Shaping the Royal Navy

The nineteenth-century Royal Navy was transformed from a fleet of sailing wooden walls into a steam powered machine. Britain''s warships were her first line of defence, and their transformation dominated political, engineering and scientific discussions. They were the products of engineering ingenuity, political controversies, naval ideologies and the fight for authority in nineteenth-century Britain.Shaping the Royal Navy provides the first cultural history of technology, authority and the Royal Navy in the years of Pax Britannica. It places the story firmly within the currents of British history to reconstruct the controversial and high-profile nature of naval architecture. Ship design entailed far more than technical knowledge and skills: politicians battled for power and control over naval policy and expenditure; naval officers grew anxious over losing control of the ship to engineers in both the dockyard and engine room; engineers struggled for authority over the design process; and scientists sought to find a role within industrial society. The technological transformation of the Navy dominated the British government and engineering communities. This book explores its history, revealing how ship design became a modern science, the ways that actors competed for authority within the British state and why the nature of naval power changed. Shaping the Royal Navy offers a novel study of the social, cultural and political construction of military technology.