Blasco De Garay was a Spanish Naval Captain and a titled
noble. He claimed designs for many new and wondrous inventions, from
turning saltwater to fresh, to diving apparatus, a crude submarine and a device
to keep light lit underwater. However, it
was his purported steam engine, one to move a ship without sails, that captivated
Spanish historians and lead to De Garay being named inventor of the World’s first
steamboat. Allegedly, a steam-powered ship sailed the waters of Barcelona
harbor on June 17th, 1543. She was named
La Trinidad, a roughly 200-ton cargo ship.
Large paddlewheels were installed amidships. Once fitted-out she moved and turned around
the calm of Barcelona harbor at about the same speed as under sail. There
were officials of the Crown in attendance, witnessing it. King Charles V was advised of the event’s
success, and given a positive report, money flowed from the Royal treasury into
the pockets of De Garay. But was it a steam powered ship? One would think that such a giant leap of
technological significance, propelling a ship without sails, would capture someone’s
attention or pen. But the whole tale was
relatively unknown, forgotten, until the dawn of the 19th century.
Spanish historian Martín Fernández de Navarrete published an
article in 1826 stating that De Garay had indeed accomplished the miracle of
moving a ship under steam power, the first nation to do so. With that the honor of such belonged to Spain.
Navarrete’s source was Tomás González, the director of the Spanish Royal
Archives, who, in 1825, had just happened to discover a trove of documents from
the 16th-century describing the affair.
According to González:
"Blasco de Garay, captain of the sea, proposed in 1543 to the
emperor and King Charles V, an ingenuity to make the older ships and boats run,
even in times of calm, without the need for oars or sails. Despite the
obstacles and contradictions experienced by this project, the emperor agreed to
try it, as was the case in the port of Barcelona, on June 17, 1543.
Garay never wanted to express his ingenuity openly, but it was seen at the time
of the rehearsal, which consisted of a large cauldron of boiling water,
and of complicated wheels of motion on either side of the vessel . The experience was made with a
200-ton nao from Colibre to unload wheat to Barcelona, called the
Trinity, its captain Pedro de Scarza"
To throw cold sea-water all over this theory; realistically,
a 16th century steam powered vessel of this size would be completely unfeasible.
The machinery required would have been very crude and cumbersome,
requiring a large engine, large boilers and fuel. González points to a “large cauldron of
boiling water” aboard, teasing us and letting us assume that had something to
do with a Renaissance steam engine’s existence.
Fernández de Navarrete took this evidence and used it to craft a
narrative, as others have since. But a
pot of boiling water and sidewheels make not a steam engine.
One copper pot of boiling water wouldn't have
sufficed in creating enough steam to move two paddlewheels, even less so when
combined with water resistance. Coal was not widely seen as a heat source in
this period, so it would be wood that fired the boilers. The amount of wood
needed to make this all work would be tremendous, taking up ridiculous amounts
of room within the interior of the ship.
Between the steam engine, the boilers (it would require more than one
“cauldron”) and the weight of wood necessary to generate enough steam, La
Trinidad might very well have capsized, and De Garay’s Renaissance version of show
and tell would take place at the bottom of the harbor…
Blasco De Garay never claimed to have invented a steam engine
nor did he power a ship with one. He stated as such in a letter to
Charles V, that his design was not to move ships by steam, but by human hands:
"the ingenuity was not
moving by steam, but thanks to men who manually rolled wheels with shovels that
moved the boat"
Paddlewheels were indeed attached to La Trinidad and
she did paddle about the harbor. As
stated earlier, this happened and was witnessed, but it was sailors manually turning the wheels, not steam. Again, all the confusion seems to derive from
González and him mentioning a pot. The
truth of the matter is this. Two separate inventions were developed and tested by Blasco
De Garay on that day in June. Manually
operated paddlewheels hanging off the sides of a ship, and a device to
desalinate water. Both are documented
and can legitimately be tied to De Garay. The first eliminated the need for sail
or tow, hastening docking as well as the process of moving ships to and from
the harbor mouth without reliance on wind.
A fancy and expensive replacement for oars, which are cheap and don’t
require bags full of escudos to complete the job. The second and likely the more important of
the two could eliminate water storage aboard a ship, which takes up a
tremendous amount of cargo space. If a
Spanish long range galleon were able to make fresh water from the vast salt-seas
about her, space in the hold previously used to store large barrels of drinking
water could accept more lucrative cargo like gold and silver from the New
World or luxury goods from Asia.
Captain Blasco De Garay never spoke, much less wrote, of
a steam engine. No 16th-century record or
plan for a device of this sort exists in Spain or anywhere else,
making its existence a bit unlikely. Then again, Renaissance inventors
were notoriously secretive. Perhaps De
Garay wished to keep his designs and prototype away from covetous eyes…or
more likely, it was all made up to satisfy a nation in the throes of a mid-life
crisis. The reality is that two crucial
and very important innovations with relevant naval use were demonstrated and showcased,
witnessed by high government officials, who represented the King and his purse. I suspect purse is the “key” word.
What If?
But what if Blasco De Garay had invented the steamship
centuries before it appeared on a widespread scale. Would Spain have taken advantage of it? If
this invention had existed, and the Spanish capitalized on it, can you imagine the
Armada Campaign of 1588 and how it might have turned out? A Spanish fleet under steam, landing Spanish
soldiers on English shores unopposed because the English Navy, still at the
mercy of the wind, is unable to catch them.
Spanish steam powered galleons sinking English warships one after the
other, outpacing every tactic, defense and maneuver a ship under sail alone can
make. Spanish warships steaming up the Thames River and bombarding London. Would
the English Navy have progressed to steam power as well? Could they have
developed or stolen the technology and implemented it for themselves? Would 1588 have been the first “clash of the steamships”?
In the End…
Blasco De Garay’s inventions never went very far, his work seeming
to pass away along with him in 1552. But
as a propaganda tool, he was of some use in soothing Spanish pride. Enough so that a paddle-wheel steam warship was
named for him. Incidentally, he did get the
paddlewheel right. The whole thing is as simple as that, no hot air needed.
