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Abstract
This paper offers some new insights into aspects of the life and work of the shipwright William Sutherland (1668–1740). He went to sea in 1679 and advanced to master carpenter by 1692. Afterwards he served three years as quarterman at Portsmouth under his uncle William Bagwell. At Deptford in 1715 he became embroiled in controversies over timber measurement abuses. He was appointed master caulker at Sheerness in 1717 and died there in 1740. Patronage from the Earl of Sutherland was not sufficient to allow his greater advancement. His theoretical ideas about ships' moulding based on Royal Society papers and Newton's Solid of Least Resistance were sometimes over rigid and often out of step with contemporary practices, while highly perceptive relative to specific practical needs.
Acknowledgement
I wish to express my gratitude to the archivist at the Caird Library, Mike Bevan, for organizing a foliation of Sutherland's manuscript and its diagrams to allow specific sections to be referenced unambiguously. For an electronic transcription of the manuscript see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/christopher.mallagh/Sutherland/SutherlandMS.html
Notes
1 National Maritime Museum (hereafter NMM), SPB/50/1 and SPB/50/2
2 Sutherland has regularly featured in The Mariner's Mirror: Salisbury, ‘Some Notes’; Johns, ‘William Sutherland’; C. K., ‘William Sutherland’. Sutherland's manuscript: ‘Action and Reaction’. Among modern articles referencing Sutherland are Kenchington, ‘William Sutherland's Ship, circa 1710’ and Endsor, ‘The Midship Bend of the Hampshire 1653’. Neither throw significant light on Sutherland's biographical development and its interaction with his theoretical ideas.
3 Wright, Thesis, 24.
4 Sutherland, Ship-Builders Assistant, preface. His birth date is derived from the baptismal registers of St Nicholas, Deptford. For his early life see J. Phillips, ‘The Bagwells’, online article (http://www.pepysdiary.com/indepth/2012/07/18/the-bagwells/, retrieved Aug. 2013).
5 Sutherland, ‘Action and Reaction’, fos 48r/49r.
6 Ibid. fo.50v.; Navy Board In-letters, The National Archives of England and Wales (hereafter TNA), ADM 106/633.
7 TNA, ADM 106/633. He probably sailed in the Bonaventure also, and described her as ‘a log heavy ship’; ‘Action and Reaction’, fo. 50v.
8 TNA, ADM 106/633.
9 Parish Registers, St Nicholas, Deptford; TNA, ADM 106/842/49.
10 TNA, ADM 106/842/49.
11 All dates are given with the year beginning on 1 Jan., not on the 25 Mar. (Old Style) as used by contemporary documents.
12 Collinge, Navy Board Officials, 22; Hemingway, ‘The Work of the Surveyors’, 139; Minutes of the Navy Board, Jan. 1715–Dec. 1717, NMM, SER/72, at dates given; Williamson, To the Lords Commissioners, 11–17.
13 NMM, SER/72, at dates given. The details of the proclamation are taken from Williamson, To the Lords Commissioners, 19.
14 NMM, SER/72, at dates given. Williamson, To the Lords Commissioners, 22–5. For earlier abuses and administrative difficulties see Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, chs 2 and 3.
15 Williamson, To the Lords Commissioners, 26–30.
16 Ibid.; NMM, SER/75, 5 Oct. 1717. That the Navy Board interfered in the yards when and where they liked is obvious from a host of cases.
17 NMM, SER/74: 28 Mar. 1716, 16 Jan. 1716.
18 Navy Board In-Letters and Orders, NMM, ADM/A/2061, 28 Sept. 1716; Admiralty: Board's Minutes: 24 Oct. 1715–12 Apr. 1715, TNA, ADM 3/30, 3 Oct. 1716. Williamson's own account has him much more critical.
19 NMM, SER/75 as dates; NMM, ADM/A/2074; C. K. ‘William Sutherland’, gives Sutherland's warrant as 22 Oct., peculiarly. Sutherland's pay was £80 p.a.: Sheerness Ordinary: Navy Board and Admiralty: Yard Pay Books, TNA, ADM 42/1490, 4th Quarter.
