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 of vessels, often directly 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 third of four, is on 'Cigar Ships', which, as Guthrie drily notes: 'in this context refers to the shape of the vessel, not her cargo, and this group of steamers represents the railwayman's approach to naval architecture' as they were conceived by the Winans brothers who came from a family of brilliant and wealthy railroad engineers. Their first cigar vessel was built at Baltimore in 1858.

To get a modern historian’s perspective on these extraordinary ships Dr Sam Willis with Stephen McLoughlin, a naval historian of immense knowledge of the period and the many maritime innovations it produced.

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