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Abstract
The improvements in shipbuilding by Sir Robert Seppings in the early nineteenth century represent one of the last major revolutions in the age of the wooden sailing warship. However, little is known about Seppings's sources of inspiration, a blank that this article attempts to fill in to some extent. Recent historical finds confirm that Seppings was acquainted with at least one earlier, foreign version of diagonal framing before coming to his own system, while it has earlier been recognized that his round stern was inspired on Danish examples. When traced back to their ultimate origin both ideas lead to the same man: William May (1725–1807), dockyard superintendent of the Amsterdam Admiralty from 1780 to 1795.
Notes
1Barrow, A Family Tour Through South Holland, 64.
2Seppings, ‘On the Great Strength’; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, ADM BP/38a.
3John May married Rebecca Prinsex (also called Pensix or Pinsex) shortly before they moved to Lorient, De Nederlandsche Leeuw, 1922, col. 234. William's elder brothers, Job (dates unknown) and John (1720–82), set up a shipyard at Wittenburg in Amsterdam, where they built a house in 1760, De Nederlandsche Leeuw, 1922, col. 287; Deurloo, ‘Bijltjes en klouwers’, 10. William's younger brother, George (1734–95), set up as a shipwright in Amsterdam as well, De Nederlandsche Leeuw, 1922, col. 234.
4In Lorient at the end of the seventeenth century the French navy had taken over the yards of the Compagnie des Indes, which was in financial trouble; in 1719 the Compagnie was able to take them back into its care and the navy, apart from the fortress of Port Louis, left Lorient. In Toulon the naval activities significantly declined in the period of peace after the French wars of 1693–1715. Only six ships were built in 1720–25, and only II over the next five years. Villiers, La Marine de Louis XVI, II, 36–8 and 44.
5Davis and Bentam were appointed at the Amsterdam Admiralty Dockyard in 1727 and 1728 respectively. Thomas Davis resigned in 1736, see Voorbeytel Cannenburg, ‘De Nederlandse scheepsbouw’, 76–84; Bruijn, ‘Engelse scheepsbouwers’, 18–24.
6Hoving and Lemmers, In tekening gebracht; Hoving and Lemmers, ‘Drawing the Line’.
7As late as 1743, at the death of his first wife, John declared that he did not have ‘the means to offer to his children under age any part of their mother's inheritance, De Nederlandsche Leeuw, 1922, col. 230; Rebecca May-Prinsex got a fourth-class grave in the Oosterkerk in Amsterdam, whereas John was buried first class in 1779.
8Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam, I, 577–8; Kramer, Gedenkschriften, I, 226.
9National Archives, The Hague (hereafter NATH) Admiraliteitscolleges (Admiralties), Collectie Van der Heim, 448: Journaal gehouden op 'sLands werf te Amsterdam, door veele onderschijde persoonen, door den Admiraal Schrijver aan den Hre. Hertog [Van Brunswijk] overgegeven den iyde Nov. 1762 (Diary kept at the State dockyard in Amsterdam, by many different persons, handed by Admiral Schrijver to the lord Duke [van Brunswijk] on 17 Nov. 1762); this diary consists largely of the accusations made by Kramp. Schrijver's willingless to pass on the document to van Brunswijk, the Prince of Orange's chief advisor, was due to his animosity towards John May, which stemmed from a dispute between May and Bentam, whom Schrijver wholeheartedly supported, from as far back as 1752. Bruijn, ‘Engelse scheepsbouwers’, 22–4.
10Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam, I, 578.
11Ibid., obviously leaning on Kramp's litany, see note 9.
