#3. The copper goes at the bottom

Previous : #2. Trincomalee to Java isn't a straight line.

The fact that the holds of the HMS Java were filled with copper plating in 1812 was not an accident, but a policy of the Royal Navy that was a hundred years in the making.

Modern ships face issues of sea growth on their hull, but those who have attended to their vessels in drydock would know that when these are grit blasted out, there still remains in hard steel the impression of where these organisms held on to. Their impact on the wooden hull was much much worse.

Shipworms were unholy looking creatures that would burrow into the wooden hulls eating away the wood within a few years if left unchecked.

The solution that the Royal navy and pretty much everyone used till the middle of the 18th century was to have a thin (expendable) wood sheathing on top of the wooden hull or/and cover the hull with other stuff such as Brimstone, tar and whale oil, which would reduce the sea growth especially when the vessel was in tropical waters.

It was back in 1708 that Charles Perry recommended sheathing the vessel hulls with copper. However, the idea never gained steam. Although a few trials were held over the years, the Navy board considered the prospect of sheathing the vessels too expensive to install and maintain.

To give you an idea the wood required for a 74 gun Naval vessel would cost about ￡ 262. In comparison, the 14T of brass would cost the Navy ￡ 1,500. There was also the small matter that electrolytic reaction was not properly understood back then, and the iron bolts holding the brass plates would corrode off dropping the brass plates into the bottom of the ocean!

As with most times when we have progressed in technology, it, unfortunately, took a war for the Royal navy to change their mind. When the second continental congress in America issued the Declaration of Independence on 04 July 1776, the hostilities had been going on for some time. As the situation unfolded, France joined the Americans in their cause and declared war of Britain in 1778. Spain and Netherlands joined France in 1779 and 1780 respectively. Britain thus had all of the major powers allied against it. It was estimated then that to win the war, Britain would need to build 100 new warships. Building a warship could take five years and 2000 trees.

Admiral Charles Middleton would later play a crucial role in the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire, but in 1779, he was the Navy Board Comptroller facing the situation and knew the new ships would never be ready in time. The option he decided to back was that of refurbishing the ships instead. He would put better guns to out gun the enemy and put copper plating on the vessels to let them run longer and faster than the enemy.

The copper for all the plating came from the Parys Mountain mines in Wales and most of the work took place at the Portsmouth harbor we discussed in #2. Such was the capacity of the port that by By 1781 - barley 2 years after Middleton petitioned the King, 82 ships of the line had been coppered, along with fourteen 50-gun ships, 115 frigates, and 182 unrated vessels.

While Middleton’s plan proved too late to save the American colonies, it did prove decisive in the naval victories over French and other navies. Regardless, the reason for the loss of the American colonies was put by many commentators due to the fact that not all ships were coppered or fast enough. The popular anger seems to have been directed to John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who was the First Lord of Admiralty then. There was even a publication in the London Magazine which made reference to him having spent more than 24 hours at a go on the gaming tables with nothing else to sustain him than some cold beef placed between slices of toast - hence giving name to the sandwich!

The great success of the coppered vessels meant that better (richer) shipowners would also be interested in covering their vessel bottoms with these plating. As I last visited Greenwich, I saw the Cutty Sark from outside the building, but not her bottom. Ships like would reflect the Owners willingness to spend extra money on fitting their vessels and would likely to be well maintained and equipped. This is the reason why “Copper Bottomed” became a term of use to denote anything of great quality and dependable nature.

The Rolling of Copper into sheets though was not as straightforward as you might imagine. Pure copper would corrode too fast and it was only in about 1832 when Muntz Metal ( an alloy of copper and zinc) came along and presented the longlasting solution. During all that time, all of the Royal Navy copper was rolled at Portsmouth and sent to India where ships were constructed. This was the reason the Holds of HMS Java were filled with the Copper plating that weighed her down in December of 1812.

Yet back in 1794, there was another small Navy keenly aware of the benefits of copper sheathing. As copper was not rolled in USA then, the Americans at great expense bought from Britain, copper sheathing for 6 frigates that the US navy was building.

It is ironical that one of these vessels coppered and launched in 1797 at Boston was none other than the nemesis of our HMS Java - the USS Constitution.

The USS Constitution being coppered before launching: