The real heroes of LV50 are the crew who served on board her, risking their lives to keep others safe at sea. Unfortunately, few records of them and their lives have survived. We’ve traced the men who manned LV50 as far as we could using the UK census records and managed to find some information about them and their family.
See https://friendsoflv50.org.uk/the-men-of-lv50-genealogical-research/.
There are other, perhaps better-known people, who’ve contributed to the success of LV50 and other lightships. Like most people of that era whose achievements have survived for posterity, they were male and in a position of power and influence. Still, they made an important contribution to the story of our vessel and their story deserves to be told. One of these Leading Lights is Sir Robert Seppings (1767 – 1840) who is, as we’ll see, sort of the grand-father of LV50
This post is a shortened version of the full article that can be read at:
https://friendsoflv50.org.uk/leading-lights-of-lv50-robert-seppings-1767-1840/
If you look at a late 18th century fighting ship, like HMS Victory floated out in 1765 (114 years before LV50) you’ll see a vessel adapted for a very different role. In some ways like LV50, an essentially wooden vessel, but in many ways very different.
Some of the differences between LV50 and HMS Victory can be attributed to their different roles. The Victory sits higher in the water to accommodate her massive firepower and has 3 masts to hold the sails that propel her through the water. None of these were needed in a lightship. However, both vessels are constructed largely of wooden ribs, planking, beams and decking. As you’ll see, most of the differences of basic construction details are down to our leading light, Robert, later Sir Robert, Seppings.
When HMS Victory was built wooden ship design had hit a brickwall, several in fact. The drive to build bigger vessels to carry more and bigger guns had encountered a problem. Larger ships were weaker and more prone to leaking. The planks of the hull were being continually flexed (hogging & sagging); leading to leakage. The bigger the ship the worse the problem as apart from the keel and hull planking there was very little lateral strengthening. Another weak point in ships of that time was the squared off design of the stern.
These weaknesses were well known but the real challenge was how to change the design of ships in the early 19th century? Driven by the need to build bigger and better ships to combat, literally, the rapidly expanding French fleet of Napoleon. To do this they had to innovate.
The man of the moment was Robert Seppings, he revolutionised ship design and as we’ll see many of his innovations can be seen in LV50.
Changing ship design was never going to be easy. Engineering, as a science, was in its infancy then and didn’t really come of age until the later part of the 19th century when engineers like George Robert Stevenson pushed forward the necessary techniques. (For George Robert Stevenson’s links to LV50 see our article on House Yacht Tyne 1 https://friendsoflv50.org.uk/the-hunt-for-hy-tyne/)
Innovation moved forward by trial and error and errors were very costly. Take the case of the Swedish warship the ‘Vasa’ that sank after sailing only 1,300m on her maiden voyage in 1628.
It took a brave man with support from friends in high places to change things. So, who was Robert Seppings and what did he do?
*oil on canvas
*119.9 x 93 cm
*1833
He wasn’t born to greatness. The son of a Norfolk cattle dealer, he was born in1767 and his first job was delivering the mail on the back of a mule. The death of his father when he was only 14 years old must have been traumatic but led to other opportunities. He was taken in by his uncle, a retired navy captain in Plymouth. He used his connections to apprentice young Robert to the master ship wright John Henslow there.
His work in the Plymouth dockyards led to him moving to London’s Chatham dockyard as a master ship wright in 1804. The Royal Navy led the way in ship design and Chatham was the centre of their ship building so the move placed him in the right position to innovate
Here he took on the problem of weakness of ships hulls. His solution of diagonal bracing met much resistance despite its simplicity. He likened it to the diagonal bracing of a 5-bar gate that added enormous rigidity to this everyday country item
It was 10 years before a ship was built along these lines in 1815 but support from far-sighted Admiralty figures ensured its adoption.
Over the years he solved many of the issues facing ship building and these can be clearly seen in the construction of LV50. Diagonal bracing, the rounded stern, the use of iron and moving away from an all-oak construction for the hull can all be traced back to his influence.
Read the full article to see how his life and work changed ship building forever.
https://friendsoflv50.org.uk/leading-lights-of-lv50-robert-seppings-1767-1840/
Of course, innovation didn’t stop when he retired. By 1860 the ‘Warrior’, the first of the iron hulled warships in service with the royal Navy was launched. Progress marched on. By 1871, with the launching of the ‘Devastation’, sailing masts were gone and steam power alone propelled major warships through the water (allowing the introduction of gun turrets).
Where the Royal Navy led, merchant ships followed, at a respectable distance behind.
Afterword
‘Seppings career came at the end of an era. He had been schooled in the most traditional of environments and could easily have opposed change, as most shipwrights did. His importance rests on his rejection of the easy path and his restless desire to find improvements. He was not the last of the age of sail’s designers but the first of the innovators that would transform warships forever… He rose from rural obscurity to become the most prominent ship designer of his generation’.
US Naval Institute Philip K Allan August 2024
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