12Personalia William May (manuscript in the Netherlands Maritime Museum, Amsterdam): William May started as midshipman on the Damiate in 1747, where he was presently promoted to lieutenant. On 19 Oct. 1758, May became acting captain, and was successively commander of the Triton (24 guns), and the Meermin (24 guns), in 1760 of the Hector (36 guns) and in 1767 of the Amazone (36 guns). On 16 Dec. 1774 he became a post captain, after which he was in command of the Zephyr (36 guns) in 1775 and later, in 1778, of the Piet Hein (54 guns). According to a genealogy owned by the Collot d'Escury Foundation at The Hague, William was married twice, first to Charlotte Couthrie, and then to Frances (Fanny) Lee from Portsmouth, with whom he begot three sons and one daughter: William (1760–1824), John (b. 1761, no further details), Sophia Albertina Henrietta (b. 1763) and Job Seaburne (1765–1827); see also the Book of Dutch Peerage (1915), 282.
13For the ‘Bataafsch Genootschap van Proefondervindelijke Wijsbegeerte’ (Batavian Philosophical Society) May wrote a ‘mathematical and hydrokinetic’ treatise against Anthony G. Eckhardt's (about 1740-about1810) draining-mill with sloping scoop-wheel (Personalia William May).
14See Haubourdin, ‘Jan Blanken Jansz’, 14; Bakker, Herstelplaats, 29–30; Personalia William May; NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Collectie Van der Hoop, 6, 9 Feb. 1784.
15Personalia William May.
16Dorr, De kundige kapitein, 57; besides Lutteken, Jan Binkes Janszoon is also mentioned as assistant dockyard superintendent.
17van der Capellen van de Pol, Aan het volk van Nederland, 66.
18It also seems that May was ill, or pretended to be ill for quite some time, from Aug. 1781 to Jan. 1782. Kramer, Gedenkschriften, II, 391 (25/1/1781) and II, III and IV.
19Bartstra, Vlootherstel en legeraugmentatie; Kramer, Gedenkschriften, II, 365 (14/1/1781): ‘This augmentation [of the army: see Bartstra] is the only case that is discussed, so the rest remains in a state of great concern, because the work of the navy will not be continued with any proper diligence, especially not at the Amsterdam Admiralty, where the dockyard superintendent May, son of the shipwright and brother of the tradesman there, is highly suspect, apart from being of English origin and much addicted to that nation.’
20In 1783 the States General issued an imperative resolution to try once again to enforce at least some harmony in shipbuilding, but the various Admiralty dockyards stuck to their local practices nevertheless. Vervolg van de missive en memorie van Zyne Hoogheid den Heer Prince van Onrange en Nassau aan Hun Hoog Mogende op den 7 october 1782 overgegeven (. . .), 1783, no. 16, ‘Extract uit het Register der Resolutien van de Hoog Mog. Heeren Staaten Generaal der vereenigde Nederlanden 30 september 1782’; similar efforts at standardization had been made before, for instance by William IV in 1747; van Bruggen, ‘Aspekten’.
21Willem Lodewijk van Gendt (also called van Gent or van Genth) was made apprentice of Thomas Davis in 1728 or not long after that date. He was old by the time he succeeded John May.
22Van Gendt was often openly ridiculed by John May, who abused his assistant without fail. Lemmers, Van werf tot facilitair complex, 65.
23It is not clear what happened to van Gendt: an annotation in a diary of 1800–1 kept by Jochem Pietersz. Asmus, dockyard superintendent in Amsterdam 1798–1807, suggests that he did not die until 1800. NATH, Archief Asmus, 5.
24NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Appendix, 17: Jochem Pietersz. Asmus, Genealogy of Naval Ships, manuscript about 1807.
25NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Collectie Van der Hoop, 11 and 14; Antoine Groignard (172798) became ‘ingenieur-constructeur’ in Brest in 1765, Villiers, La Marine de Louis XVI, I, 54–8. In his criticism of Groignard May displays such an abysmal ignorance of theoretical shipbuilding, mathematics and physics that the historian and engineer van Bruggen could write about him only in ironical terms (van Bruggen, ‘Aspekten’). Van Bruggen, on the other hand, does not seem to have known the difference between William and his father, John. However, van der Hoop's comment on May, quoted above, shows that the gaps in May's theoretical knowledge were not so evident to his contemporaries.
