Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century is the title of a pamphlet written in 1966 by J Guthrie, then an employee of the maritime classification society Lloyds Register. It was written for private circulation amongst the staff. Guthrie realised that, as the premier classification society Lloyds Register were able to produce a very good technical description, often directltly from plans, reports and records of conventional ships. But this left a gap in their knowledge - 'But what of the unorthodox ships, the rebels from tradition: those monsters and freaks of the nautical world which, throughout the whole of the 19th century attained transient fame (or notoriety) before disappearing from the scene for ever?'. Guthrie's pamphlet aimed to answer that question by exploring some of the most radical nautical designs of the nineteenth century. This episode, the first of four, looks at Monitors, a vessel type named after the original ship Monitor, built by the Union Navy in 1861 during the American Civil War. She led to an entire class of vessels all of which shared her curious design: an ironclad warship designed to float only just above the surface, with a single turret, to present as small a target as possible. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Andrew Choong Han Lin, a curator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.

Subsequent episodes will look at circular ships, cigar ships and the unique Cleopatra, an iron vessel designed and constructed for the sole purpose of bringing an ancient Egyptian obelisk to London from Alexandria.

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