This is a story about an inventor and his invention. It is the story of striving to create something new and innovation in problem solving. It is also, perhaps more than anything, a story of failure. It is the story of a brilliant man trying to solve a longstanding problem. It is the story of how in solving that problem, he created others. And it is a story of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. The man, Sir Henry Bessemer, was undoubtedly a talented inventor. Born two years before the Battle of Waterloo, and dying two years before the end of the 19th century, this Victorian gentleman is most remembered for his steel-making process which became the most significant way to manufacture steel for a hundred years. The process made his fortune, and his reputation, and earned him his knighthood. He also played a major role in establishing Sheffield as a major producer of steel and center for industry; without him Sheffield may never have come to be known as England’s “steel city.” But Sir Henry was that most Victorian of oddities, a gentleman amateur, and his dabblings into multiple fields of expertise were not all so successful. It may be for his steel that he is remembered, but it is for his ideas about ships that he has become infamous. This is not the story of his successes, his contributions to the Second Industrial Revolution which saw Britain emerge as a global leader in the 19th century. This is the story of the SS Bessemer, among the most ill-fated of ships to ever have set sail. A Genius in His Field To be fair to Sir Henry, he was a brilliant man. The son of a Huguenot and another inventor who was forced to flee France after the Revolution of 1789, he was born in Hertfordshire in 1813 into a moderately successful family, and had to make his name on his own merits. Sir Henry made his first fortune designing and manufacturing steam powered machines which produced bronze dust, a key component in gold paint. The secret manufacturing process proved difficult for others to reproduce, and he became a major supplier. His steel making process, at once good quality and cheap, addressed a pressing bottleneck in British industry. It led to iron being replaced with stronger and stiffer steel, improving at a stroke Britain’s entire industrial base. But Sir Henry’s move to the seas and his creation of the SS Bessemer was designed to address a more personal problem. Sir Henry suffered from extreme seasickness, and it was this that led him to investigate whether a solution could be found. His solution seems at first to be brilliant. The SS Bessemer was to be a paddle steamer which would contain a central cabin mounted on gimbals and designed to stay level no matter the outward orientation of the ship. The ship would roll with the waves, but the passengers within would always stay perfectly upright. It was not an automatic feature, and required constant crewing to work. A member of the crew was tasked with watching a spirit level at his station, and manipulating a complex system of hydraulics to adjust the orientation of the cabin in real time. Sir Henry built a successful test version at his home in Denmark Hill, London, and received a patent for the design in 1869, His idea was to use the SS Bessemer as a cross channel ferry, linking England and France and providing a solution to comfortable travel to continental Europe. He attracted a significant amount of investment to the project, some £250,000 then and the equivalent of more than £25 million ($31 million) today. He set up a limited joint stock company to continue to attract investment and envisaged running a fleet of these innovative ships, opening the door to France and the world beyond. There was however a tiny problem with the idea, and that problem was the SS Bessemer herself. Put simply, the central stable cabin radically reduced the ship’s seaworthiness and the ship herself proved to be a nightmare to operate. By the time she arrived at Calais for her first trials she had already crashed into the shoreline at Hull, thankfully emerging without damage. However as she tried to enter Calais harbor she proved impossible to steer at slow speeds, and crashed into the pier. The gimballed passenger cabin within did not roll with the ship, of course, and the momentum of this caused the SS Bessemer to lurch wildly from side to side in anything but a flat calm. But the mere inclusion of the cabin was enough to compromise her entire design, and even with the gimbals locked in place she displayed horrible sailing characteristics. After the damage to the ship and the pier were repaired the SS Bessemer again tried to enter Calais harbor. She promptly crashed into the same pier and caused much more extensive damage. Part of the pier was entirely demolished by the impact. It was clear that the idea, and the ship, were cursed, and investors lost confidence in a vessel which only seemed good for slowly dismantling the seafront at Calais. She would never sail with the gimbals operating, and after a further accident she had her seaworthiness license revoked, and the innovative cabin removed entirely. The hull was docked in Dover where she remained, slowly degrading and rusting until she was sold for scrap in 1879. The cabin however had a very different end: claimed by the ship’s chief designer Edward James Reed, it was installed at his home, Hextable House in Swanley, where it was used as a billiards room. The house went on to become a women’s horticultural college and the cabin became a lecture hall, until the college was bombed by the Luftwaffe in World War Two. The cabin was destroyed. Today only three decorative panels survive from the SS Bessemer, recovered from the ruins of the cabin after the bombing. Nothing
The Dancing Mouse: USS Edsall Wreck Rediscovered After 80 Years
It is March, 1942, and the US is reeling from the Japanese surprise attack on her surface fleet at Pearl Harbor three months before. A lone, Clemson-class destroyer, the USS Edsall, crosses the Indian Ocean headed for Tjilatjap, the only deep-water port on the island of Java. The Edsall is far from cutting edge. Launched more than twenty years earlier in 1920, she belongs to an earlier generation, and besides she has been damaged by her own depth charge while attacking a submarine in January. Aboard are more than 150 sailors, as well as some 31 pilots and ground crew travelling as passengers. Another US ship, the USS Pecos, has been attacked in the area and the Edsall was likely trying to reach her last position to search for survivors. She would never make it. The Japanese task force which sank the Pecos is still in the area, and at 3.30pm on 1st March they radio that they have spotted a light cruiser in the area. They close to attack, and less than an hour later the Edsall comes under fire from two Japanese battleships and two heavy cruisers. She is hopelessly outmatched. Edsall did not go down without a fight, however. Her skilful evasion of the Japanese shelling earned her the nickname “The Dancing Mouse” but she could only dodge the barrage for so long. After more than 1,300 shells were fired and almost entirely missed her, dive bombers eventually damaged her enough for the Japanese task force to find their mark and sink her. Now, 80 years later and on Remembrance Day, the Australian government have announced they have found her wreck, reports The Washington Post. The wreck was first discovered by an Australian navy ship named the Stoker in 2023. The announcement was delayed however due to operational concerns, and because the USS Pillsbury, another Clemson-class destroyer, was also known to have sunk in the area. Once the wreck had been carefully surveyed with underwater robots and sonar it was confirmed as the Edsall. The ship remains largely intact, a testament to how well she evaded the Japanese attack. The final bomb hit which doomed the Dancing Mouse can even be seen, near the stern. Japanese witnesses to the attack described her as rolling belly up before sinking, but as the wreck showed she righted herself as she sank, before crashing into the bottom with some force where she remains to this day. The wreck will now be designated a war grave. Header Image: The end of the Dancing Mouse: The USS Edsall sinks, as captured by the attacking Japanese task force. Source: US Naval History and Heritage Command / Public Domain.