26Personalia William May: the document from which this passage is quoted, is a eulogy addressed to the Amsterdam Admiralty Council, probably written by William May himself and apparently meant to be read out by an intercessor on May's behalf.
27NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Collectie Van der Hoop, 14.
28Van Bruggen, ‘Aspekten’.
29Staniforth, ‘The Introduction and Use of Copper Sheathing’, 21–48: lead sheathing had already been used in Greek and Roman antiquity, by the Spanish in the seventeenth and the British in the eighteenth centuries. May correctly mentions the British frigate Alarm in 1761 as the first ship to have been coppered, ‘though I vaguely remember having read somewhere that the ship in which the admiral Piet Heijn sailed to Brasil had been coppered’, NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Collectie Van der Hoop, 14.
30Staniforth, ‘The Introduction and Use of Copper Sheathing’, 25.
31NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Collectie Van der Hoop, 14; after 1785 experiments were made in France with a metal varnish, for which the Adminstrateur General de Doublage de la Marine Franfaise de Beaubourg obtained a patent, NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, 1088.
32NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Collectie Van der Hoop, 14: all the following refers to this archival source, unless mentioned differently in the notes. May's most important ideas were formulated in two documents, dated 24 Dec. 1784, and 1 Mar. 1785. On 12 Mar. 1785 he submitted a third suggestion, in which he advocated the replacement of the tar-and-paper buffer layer with an extra oak skin, onto which the copper plates were to be fixed. However, May's earlier suggestions were more far-reaching and more important, since they entailed drastic consequences for the construction of the ship.
33In the meantime the British producers of copper bolts had been contacted, as is apparent from a letter, date ii Aug. 1784, from a certain Grenfell, who was willing to supply such bolts on behalf of a British firm that recommended the English building method of using only copper bolts. Apparently May did not want to go that far: he still preferred using iron bolts for the heavy timbers.
34This model, a hitherto anonymous and enigmatic item in the Navy Model Collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (NG-MC-112) and only identified by this research, shows two building methods: on one half shows the traditional construction, and the other the May method with the bolts underneath the planking, and with sloping knees, strakes without scarphs, and copper ‘trackbolts’ (dovetail joints) in the keel.
35NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Collectie Van der Hoop, 13; it is unclear if Mast's adversity towards May had political motives as well: at the Batavian Revolution in 1795 Mast disappeared and a new shipwright was appointed, R. Dorsman, who came from Hellevoetsluis and had undoubtedly been designated by the brand-new constructor general, Pieter Glavimans (1755–1820), coming from Rotterdam, to conquer the obstinate Amsterdam stronghold and sweep it into the Rotterdam sphere of influence (NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges 1.01.46, 1083 Register resoluties equipage 17911796, 22 May 1795). Besides, the Amsterdam dockyard was a well-known hotbed of Orangeist sympathies, which makes it almost certain that Dorsman's choice had a political motive. After 1795 Cornelis Mast is mentioned just once in 1797, in connection with the Amphitrite, but then probably only as designer, the ship having been launched two years after his resignation. Asmus, Genealogy of Naval Ships.
36Asmus, Genealogy of Naval Ships; NG-MC-660 of the Navy Model Collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is a model of the Pijl; as it is a block model, the interior frames cannot be studied, but the absence of side-scarphs in the planking is noteworthy.
37NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Collectie Van der Hoop, 13.
38Jochem Pietersz. Asmus, Rapport van een reize naar de Fransche zeehavens aan den Oceaan in den jaar 1797, op ordre van het Bataafsche Gouvernement - Verzameling van differente stukken gedurende de reize naar de Fransche zeehavens in den Oceaan in den jaare 1797 (manuscript in 2 vols., 1797–1801, Netherlands Maritime Museum in Amsterdam), observed that the French had adopted the British method by 1797. Meanwhile in commercial shipbuilding a buffer with paper remained standard practice until far in the nineteenth century.
