Richard Hall Gower
Captain Richard Hall Gower (1768–1833) was an English mariner, empirical philosopher, nautical inventor, entrepreneur, and humanitarian.
He left school, "thankfully", to join the British East India Company as a midshipman in the vessel Essex carrying troops and invalids.
When he returned to England after his first three-year voyage, he studied navigation at Edmonton and, on rejoining ship, was dubbed "the young philosopher".
Ever inventive, he once fitted a canvas speaking tube from the main top to the deck, installing it overnight to surprise and please his captain.
His intention was to so improve ship design that, in whatever wind and weather, vessels would sail safely, speedily and economically with a crew properly accommodated and put to no unnecessary risk.
The results were broad, squat boxes, hydrodynamically inefficient, with squalid accommodation for the crew and complicated rigging that entailed much very dangerous work aloft.
By this time, to be successful, innovations had to be well founded in good science, properly protected against plagiarism by letters patent and backed by the Crown, government, patrons or merchant venturers.
So Gower defended most of his ideas with an applications for patents, in which he expounded the physical theories he believed supported his innovations as well as describing the matters which he claimed to be original inventions.
He suggested a non-elastic substitute for imported hempen standing rigging to be made of wooden cylinders joined together by iron straps.
Gower also constructed a twin hulled catamaran, just ten feet long, on which he mounted a barrel of water that drained to underwater by a curved pipe pointing aft.
The most original features of these vessels were their slab sides above, and the concave and convex sweeps of the hull, below the waterline, the Joints scarfed and bolted rather than chocked and treenailed, ballast was iron cast into special shapes to sit just above the deadwood and between the floor timbers and the narrowest part of the hull above the keel was reinforced by strong cross timbers bolted through the sides.
While waiting for the convoy to assemble, Gower, ever the salesman, showed her off to the King and his party on the Royal Yacht in Christchurch Bay.
Perhaps there was some aspect of the design of the Transit, say her problems in shallow tidal harbours, or the strange way of her sailing, that killed off the Company's enthusiasm.
Captain Gower was a regular contributor, mainly on nautical subjects, to the Suffolk Chronicle under the initials R. G. or "John Splice".
He expressed much concern about the cramped and squalid conditions under which Jack Tar had to work and he deplored the cruel and heartless behaviour of many captains.
He thought that these cruelties, so readily meted out to sailors just for disobedience, would be better applied to those on land who ill-treat, forge, rob and plunder the peaceable inhabitants of the country.
He concluded "Our colossal Navy is merely an object of magnificence, and show of power, without opposition in the present state of Europe".
He thought that, because of the need for large coal bunkers, 'steam paddlers' were unlikely to replace sail on long trade routes such as the trans-Atlantic crossing.
He hoped that vessels of the Transit type would ply across the Ocean until "more portable means shall be invented for putting steamers in motion".
He lies in a vault on the North side of the church of St Mary Stoke, Ipswich, in the company of Master Mariners, shipwrights and men of the sea.
A Memoir about him concludes "Of him it may with truth be said that by those who knew him best, he was beloved the most; and if the motto Palmam qui meruit ferat (Let he, who has won the palm, wear it) had been verified, the laurels that now shade others heads would have crowned the temples of Richard Hall Gower."
