The Winans' Cigar Ships

[ONI-Defense]

The Winans family were well known in the 1800's for their contributions to the railroad industry, designing and building trains and railroad machinery, however they also experimented with nautical technology as well, designing and building spindle hulled vessels known as cigar ships.

The first one that I've drawn is the yacht Ross Winans, which actually was the last of the cigar ships to be built, though the Walter S. Winans was rebuilt at a later date in 1877. She was a 76.2 meter long ship that displaced 400 tons and was built in London (The Winans had moved their shipbuilding efforts to Britain due to the Civil War) where she traveled along the Thames during her 4 year career that ended in 1870 when she was scrapped in France. The ship proved to be a failure however as it was very slow and pitched easily in light seas, a flaw that lead to an incident were it capsized on the Thames, costing the lives of 4 crewmen.

[ONI-Defense]

The first Winans cigar ship, the SS Winans, which was built in 1858 to test the basic concept. The design consists of two hull sections with conical tips connected by a midship propeller shaft that drives a shrouded 9 bladed propeller. She began as a 54.9 meter steamer but was modified after her first trial, bringing her to 71.6 meter in length which is how the ship is depicted here. Ultimately the midship propeller proved to be a major flaw in the design, kicking up large amounts of spray and possibly ruining the beneficial effects of the streamlined hull(s). Another issue it had, a problem inherent to all of the cigar ships, was that it would pitch badly and were unstable.

The SS Winans ended its days tied up in Baltimore Harbor near the Winans' shipyard until she was scrapped on an unknown date.

[ONI-Defense]

This is the SS Walter S. Winans, a 21 meter long cigar boat built in 1865 as another part of the Winans' experiments. This particular vessel was a test platform for the different propeller layouts to be used on future cigar ships, using three small propellers on each end under the hull and two larger propellers at the end of of each spindle. A complex mechanism was designed for the vessel that allowed the engine to drive different propellers in various configurations.

In 1877 she was rebuilt, lengthened considerably to a new length of 46 meters. Two major modifications were that she now had two stern shafts driving three propellers each and that she now had a more conical stern and bow. At one point an experiment was done using four propellers on each shaft, however no reference images exist of this modification nor does the source material contain the date that this was tried.

Before her rebuild she made a cross-Channel voyage with only a single large propeller as an experimental passenger vessel; the rest of the propellers were removed along with their shafts to add two more passenger cabins.

[KHT]

Rather cool, I must say. What was the idea behind the Cigar ships and their shape?

[Hood]

A very interesting subject and well drawn too.

[ONI-Defense]

Thanks.

The idea behind them was to create fast steamers with an ultra-streamlined hull and with minimal superstructure. While the cigar ships were not successful, they did inspire the designers of early submarines and torpedo boats, and apparently even Jules Verne.

[Karle94]

The design flaw that made them unsuccessful is quite obvious. Yet, the concept and the ships themselves are rather cool. They look a lot like submarines, if not even more like semi-submersibles.

[eswube]

Excellent work! Great to see these ships here.

The book "Niezwykłe okręty" I mentioned in reference to SS Bessemer mentioned also - among others - Winans' ships. I thought it would be great to see the designs mentioned in that book made into SB scale and it seems that it happens in a way.

[Novice]

Interesting concept, and very beautiful execution of the ships themselves.

[Thiel]

I seem to remember reading about a type of barge designed around broadly similar lines being used in the Great Lakes for a while in the early parts of the 20th century