Chapter 13: "Iron, as a material for ship-building"

… is an Italian freelance scholar. She is a specialist in the history of discoveries, Portuguese and European expansion, maritime, nautical, and oceanic sciences, seafaring and sea trade.

She received her degree in humanities at Pisa University with a dissertation on Vasco da Gama’s first journey to India. Soon afterwards, she received research scholarships at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Instituto Camões, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal and Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses. In 2000 she was awarded a prize for Portuguese culture.

The Iron Library is a great resource for the history of the treatment of fouling on wooden and iron ships. The Scholar in Residence program was therefore very fruitful to my research focusing on such treatments in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The analysis of my two favorite books was enriched by the study of many secondary sources, confirming what I was looking for and adding new things to my research. It is difficult to summarize in a few lines the richness of the material I analyzed, but what I can say is that the results of my research could give rise to some individual publications.

"A DISCOVERY of an early Method to secure SHIPS BOTTOMS from Worms"
In chronological order, my first favorite book is "Three letters on Mining and Smelting; in which a Method is laid down, Whereby these useful Sciences may be greatly Improved. To which is added, a Fourth LETTER; A DISCOVERY of an early Method to secure SHIPS BOTTOMS from Worms" written by Diederick Wessel Linden and printed in London in 1750 for George Keith, Bookseller, at Mercers-Chapel, Cheapside.

"Iron, as a material for ship-building"

My second favorite book is "Iron, as a material for ship-building, being a communication to the Polytechnic Society of Liverpool" printed in Liverpool in 1842. The book, with an appendix including drawings and a collection of letters by renowned personalities of the time who were interested in both iron and shipbuilding, contains a pioneering lecture by John Grantham, an English engineer involved in marine, railway and tramway engineering. This lecture on iron shipbuilding, held in 1842 at the Polytechnic Society of Liverpool, focused on the early history and construction of iron vessels, as well as on iron vessels as both a national and a commercial issue.

As to fouling and its treatment, the book contains two interesting paragraphs. One describes the condition of ships sailing in oriental seas, giving detailed information on “shells” and “animals” causing fouling; the other paragraph is on Grantham’s instrument, a scraper for cleaning ships’ hulls, a mechanical method initiated at the end of the 19th century and which can be considered the forerunner of the automated methods largely employed to clean hulls today. But I did not only find important material on Grantham’s solution for treating fouling. The book also allowed me to discover a letter by Thomas Jevons, a Liverpool iron merchant, on his iron life-boat, suggesting new chapters for my future research.

"Mechanic's Magazine"

During my research, thanks to the screening of "Mechanic's Magazine" – where I found many other items of news from the time on treating fouling – and more historical magazines and journals, I had the opportunity to follow Grantham’s efforts for the treatment of fouling, which latterly included a novel hull design and a new hull coating.