"The painful transition from Sail to Steam: 1840s" Topic

"I'm fascinated by the way that navies – and most especially the Royal Navy – adapted organisationally and professionally to the advent of steam power from the 1840s onwards. The transition was long and painful – some five decades – and during this period the majority of vessels carried both forms of propulsion. An important factor was that, despite the increasing efficiency of steam power, sails provided a high degree of independence from shore support and fuel supply, especially on foreign station.

I was therefore all the more interested to find an extract from a book entitled "Two Admirals", published in 1909 by Admiral John Moresby (1830 – 1922) which relates to the experiences of his father, also an admiral, as well as of himself, in the period 1786 to 1877. The younger Moresby as responsible for the exploration of the coast of New Guinea in the 1870s and Port Moresby, Papua-New Guinea's capital, and which was to play such a vital role in WW2, was named after him…"
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