Paddle steamer

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A paddle steamer is a ship or boat driven by a steam engine that uses one or more paddle wheels to develop thrust for propulsion. Boats with paddle wheels on the sides are termed sidewheelers, while those with a single wheel on the stern are known as sternwheelers. Although generally associated with steam power, paddleboats, or paddlewheelers have also been driven by diesel engines, animal power, or human power.

The paddle wheel was the first form of mechanical propulsion for a boat, but has now been almost entirely superseded by the screw propellor and other, more modern, forms of marine propulsion.

Contents 1 Paddle wheels 2 Types of paddle steamer 3 Early Developments 4 Seagoing paddle steamers 5 Paddle steamers today 6 References 7 See also

[edit] Paddle wheels

The paddle wheel is a large wheel, generally built of a steel framework, upon the outer edge of which are fitted numerous paddle blades (called floats or bunkets). In the water, the bottom quarter or so of the wheel is underwater. Rotation of the paddle wheel produces thrust, forward or backward as required. More advanced paddle wheel designs have featured feathering methods that keep each paddle blade oriented closer to vertical while it is in the water; this increases efficiency.

[edit] Types of paddle steamer

There are two basic ways to mount paddle wheels on a ship; a single wheel on the rear, known as a stern-wheeler, and a paddle wheel on each side, known as a side-wheeler.

Stern-wheelers have generally been used as riverboats, especially in the United States, where they still operate for tourist use on the Mississippi River. On a river, the narrowness of a stern-wheeler is preferable.

Side-wheelers, meanwhile, have also been used as riverboats, but also commonly as coastal craft. While wider than a stern-wheeler, due to the extra width of the paddle wheels and their enclosing pontoons, a side-wheeler has extra maneuverability since the power may be directed to one wheel at a time.

[edit] Early Developments

The use of a paddle wheel in navigation appears for the first time in the mechanical treatise of the Roman engineer Vitruvius (De architectura, X 9.5-7), where he describes multi-geared paddle wheels working as a ship odometer. The first mention of paddle wheels as a means of propulsion comes from the late 4th century military treatise De Rebus Bellicis (chapter XVII), where the anonymous Roman author describes an ox-driven paddle wheel warship:

“

Animal power, directed by the resources on ingenuity, drives with ease and swiftness, wherever utility summons it, a warship suitable for naval combats, which, because of its enormous size, human frailty as it were prevented from being operated by the hands of men. In its hull, or hollow interior, oxen, yoked in pairs to capstans, turns wheels attached to the sides of the ship; paddles, projecting above the circumference or curved surface of the wheels, beating the water with their strokes like oar-blades as the wheels revolve, work with an amazing and ingenious effect, their action producing rapid motion. This warship, moreover, because of its own bulk and because of the machinery working inside it, joins battle with such pounding force that it easily wrecks and destroys all enemy warships coming at close quarters.[1]

”

Paddleboats were built in China from the 5th-6th Centuries,^[2] and according to the Water Margin were used in the 12th century. The Chinese Song Dynasty (960 - 1279 AD) issued the construction of many paddle-wheel ships for its navy, and according to historian Joseph Needham:

"...between 1132 and 1183 (AD) a great number of treadmill-operated paddle-wheel craft, large and small, were built, including stern-wheelers and ships with as many as 11 paddle-wheels a side,” (Needham, 476).

In 1543 the Basque engineer Blasco de Garay in Barcelona made an experimental vessel propelled by a paddle-wheel on each side, worked by forty men. In the same year he showed Carlos I of Spain (also known as Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, a new idea - a ship propelled by a giant wheel powered by steam, but Carlos was not interested in it.^[3]

In 1787 Patrick Miller of Dalswinton invented a double-hulled boat, which was propelled on the Firth of Forth by men working a capstan which drove paddles on each side.^[4]

The first paddle steamer was the Pyroscaphe built by Marquis Claude de Jouffroy of Lyon in France, in 1783. It had a horizontal double-acting steam engine driving two 13.1 ft (4 m) paddle wheels on the sides of the craft. On July 15, 1783 it steamed successfully up the Saône for fifteen minutes before the engine failed. Political events interrupted further development.

The next successful attempt at a paddle-driven steam ship was by the Scottish engineer William Symington who suggested steam power to Patrick Miller of Dalswinton.^[4] Experimental boats built in 1788 and 1789 worked successfully; in 1802, Symington built a barge-hauler, Charlotte Dundas, for the Forth and Clyde Canal Company. It successfully hauled two 70-ton barges almost 20 miles (30 km) in 6 hours against a strong headwind on test in 1802. There was much enthusiasm, but some directors of the company were concerned about the banks of the canal being damaged by the wash from a powered vessel, and no more were ordered.

