Seppings on joining of timbers

In forming the frames or ribs, half the timbers only are united … the intermediate two timbers [termed fillings] being unconnected with each other, and merely resting on the outer planking, instead of giving support to it … This loose practice is, I believe, peculiar to the English merchant ship-builder; and indeed was persued till very lately even in His Majesty's Navy, while the preferable system of connecting the ribs was common to other maritime powers.

… but the present mode of joining together the several pieces of the same rib, is also highly objectionable. It is done by the introduction of a third piece, technically termed a chock or wedge piece … Of these chocks not only one in a hundred is ever replaced [i.e. reused] in the general repair of a ship; for they are not only found defective, but very generally to have communicated their own decay to the timbers to which they are attached. Besides this, the grain of the rib-pieces being much cut, to give them the curvature required, has a considerable share in weakening the general fabric. That they occasion a great consumption of materials, is obvious, as the ends of the two rib pieces must first be cut away, and then be replaced by the chock.

… the introduction of chocks was no doubt to procure that curvature which is so necessary in the formation of a ship, when crooked or compass timber became scarce …

Sir Robert Seppings writing in the Philosophical Transactions, 1820.

Transcribed by Lars.Bruzelius@udac.se

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