39Tromp, ‘Verhandeling’, mentions that Dupin in ‘De la structure’ made an extensive study of this problem and concluded that hogging could be of advantage ‘only in badly shaped ships’. Dupin mentions even more early French experiments.
40Duhamel du Monceau, Grondbeginselen, 92; Tromp, ‘Verhandeling’, pl. II, fig. i; Duhamel du Monceau also mentions suggestions for an improvement on Goubert's frame by an anonymous officer, who would have the riders replaced with iron parts.
41Tromp, ‘Verhandeling’, pl. II, and : Tromp also mentions that the Swedish shipwrights F. H. af Chapman reversed Bouguer's system, so that the shores served as props. Tromp quotes Chapman himself: ‘The construction is of a very efficient usefulness in weak ships and in such whose length is great in proportion to their draught. We have followed this up in several ships built by us, and the effect has served its purpose (. . .).’ This framing was fitted on either side at one fourth of the width on sister-keelsons, especially constructed for this purpose: moreover, Chapman's framing served as an additional support for the gun deck just above. See also af Chapman, Traktat om Skepps-Byggeriet, p1. XXXVI and Architectura Navalis Mercatoria, pl. XA5.
42Tromp, ‘Verhandeling’, I, 60; Petrejus, Nederlandse zeilschepen, 60: Lambert, The Last Sailing Battle Fleet, 60.
43Banks, ‘On a New Principle’, 285–302; Seppings, ‘On the Great Strength’.
44Tromp, ‘Verhandeling’, II, 147–8. In a footnote Tromp claims May left writings on the system, but these have not been found. The author further adds, ‘If one is to believe Dupin, then this idea was not new. In his repeatedly quoted Treatise he says that the Engineer Chaucot had renewed the idea of using sloping riders in his award-winning treatise of 1755.’
45In 1825 Captain J. C. Rijk during his voyage along the North American east coast noted the use of sloping knees in American warships, Joshua Humphreys's diagonal constructions as applied on the frigates Constitution (1794) and Constellation (1795); in USS Constitution (‘Old Ironsides’) they can still be observed today, see J. C. Rijk, Generaal Rapport Z.M. Pallas (manuscript in the Netherlands Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, 1825), appendix 1: ‘About the navies of England and America’, p. 132; see also Martin and Roach, ‘Humphreys's Real Innovation’. Humphreys's diagonal construction lay in the exact opposite way of May's. Rijk's association with Seppings's diagonal framing, and even more so his criticism (‘as every knee stands by itself and they are not mutually joined together, their shoring cannot be of great use against hogging’) are quite revealing.
46Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, cat. no. 501; NATH, Marine 1795–1813, Appendix I, 20, List K (List of the various models, formerly belonging to the Construction department, by Jochem Pietersz. Asmus), no. 1.
47Young, ‘Remarks on the Employment of Oblique Riders’ describes HMS Kent's ‘riders which made an angle of a few degrees only with a vertical line’. It was Larrie Ferreiro who pointed out the Kent refit to me, for which I am very indebted.
48National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, ZAZ0689 and ZAZ1148; ZAZ0689 is said to be ‘dated 1797’, but this unquestionably refers to the launching date of HMS Kent; Seppings's refit with diagonal riders was executed in 1805 only.
49Gardiner, Frigates of the Napoleonic Wars, 81; again, I want to thank Larrie Ferreiro for this reference.
50Young, ‘Remarks on the Employment of Oblique Riders’, 328.
51James, The Naval History, VI, 417, referring to John Knowles's appendix in the Elements of Naval Architecture.
52Tromp, ‘Verhandeling’, I, 148 note 2; May's conception of the round stern is also mentioned in Rijk, Handleiding, 139.
53Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Navy Model Collection, NG-MC-306 and NG-MC-1351.
