HMS Vanguard (1835) - Characteristics of Symondite Warships

Characteristics of Symondite Warships

Warships designed to the ideas of Captain Sir William Symonds (1782–1856) are known as Symondite warships, although the adjective has no official use as terminology. His intention was to give the Royal Navy an advantage in speed (under certain weather conditions), allowing it to force action.

Symondite warships were very broad, and had a sharp 'V'-shaped hull-form. (Preceding designs had a 'U'-shaped hull form.)

• Their wide beam gave them very high stability, which allowed them to carry nearly twice the power of sail as vessels of the old type. Unfortunately the Surveyor's department was understaffed, with the result that their stability was over-done. Symondite warships rolled quickly, heavily and sometimes unevenly. This made them poor gun platforms. The rapid rolling also caused the rigging to wear out more quickly than on previous designs.
• Because Symondite warships got their stability from their great beam, they did not need to carry so much iron ballast as previous designs.
• Their 'V'-shaped hull with its steeply rising floors was inconvenient for carrying stores.
• They had higher and wider gun decks than preceding designs. This gave the gun crews more space to work in, improving efficiency. It also helped their sailing performance, because they were carrying fewer guns for their size.
• They had an excessively raked stern. In some ships, modifications to their sterns to remedy defects in the original design left "the stern timbers badly arranged, weakly supported and held together with iron straps." The Symondite stern "lacked the defensive strength of the true round stern. There was simply too much glass to offer any protection to the crews of the stern battery in action."

Symondite warships were very sensitive to how they were stowed. If trimmed carefully, they were fast in moderate winds, thought they did not do as well as preceding designs in head seas, or rough seas.

Compared with previous designs, Symondite warships required 19% more loads of wood and 30% more man-hours to build.

Some of the Symondite warships were converted to steam in the 1850s (though not Vanguard). Their 'V'-shaped hull made it difficult to add a steam engine and boilers and to store coal. The extra weight was low in the ship, exacerbating their excess stability, which made their rolling even worse than before. (In fairness, at the time they were designed, it was never anticipated that they would be converted to steam.)