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The Great Wind Ships

By: Brian Stafford
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  • Summary

  • The development of sailing ships through their role in the exploration of the planet and their exploitation of the great trades that made the modern world, The series includes information on how a sailing ship works, its strengths and weaknesses, and how they made their way around the world. It traces their development from the fragile caravels that first made their way down the coast of Africa, to the world-circling clippers of the gold rush era and the mighty windjammers of the nitrate trade. The narrative examines how they revealed the East to Europe and how big the world actually was and exploited the trade in East Indian spices building enormous wealth. The sailing ships were the original instruments of globalisation. The story begins with the caravels and carracks of the early spice trade to the era Iberian galleons and to the fabled East Indiamen that ruled the oceans for over a century. The development of the frigate ushers in a new era of better performing full-rigged ships, but the real search for better speed and increased 'weatherliness' will go on elsewhere. It will be in the nefarious opium and slavery trades that this happens and the cult of 'hard-driving', pioneered by American skippers, will emerge. Meanwhile, raw material requirements of the burgeoning industrial revolution bring a new urgency to sea transport and with it the development of the liner services; so-called packet ships bring raw materials to Great Britain and take its manufactures to the rest of the world, mainly to and from the United States. Their trade is given an enormous boost by a lucrative back freight: emigration from Europe following famine and revolution there, to the United States and the outliers of the British Empire. The world needed more precious metals to finance its rapidly expanding trade and the discovery of gold in California and Australia leads to the emergence of the romantic clipper ships in which the craving for speed produces the most beautiful sailing ships ever built. But their reign is short-lived and constrained by the development of the steamship and the opening of the Suez Canal. Steamships needed strong hulls and the industrial revolution produced the ability to work steel which, when applied to sailing ship construction led to the development of the mighty windjammers, whose ability to go where steamships could not, saw them dominate long distance haulage of vital materials for decades. A sailing ship is a very efficient solar pump. It is a hollow box driven, in effect, by the sun. In an age of increasing environmental consciousness this vital property is not lost on modern shipping interests and experiments are taking place all over the world for at least a partial return to wind power.

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    Brian Stafford
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Episodes
  • Season 1 Ep 3

    Season 1 Ep 3
    May 16 2022

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    23 mins
  • Summary

    Summary
    Apr 20 2022

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    14 mins
  • The Great Wind Ships

    The Great Wind Ships
    Mar 28 2022
    Introduction

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    8 mins
World Economics Science
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