The NS Savannah and the Brave New World of Nuclear Shipping
Nuclear power is perhaps one of the most divisive inventions in history. Its advocates point to almost unlimited energy with minimal pollution and waste, providing power for an ever-more power hungry world. Of course this is only one part of the story, and its detractors would equally point to the equally unlimited damage which can be caused by a failure of a nuclear power plant. Everything is always fine until it isn’t, of course, but when a nuclear reaction isn’t fine this can easily lead to a worst case scenario: a nuclear wasteland uninhabitable for generations. But there was a time there where nuclear power was seen as paving the path to a brave new world of free energy. The bomb may have come first, but it is unarguably nuclear power generation which has changed the world much faster, and to a much greater extent. Forward thinkers and planners, half entranced by this new source of power and half jumping on the bandwagon of its popularity, sought to power almost anything with nuclear power. Spacecraft, airships, even cars and other passenger vehicles: all were given nuclear engines although, thankfully, none were actually built. Almost none. There was one example of a nuclear-powered civilian vehicle which made it into production, albeit only as a single example. The NS Savannah was an American merchant ship, fully powered by an onboard reactor and launched in 1959. When launched she was by far the cleanest ship in her class. She could carry cargo or passengers anywhere in the world, powered by an entirely new reactor design, and could go for years without refueling. She could travel a theoretical 550,000 km at up to 44 km/h, making her a class leader in speed and blowing away the competition in efficiency. President Eisenhower saw the Savannah as part of his “Atoms for Peace” initiative, proving the viability of nuclear technology for so much more than warfare and general destruction. Yet the Savannah only sailed the seas for ten years, from 1962 to 1972. She never had a nuclear accident, never had any problems with her reactor. And yet this proof of concept for nuclear-powered civilian ships was ultimately a failure. Why did the NS Savannah fail? An Exercise in Diplomacy When Savannah went into service in 1962 she was a wonder to behold. At 180m long and with three decks above the cargo spaces, this beautiful white ship had no smokestacks belching black smoke into the sky, no pollutants of any kind: she simply glided through the water, silently and peacefully. Safety was, of course, ahuge part of the Savannah’s design. She was built with a series of nine watertight compartments to minimize the risk of accidental sinking. Seven of the compartments were cargo holds, and an eighth held machinery. The ninth held the nuclear reactor, isolated from the rest of the ship. Passengers who traveled aboard could stay in one of the 30 staterooms, and enjoy the large dining facilities, movie theater and library, all while traveling the world in comfort and luxury. Savannah’s proportions made her appear more like a giant yacht than a commercial ship, all part of creating this atmosphere of elegance and looking to the future. So, why did she fail? Well there are several reasons, both related to the ship herself and the wider world she found herself in. Put simply, she was never intended to pave the way for others such as herself: she was to champion nuclear propulsion, not to serve as a viable shipping service. 180m is extremely small for a cargo ship, and Savannah was dwarfed by her competition. Of course she doubled as a passenger liner, but here again she fell short: Savannah tried to be both types of ship, and fell short on both counts. She could carry only 7,700 tons of cargo and fewer passengers than her own dining room could accommodate. These were rookie numbers, and she was, as designed, never going to be serious competition for existing ships. Then there was the squeamishness shown about nuclear powered vessels by the rest of the world. Many ports were unwilling to allow a nuclear reactor to sit in their harbors, either charging enormous port fees or outright banning her. None of these were insurmountable, of course. Nuclear powered vessels run by the militaries of several states travel the seas regularly and have done so for decades. Finding a way to berth Savannah in civilian ports was only a matter of infrastructure, and were she to be proven a success these were solvable problems for her larger, more practical successors. But the real problem was, of course, money. Savannah was estimated to cost some $2,000,000 more than a comparable ship under conventional power every year, ruining her chances of ever being economically viable. Her crew outnumbered both other comparable crews and their own passengers, and needed special training to operate the reactor. Her nuclear reactor was extremely expensive and potentially hazardous to refuel and maintain, and there was simply no cargo which justified this cost to deliver. Her design also made cargo loading a more challenging and expensive proposition. In 1971, with oil prices as low as $20 a barrel, Savannah was retired from service. In truth she had only served as a passenger ship for three years, carrying only 480 people from 1962 to 1965. But was her failure entirely unrelated to her nuclear propulsion? Could the concept, in a more practical design, have worked? Well, not entirely: there was a dirty secret at the heart of NS Savannah. At designed, the low-level radioactive waste produced by her fission reactor was stored in onboard tanks. However these tanks had a total capacity of 38,000 liters, and Savannah needed far more space than that. In her first year alone Savannah disposed of ten times her capacity, some 440,000 liters of this waste, at sea. Out there in the middle of nowhere, where nobody could see, it seems that Savannah was responsible for her
