He was the first to formulate reliable laws for the resistance that water offers to ships (such as the hull speed equation) and for predicting their stability.

His experiments were vindicated in full-scale trials conducted by the Admiralty and as a result the first ship test tank was built, at public expense, at his home in Torquay.

This showed that the "wave-line" theory was not as universal as claimed, and was the start of a better understanding of hull resistance.

In 1877, he was commissioned by the Admiralty to produce a machine capable of absorbing and measuring the power of large naval engines.

[7] While on holiday as an official guest of the Royal Navy he died in Simonstown, South Africa, where he was buried with full naval honours.

[7] Robert Froude would also further his father's theoretical work describing blade element theory[8] in papers authored to the Royal Institution of Naval Architects.