07-10-2003, 05:41 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-10-2003, 07:51 PM by Rhydderch Hael.)
In a wooden sailing ship, the length also created another factor of consideration: hogging on the keel. A metal ship, be it of steel or aluminum, isn't going to have a bow in her keel due to the buoyancy pressing up from above. The elastic nature of wooden ships presented that problem, of course.
It gets worse with a wooden warship, since the heaviest loads borne upon the vessel (the gun decks) are as far away from the keel (the fulcrum of this hogging movement) as one can get: high above the waterline and on the periphery of the ship's hull, which only makes the buoyant force pressing up on the keel all the worse. The reason the European frigates were not built along the lines of the Americans was because the Americans (Humphreys and Fox) had the idea of building transverse ribs into the hull. These ribs, like the buttresses of a cathedral, conspired to transmit the greatest weight of the ship, the gun decks, directly onto the keelâ thus eliminating keel hogging and the risk of springing the ship's back. Seemingly simple to figure out today, but it was revolutionary at the turn of the 19th century.
It gets worse with a wooden warship, since the heaviest loads borne upon the vessel (the gun decks) are as far away from the keel (the fulcrum of this hogging movement) as one can get: high above the waterline and on the periphery of the ship's hull, which only makes the buoyant force pressing up on the keel all the worse. The reason the European frigates were not built along the lines of the Americans was because the Americans (Humphreys and Fox) had the idea of building transverse ribs into the hull. These ribs, like the buttresses of a cathedral, conspired to transmit the greatest weight of the ship, the gun decks, directly onto the keelâ thus eliminating keel hogging and the risk of springing the ship's back. Seemingly simple to figure out today, but it was revolutionary at the turn of the 19th century.
Political Correctness is the idea that you can foster tolerance in a diverse world through the intolerance of anything that strays from a clinical standard.