ABSTRACT
On 23 February 1849, MP Arthur Anderson brought forward a motion in the House of Commons that 'a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the practicability of providing, by means of the Commercial Steam Marine of the Country, a reserve Steam Navy available for the National Defence when required'.1 The idea was hardly novel. Merchant ships had, of course, played major roles in sailing navies; indeed, before the creation of standardized, purpose-built warship fleets in the mid-and late seventeenth centuries - products of the growing power of European states to raise the requisite financial resources to build them - navies had consisted of a small 'core' of 'the king's ships' which were hastily supplemented by armed merchant vessels upon threat or outbreak of hostilities. This role diminished substantially over the course of the eighteenth century as warship construction techniques, especially with regard to scantling and planking weight and thickness, diverged farther and farther from merchant shipbuilding practice. But even late in the sailing era merchant vessels were employed in a variety of auxiliary capacities; small ships - often captures - were 'purchased' into the service as despatch vessels and tenders, and heavily timbered ships - East Indiamen preeminent among them - were used for more warlike tasks.