While Charlotte Dundas was the first commercial paddle-steamer and steamboat, the first commercial success was possibly Robert Fulton's Clermont in New York, which went into commercial service in 1807 between New York City and Albany. Many other paddle-equipped river boats followed all round the world.

[edit] Seagoing paddle steamers

The first sea-going trip of a paddle steamer was that of the Albany in 1808, which steamed from the Hudson River along the coast to the Delaware River. This was purely for the purpose of moving a river-boat to a new market, but the use of paddle-steamers for short coastal trips began soon after that.

The first paddle-steamer to make a long ocean voyage was the Savannah, built in 1819 expressly for this service. Savannah set out for Liverpool on May 22, 1819, sighting Ireland after 23 days at sea. This was the first powered crossing of the Atlantic, although Savannah also carried a full rig of sail to assist the engines when winds were favorable. In 1822, Charles Napier's Aaron Manby, the world's first iron ship, made the first direct steam crossing from London to Paris and the first seagoing voyage by an iron ship anywhere.

In 1838, Sirius, a fairly small steam packet built for the Cork to London route, became the first vessel to cross the Atlantic under sustained steam power, beating Isambard Kingdom Brunel's much larger Great Western by a day. Great Western, however, was actually built for the transatlantic trade, and its crossing began the regular sailing of powered vessels across the Atlantic. Beaver was the first coastal steamship to operate in the Pacific Northwest of North America.

The largest paddle-steamer ever built was Brunel's Great Eastern, but it also had an additional screw propulsion and sail rigging. It was 692 feet (211 m) long and weighed 32,000 tons, its paddle-wheels being 56 ft (17 m) in diameter.

In oceangoing service, paddle steamers became obsolete rather quickly with the invention of the screw propeller, but they remained in use in coastal service, thanks to their shallow draught and good maneuverability.

[edit] Paddle steamers today

Few original paddle steamers remain in existence, and those that do are mainly preserved for tourists or as museums. Some paddle steamers still operate on the Mississippi River, as do a few in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe.

PS Waverley, built in 1947, is the last sea-going paddle steamer in the world. This ship sails a full season of cruises every year from ports around Britain, and has sailed across the English Channel to commemorate the sinking of her predecessor of 1899 at the Battle of Dunkirk.

PS Skibladner is the oldest steamship in regular operation. Built in 1856, she still operates on lake Mjøsa in Norway. PS Adelaide is the oldest wooden-hulled paddle steamer in the world. Built in 1866, she operates from the Port of Echuca, which has the largest fleet of paddle steamers in the world.

The Elbe river Saxon Paddle Steamer Fleet in Dresden (known as "White Fleet"), Germany, is said to be the oldest and biggest in the world, which over ca. 700.000 passengers per year.^[5]

Switzerland too has a large paddle steamer fleet, most of the "Salon Steamer-type" built by Sulzer in Winterthur or Escher-Wyss in Zürich. There are five active and one inactive on Lake Lucerne, two on Lake Zürich, and one each on Lake Brienz, Lake Thun and Lake Constance.

There are a number of paddle steamers operated on Lake Geneva, by Swiss company CGN. CGN operates a fleet of vessels including three converted to diesel electric power in the 1960s and five retaining steam. One, Montreux, has been reconverted in 2000 from diesel to an all-new steam engine. It is the world's first electronically remote-controlled steam engine and has operating costs similar to state of the art diesels, while producing up to 90 percent less air pollution^{[citation needed]}.

In Soviet Union, the river paddle steamers of the type Iosif Stalin (project 373), later renamed as type Ryazan, were built until 1951. Between 1952 and 1959 ships of this type were build for Soviet Union by Obuda Hajogyar Budapest factory in Hungary. In total, 75 type Iosif Stalin/Ryazan paddle steamers were build. Few of them still remain in active service, as in 2007.^[6][7] Iosif Stalin/Ryazan paddle steamers are side-wheelers. They are 70 m long and can carry up to 360 passengers.

A small paddle steamer fleet operates on the lake of Como, Italy, mostly but not only for touristic purposes.

The paddle steamer Curlip is currently being reconstructed in Gippsland Australia.

[edit] References

• Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Part III. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.

[edit] See also

• Steamboat