Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

BY ALBERT G. HOOD, Editor of “ The Shipbuilder.” This is the first of a Series of very interesting- Articles on the Development, Design, Construction, and Propulsive Machinery of Steamships. Birth of the Shipbuilding Industry. SINCE the use of contrivances to assist man to float must have commenced almost as soon as the world began, one must have recourse to the tombs and monu- ments of ancient Egypt in order to trace the birth of the shipbuilding industry. Ships, as distinguished from the raft or the “ dug-out,” by which we mean a tree trunk hollowed out by man, were constructed in Egypt long before the advent of the Pyramid builders ; and thus the land of the Pharaohs— so far, at least, as research up to the present has revealed—must be credited with being the oldest shipbuilding country in the world. According to Sir George Holmes, in his fas- cinating book Ancient and Modern Ships, it may be safely inferred that ships were used by the Egyptians sixty-seven centuries ago. The late Mr. Villiers Stuart, in his work Nile Gleanings, reproduced the oldest authentic picture of an Egyptian vessel, copied from a tomb. This ship, which was in use on the Nile about six thousand three hundred years ago, or fifteen centuries before the date com- monly accepted for Noah’s ark, must have had a length of- at least 56 feet, with a beam of about 7 feet, and was propelled by oars, or rather paddles, and sails. Rameses II. carried on wars by sea, and there are in exist- ence illustrations of the battleships of Rameses III. (1200 B.c.), in which the rowers were protected from the enemy’s missiles by strong bulwarks, while the commander directed opera- tions from a kind of crow’s nest at the mast- head, the sides of which afforded him a certain amount of cover. Thus we have the origin of the heavily armoured battleship of the present day, which on going into action is controlled from a conning tower. It would be an interesting study to trace the ship- building industry from the Egyptians to the Greeks, the Phoenicians, and the Romans, but it hardly comes within the province of this article. It may be mentioned, however, that so recently as 1905 the late Mr. Wigham Richardson, the eminent Tyne shipbuilder, constructed a model of the trireme, or war- Note.—The heading shows the “ Lusitania ” compared with the famous Cunard Boat-Train.