54Obreen, Catalogus, 54, cat. no. 306.
55The portraits of May and Hohlenberg belong to a private collection. They are unsigned. According to specialists they are of a decent quality; Adriaan de Lelie (1755–1820) has been mentioned as the possible artist.
56Hoj, F. C. H. Hohlenberg
57From Paris Hohlenberg also corresponded with the famous Dutch mathematician Jan Hendrik van Swinden on the preparations for the introduction of the metric system, see Rentenaar, Van Swindens vergelijkingstafels van lengtematen en landmaten. In 1793 he left for a second trip, this time for Karlskrona in Sweden, where he befriended the much older F. H. af Chapman. This visit to Sweden is the more remarkable in view of the tensions between Sweden and Denmark in those days.
58Bjerg and Erichsen, Danske Orlogsskibe, 56–64; Eric Nielsen on http://www.milhist.dk/ soldaten/hohlenberg/hohlenberg_buried.htm, accessed 10 Feb. 2012.
59Hoj, F.C.H. Hohlenberg , 65.
60Lyon, The Sailing Navy List, 267.
61Bjerg and Erichsen, Danske Orlogsskibe, 64. It must be mentioned that Hohlenberg's biographer, Jeppe Bjorn Hoj, is not as convinced of Hohlenberg's influence on Seppings as Bjerg and Erichsen and suspects this attribution stems from the glorification of Hohlenberg by the
Danish navy in the difficult times of the 1930s by naval historian J. H. Schultz (J. B. Hoj, pers. comm.). However, Lambert, The Last Sailing Battle Fleet, 64, seems to confirm Seppings's concern with the vulnerability of the stern, completely in line with William May's ideas.
62Lambert, The Last Sailing Battle Fleet, 64.
63Bjerg and Erichsen, Danske Orlogsskibe, 58–9; Obreen, Catalogus, 54; Haj, F. C. H. Hohlenberg, 20–2.
64Personalia William May.
65Lambert, The Last Sailing Battle Fleet, 64.
66Lemmers, Van werf tot facilitair complex, 69–74.
67NATH, Admiraliteitscolleges, Collectie Van der Hoop, 105.
68Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken, 214; engraving in Roodhuyzen-van Breda Vriesman, In
woelig vaarwater, 114; NG-MC-513 is a model of May's gunboat in the Navy Model Collection in the Rijksmuseum.
69May had already applied for his retirement pension during the stadtholderate of William V, presumably on account of his advanced age (in 1795 he was 71), Personalia William May.
70Lemmers, Techniek op schaal. 148–72.
71Young, ‘Remarks on the Employment of Oblique Riders’. HMS Leyden actually had a long career and was paid off only in 1810, to be disposed of in 1815. HMS Kent became a sheer hulk in 1856, and was broken up in 1881.
72Saal, ‘Jan Blanken’, note 2; the Personalia of Job Seaburne May contain two letters from Job Seaburne May from the Nieuwe Diep to his father (undated, end of the eighteenth century): Job Seaburne supervised the harbour construction and he sent reports of this to his father in Amsterdam, who was in charge of the entire operation. In 1823 Job Seaburne May and William May jr appealed to King William I for posthumous recognition of their father's role, NATH, Buitenlandse Zaken (Foreign Affairs), Gezantschap Londen (London Consulate) 1814–1890, 179.
73Rasmussen, ‘The Royal Danish-Norwegian Dockyard’, 41–54; Hoj, F. C. H. Hohlenberg, 14.
74Roberts, Eighteenth Century Shipbuilding.
Additional information
Alan Lemmers published a CD-ROM catalogue of the Dutch Navy Model Collection in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 1995, followed a year later by a PhD thesis on the same collection. He then joined the historical research institute of the Royal Netherlands Navy, which in 1995 merged with the Netherlands Institute of Military History. Lemmers has published books and articles and created museum exhibitions and audiovisual productions on a variety of Dutch naval topics.