20 TNA, ADM 106/842/71; ADM 106/839/120.
21 TNA, ADM 106/842/49.
22 Ibid.
23 Johns, ‘William Sutherland’.
24 Ackworth's patronage in promoting Fellows and Mills: NMM, SER/72, 13 Jul. 1715, British Library Add. MS 9328, fos 313r–317r. Williamson, Memoirs, 27–9.
25 C. K., ‘William Sutherland’.
26 Henry Paton, ‘Sutherland, John, sixteenth earl of Sutherland (bap. 1661, d. 1733)’, rev. Jonathan Spain, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004; online edn, Oct. 2009 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11066, accessed Dec 2013).
27 Williamson, To the Lords Commissioners, 1–6. Stigant/Stigants appears variously.
28 Ibid., 7.
29 Secret History, 24; ‘Action and Reaction’, fo. 53r, fo. 49v, fo. 54r.
30 Ibid., fos 57v–58r.
31 Ibid., fo. 54.
32 Sutherland's, ‘Transverse Reconciliation’ is not to be confused with ‘Whole Moulding’ in which the basic form of the midship bend was followed throughout the moulding process: ‘one mould, made to the midship-bend, with the addition of a floor-hollow, will mould all the timbers’ (my emphasis) states the Shipwright's Vade-mecum, 228, although Sutherland's approach was undoubtedly based on the same fund of ideas as underlay whole moulding. Sutherland used Newton's Solid as source of the idea that in the longitudinal direction, the hull's sections should vary in accord with specified mathematical relationships, meaning to the shipwright, geometrically. In modern terms this meant the rising line and the narrowing line, and/or the radius of the main bilge sweep had to be treated as theory derived variables acting along the longitudinal axis of the hull; and not, as continued to be the case in many shipwrights' accounts, simply set out by ‘the artist’ according to experience and skill. On mixed spirals: ‘Action and Reaction’, fo. 52r. The large pull-out engraving in Assistant (after p. 82) demonstrates his hanging conoid in accord with this pattern.
33 Ibid., fo. 52v.
34 Ibid., fos 15v and 16r. Sutherland used the Phil. Trans. abbreviation still familiar today suggesting a good deal of familiarity with the journal.
35 Petty, Double-Bottomed Boat; ‘Treatise of naval philosophy’.
36 A conoid is a solid created by the revolution of a curve around an axis.
37 ‘Action and Reaction’, fos 11v and 13r. Ollivier, Eighteenth Century shipbuilding, CLX, described the English and French use of Newton's curve so as to indicate that it was very much an ad hoc business like the use of Wallis' curves produced at the behest of Peter Pett, as compared to Sutherland's attempted full hull form extraction from the same source. Wallis, Correspondence, to Robert Moray, 7 Apr. 1662. Wallis, Cono-cuneus. Sutherland refers to Wallis's curves in use, and like curves made by others for producing fair and smooth curves. ‘Action and Reaction’, fos 45v–46r
38 Allin had early received backing from Lord Orford. Back in the Admiralty when Allin was dismissed he seems to have been unable to do anything for his erstwhile client. NMM, ADM/A/2054, Letter, 17 Feb. 1716.
39 ‘Action and Reaction’, fos 39v–41v.
40 Ferreiro, Ships and Science, 133.
41 Darrigol, in Worlds of Flow, gives a richer picture of theoretical developments than that given by Wright in ‘Ship Hydrodynamics 1710–1880’ or by Ferreiro. It also ought to be noted the cheap digital processing and software developments in the last two decades have made the practical application of so much theoretical work at last applicable in a practical way in modern ship and yacht design. We are a far cry now from the shipwrights' craft.
Additional information
Cris Mallagh qualified as an engineer in 1961. He later gained a PhD in the history of science and technology during the Renaissance, at the University of Leeds. He was a research fellow at Leeds from 1985 to 1988 on a project exploring the social background to the development of engineering reliability. He publishes on the history of technology and the nature of technological knowledge.