Most people know what cruise ships look like, these days.
But around 160 years ago, they would have been confronted with several of the oddest looking ships that were ever built.
Possibly the strangest of them all was The Swan of the Exe, designed by Captain George Peacock of Starcross, built by Dixons of Exmouth, and launched in September 1860.
Swanning around the oceans
She resembled a gigantic white swan and was 17 ½ ft long, stood about 16 ft above water, and carried fifteen bemused passengers. The two huge sails that propelled the ship resembled an enormous swan’s wings.
The vessel’s long elegant curved prow was topped with the head of a swan with beady black eyes.
Fluttering from a brass rod in the huge cygnus’s bill was an azure silken banner on which the name ‘Swan of the Exe’ was worked in gold.
The Illustrated London News of October 13, 1860 described this unusual vessel as ‘an elegant yacht, the very similitude of a gigantic white swan which may now often be seen sunning its wings on the shining waters of the estuary of the river whence it derives its appellation.’
Alas, Victorian sea-going travellers who preferred to travel discreetly gave it the bird.
Round the world
Then there was the circular ships ordered from a British shipyard by the Imperial Russian Navy’s Admiral Popov in 1875.
The first of several round ships, each had a diameter of 121 ft. The trouble was they went round in circles and were far too slow to be of any value to the Russian fleet.
Winans’ cigar ships looked like submarines but were actually designed to carry twenty passengers across the Atlantic in four days, above the waves rather than under them.
They were also known as roller-ships and the early version was 180 ft long, with a diameter of 16 ft, and driven by steam engines operating a ring of propelling blades in the centre of the hull.
At least four cigar ships were designed and built between 1858 and 1866 by the Winans, a family successful railway engineers from Baltimore, Maryland, who moved into marine engineering with rather less success.
Some say their innovative technology attracted Jules Verne’s attention and led to the writing of his book, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
The end of me old cigar
Unfortunately, the design was faulty and the Winans’ steamer was modified extensively, ending up with a length of 235 feet.
Although they underwent several sea trials, the cigar ships never took an ocean voyage.
That’s why, like their namesake, they got stubbed out.
And then there was the ship that looked like an early motor car.
It was known as the buoyant propeller and built in the USA in 1880 by Captain Fryer.
The BP had huge hollow wheels with paddles fitted to their sides and was driven over the ocean’s surface like a car by its paddles. The idea was to create a craft that would overcome the rolling motion of the waves.
It didn’t.
The next time you take a gander at a 21st century cruise ship and complain that it looks like nothing less than a floating hotel, think on.
There are worse things at sea – at least there used to be.
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