"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message ...
"Andrew Toppan" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 20:33:51 -0400, "Charles Talleyrand"
wrote:

I'm interested in any time period from ancient Egypt to maybe Napoleon.
I'm just trying to get an order of magnitude informed guess.
Significant Google searching didn't help. Can anyone here help?

10 seconds of Googling for HMS VICTORY indicates that she "cost £63,176. For
comparison, this would be equivalent to the cost of building an aircraft
carrier today."

http://www.hms-victory.com/factsandfigures.htm



And the USS Constitution cost $302,718 in 1797 US dollars,
although the Brits could build a 74 gun ship for less.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/s...nstitution.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Al...43/supfrig.htm


I'm trying to understand these numbers in terms of something like
manhours needed to build the ship. I note that the pay for a US
sailor was 10-17 US$ per month. Therefore it took something
like 25,000 man-months to build a Constitution (or a British 74).
Does this seem reasonable?

If you're curious, the Constition was 3x over budget in part due to
political problems with Congressional funding, and is therefore a bad
example to use. That's why I'm asking for other examples. And please
don't pull this thread into a 'Congress has always sucked' direction. Can
we please have one thread without current politics?

Can someone offer other examples, particularly from a different
time period and/or a different sized ship? That would be
most helpful.



J. Richard Steffy, Wooden Shipbuilding and the Interpetation of
Shipwrecks, Texas A&M University Press, 1994.

Keith Willshaw wrote:
"Vince Brannigan" wrote in message
...


Staale Sannerud wrote:
Including the price of the guns in the ship building price would

make sense if the guns were cast especially for that ship, which

sometimes

did happen esp. with bronze guns. They were around 4x as expensive as

iron

ones by the way.

do you have a cite for this 4x figure.

vince



The table at
http://www.cwartillery.org/art-cost.html

shows bronze guns costing between 4 times and 6 times
an iron gun in the early 1860's

Keith


not for gun of about the same size.

the 3 inch ordnance rifle cost $330 the Comparably sized 12pounder
napoleon cost 490. Most of the cost of a cannon is in the boring and
turning , which don't change much with the size.

Vince

"Jack Linthicum" wrote in message
om...


Can someone offer other examples, particularly from a different
time period and/or a different sized ship? That would be
most helpful.



J. Richard Steffy, Wooden Shipbuilding and the Interpetation of
Shipwrecks, Texas A&M University Press, 1994.

While doing a little research thus lunchtime I came across the
following site which has some interesting data regarding the
early USN

http://www.iment.com/maida/familytre...psonletter.htm

No construction costs I'm afraid but some information
on running costs

Keith

It is not going to be easy to equate pre-17th century cost to the
present but once you get an idea of labor and material it will probably
be good from the first century up through the 16th. While designs
changed materials and construction methods did not change very much and
while material prices varied over time long term inflation was virtually
unheard of.

I can give you a small modern day comparison of labor if not total cost.
I have a favorite stopping point in Bay des Cays Haiti that I have
stopped by several times over the years. For the past 2 years there has
been a group of 3 men directed by an incredibly old guy building a 65'
schooner on the beach. They are doing it the old fashioned way with
axes and adzes, pegs, oakum and tar. Keel was laid in February 2000 and
when we stopped by in May of this year they were preparing to set the
masts.

I figure they can only work 10 hours a day probably 300 days a year so a
SWAG would be 18,000 hours + - maximum if my math is right. (2 yrs*300
days*10 hours*3 men.) Actual time is probably a lot less because they
had to spend a lot of time scrounging material. (We donated an old
blown out genoa and a worn halyard.)

Other adjustments include:
Labor and material requirement goes up as the cube of the length so an
85' hull would probably require twice the labor of a 65' one.

A 15th century trading vessel would have been a bit more elaborate than
this boat and a war ship considerably more.

A 15th century ship yard would have more tools and equipment to work
with than these poor fellows.

Charles Talleyrand wrote:
I'm trying to understand the cost of building an oceangoing ship in
some terms I can understand. I great answer would be of the form
"To build an 80 ft sailing vessel in 1492 took about 14,000 man/hours" or
something like that.

