Regent (ship, 1815)
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The Regent was the first steamship built in London to be used for commercial purposes.
technology
The ship was built in a shipyard in Rotherhithe and equipped with two single-cylinder steam engines from Maudslay, Sons and Field in August 1815 . They had pistons with a diameter of 50.8 cm and a stroke of 81.3 cm and weighed 5 t together with the drive and the paddle wheels . Initially, the ship had a paddle wheel 8 feet (2.44 m ) in diameter in the center. However, since this was too small and did not dip far enough into the water, a paddle wheel 10 feet (3.05 m) in diameter and 5 feet (1.52 m) wide was attached to each side.
history
During a test drive, she drove the 6.7 km route from Blackfriars Bridge to Battersea Bridge within 30 minutes . For the 7.9 km long way back upstream to London Bridge , the Regent took 52 minutes. Because of this good performance, it replaced the Thames package ship on the route between London and Margate . On October 11, 1816, Marc Isambard Brunel offered the Royal Navy the regent for test drives to test the suitability of steamers as tugs for warships. After the test, the Admiralty was convinced of the suitability.
On July 2, 1817, the Regent caught fire at Whitstable . Since the chimney of the ship was insufficiently insulated from the wood, this fire caught. The fire could not be extinguished and the captain could only let the ship run aground on the coast. The ship burned completely, but nobody was harmed.
Web links
literature
- PJG Ransom: Bell's Comet: How a Paddle Steamer Changed the Course of History , 2013, p. 42 ( online )