simply didn't have anyone who could make iron plating thicker than 5/8". On a side note, regarding the ductility of iron and influence of temperature and fraction of impurities within it- seems like the iron manufacturing companies and railroad companies would've had some data on performance of iron at varied temperature and at varied impurity content... were these not tapped to help inform the Chads or other individuals who investigated use of iron in warships?
UC I and/or UC II class subs -- preferably with some detail on minelaying method.
and you will cover the battle of Nemis when?
Good video
Do any of those iron canal barges still exist?
There is an iron barge at Blist’s Hill museum. Don’t think it’s 18th C though