Or "One could buy a 100 ft sailing vessel in Venice for 9000 florins,
and each florin could hire a skilled worker for a week."

I'm interested in any time period from ancient Egypt to maybe Napoleon.
I'm just trying to get an order of magnitude informed guess.

Significant Google searching didn't help. Can anyone here help?






--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

"Vince Brannigan" wrote in message
...


Keith Willshaw wrote:
"Vince Brannigan" wrote in message
...


Staale Sannerud wrote:
Including the price of the guns in the ship building price would

make sense if the guns were cast especially for that ship, which

sometimes

did happen esp. with bronze guns. They were around 4x as expensive as

iron

ones by the way.

do you have a cite for this 4x figure.

vince



The table at
http://www.cwartillery.org/art-cost.html

shows bronze guns costing between 4 times and 6 times
an iron gun in the early 1860's

Keith


not for gun of about the same size.

the 3 inch ordnance rifle cost $330 the Comparably sized 12pounder
napoleon cost 490. Most of the cost of a cannon is in the boring and
turning , which don't change much with the size.


You are comparing Apples and Oranges

The napoleon was a smoothbore and its production involved
much less boring and turning than a rifle

The true comparison is between an iron
smoothbore and a napoleon. The columbiads
while admittedly larger than the napoleons
were also smoothbores

Keith

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message
...

[ SNIP ]
Can someone offer other examples, particularly from a different
time period and/or a different sized ship? That would be
most helpful.

I offered one example - the bomb vessel series from 1692 - in another post
in this thread. Keith helpfully corrected me on contemporary wages,
suggesting that skilled labour at the time (shipwrights etc) was probably
closer to 25 pounds per individual per annum.

The construction cost estimates that I cited for those bomb vessels were
2828 pounds total - of that, 1919 pounds were for the timber, planks,
trenails, pitch, tar, mast, sundry material and workmanship, masts and
yards, and 909 pounds were for furnishing with rigging and ground tackle
sails and sea stores for the boatswain's and carpenter's store, and eight
months provision of sea stores.

This Navy Board estimate does not include ordnance stores.

Again, without including ordnance stores, Chris Ware states that the total
cost of purchased/converted bombs in the period 1690-95 was 13,315 pounds
(this for eight vessels), and 31,872 pounds for fourteen purpose-built
bombs. For purposes of comparison, he mentions that with this total
expenditure (45,187 pounds) one could have purchased two Third Rates
(without sea and ordnance stores).

Costs of the INFERNAL class of bombs (late 1750's) ranged from 3355 to 3758
pounds. These are building costs only. In fact, a average of another 400
pounds was expended per vessel of this class to fit them for service (i.e.
fitting the mortar beds), and the cost would still not include the ordnance.

As another complementary set of figures, from the same source, we find that
the costs of fitting out a 1690's bomb with mortars and ordnance stores was:

ca. 3480 pounds for a 13in mortar and all materials and officers to attended
(wages for Ordnance staff)
60 pounds for the mortar @ 12s per ton
140 pounds for two carriages
700 pounds for five hundred 12 1/4 inch bombs (the HE ammo)
175 pounds for 125 carcasses (incendiary ammo)
ca. 14 pounds for 750 fuzes
480 pounds for a 100 ton tender

Of course, one then still has to add wages for officers and seamen who
manned the vessel. As this helps also give an idea of the costs of a ship,
I'll note that Michael Lewis ("The Navy of Britain") mentions that in the
13th and 14th centuries the average seaman received 9 shillings a month.
These wages dropped considerably in the following few centuries. In the mid
1600's the wages for a seaman were 14-15 shillings per month, but
considering inflation, things had actually gotten worse. Of course, at close
to ten pounds per annum, in the 17th century, the average sailor was doing
better than most. After the Spithead mutiny in 1797, pay was roughly a
shilling per day (assuming you actually got paid).

If you look at Web sources like
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.html, I think you'll find
that there is a great deal of information about wages and costs at various
times.

