Protecting ships against shipworms and fouling during the Industrial Revolution era

Metallic sheathing of ships’ hulls was one of the major advances in shipping technology during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Both public and private actors in Britain’s naval-industrial complex played major roles in the development of techniques that had both military and civil uses. Evidence from Lloyd’ Registers shows how various sheathing materials were adopted by merchant shipowners between the 1770s and 1850s. In the aggregate wood gave way to copper, then to yellow metal and, to a lesser extent, zinc. Metallic sheathing was almost universally adopted in the East India, slave and Caribbean trades and somewhat later became widespread in Mediterranean and North Atlantic shipping as well as on early wooden steamships. Another sample from Lloyd’s Registers shows when in their working lives ships were sheathed and how often the sheathing had to be replaced.