Composite boats were sailboats built with wood planks on a wrought iron frame, providing more interior space. Copper coating on wooden boards reduced drag and weed growth. The design was strong and eliminated hogging and sagging. Brass bolts secured the planks. The composite boat was the last development of fast commercial sailing ships due to advances in steam power and the opening of the Suez Canal.
A composite boat is a sailboat built by placing planks of wood on a wrought iron frame. The use of the wrought iron frame of a composite boat provides additional interior space due to the lack of the large wooden beams required for strength. The composite ship design was used due to the inability to clad iron hulls with copper. This was done to combat the formation of skid-inducing weed growth that is common in warm tropical waters. Wooden boards could be covered with the copper coating, thus reducing drag and creating faster trips while sailing.
Production of the composite ship began in the mid-19th century and was effectively the last vestige in the development of the fast commercial sailing ship. The wrought iron frame inside a ship created a very strong backbone that would resist hogging and sinking while loaded. Hogging is the tendency of the boat to rise in the middle while sagging, as the name suggests, is the tendency of the boat to sag in the middle. The use of iron in the composite boat instead of the large wooden beams typically used in boat construction creates much more space inside the boat while maintaining a solid design.
While nails could not be used to secure the wood planks to the composite ship’s iron frame, brass bolts were used due in part to brass’s ability to resist rust and corrosion. In the early years of shipbuilding, copper plating was the only known method of coating a ship’s hull to prevent the formation and growth of organic materials that were so rich in tropical waters. This growth would slow down the sailboat substantially, costing the ship’s owners extra money in wages and lost cargo contracts.
As experimentation with iron plate hulls became common, builders realized that organic material would also grow on unprotected iron. Test applications of the copper coating on the iron plate produced bimetallic corrosion, a phenomenon detailing chemical imbalance and reaction between two dissimilar metals. The composite boat eliminated this problem by allowing the copper to cover the wooden exterior of the boat. Soon all the major boat builders were forced to create a composite boat to compete with the fast sailing boats. Advances in steam power as well as the opening of the Suez Canal ended the reign of the composite ship.
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