AHS

Keith Willshaw wrote:


The napoleon was a smoothbore and its production involved
much less boring and turning than a rifle

The true comparison is between an iron
smoothbore and a napoleon. The columbiads
while admittedly larger than the napoleons
were also smoothbores

I agree that rifling adds to cost, but not that much. The cost of boring
(drill the main center tube) and turnign (trunnions) is the same. Bronz if
anything is cheaper to bore and turn than iron.

Vince

Andrew Toppan vented spleen or mostly mumbled...

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 20:33:51 -0400, "Charles Talleyrand"
wrote:

I'm interested in any time period from ancient Egypt to maybe
Napoleon. I'm just trying to get an order of magnitude informed guess.
Significant Google searching didn't help. Can anyone here help?

10 seconds of Googling for HMS VICTORY indicates that she "cost
£63,176. For comparison, this would be equivalent to the cost of
building an aircraft carrier today."


Awww, no....

That could only build one of those cut rate RN CVs to be, you know, two
thrudeck crusiers welded together, one island removed, and a bit of
planking laid across the gap.

TMO

I suspect that for most sailing warships, especially the 1st and 2nd Rates,
the cost of the "Pupkeep" far outweighed those of the original "pup".

Keith Willshaw wrote:



The cost of boring
(drill the main center tube) and turnign (trunnions) is the same.

However the machinery required to cut rifling in a cannon
bore is of an entirely different order from the simple boring
process adopted for a smoothbore.

no it is not. you still advance the cutterbut you synchronize the
forward and rotational action. its called a "screw cutting"

There's a good reason
why rifled cannon didnt appear on the battlefield before
the 1850's and the rise of the machine tool is a large part of it.
It wasnt until 1841 that the first standardised screw threads
were introduced by Whitworth for example.

Does not affect cannon. all you need for cannon is a precisly cut tool
feeding controller. Cannon barrels did not require the precision that a
machine screw required.

Moreover the Parrott's were reinforced with wrought
iron hoops on the breech.


Sure, but they did burst. a lot, because the thermal effects werenot
well understood.



It being softer thats hardly surprising.

but you could also make guns lighter than an equivalent Iron gun. which
is why iron was preferred for naval and caost defense gusn and bronze
for field guns.

Vince

"vincent Brannigan" wrote in message
...


Keith Willshaw wrote:



The cost of boring
(drill the main center tube) and turnign (trunnions) is the same.

However the machinery required to cut rifling in a cannon
bore is of an entirely different order from the simple boring
process adopted for a smoothbore.

no it is not. you still advance the cutterbut you synchronize the
forward and rotational action. its called a "screw cutting"


Yes I know

There's a good reason
why rifled cannon didnt appear on the battlefield before
the 1850's and the rise of the machine tool is a large part of it.
It wasnt until 1841 that the first standardised screw threads
were introduced by Whitworth for example.

Does not affect cannon. all you need for cannon is a precisly cut tool
feeding controller. Cannon barrels did not require the precision that a
machine screw required.


But without screw threads how do you make your "precisly cut tool
feeding controller. "

Such devices were made possible by Whitworth and his colleagues
and the simple fact is the maching of a rifled barrel requires a fair degree
of accuracy if you are to have consistent accuracy which is rather
the point. After all until 1745 cannon were basically hollow cast
with maching being confined to cleaning out the bore.

Moreover the Parrott's were reinforced with wrought
iron hoops on the breech.


Sure, but they did burst. a lot, because the thermal effects werenot
well understood.


Its more to do with the fact that cast iron is a poor material
under tension.



It being softer thats hardly surprising.

but you could also make guns lighter than an equivalent Iron gun. which
is why iron was preferred for naval and caost defense gusn and bronze
for field guns.


Actually bronze guns were preferred for all uses until such time
as iron was available in adequate quality as well as quantity.
They lasted better and were more consistent but the huge
reduction in the cost of producing iron and increases in quality
around 1776 with the introduction of the use of coke
made them very much cheaper

Keith