December 1 , 2014
We commemorate William Froude’s birth day of 28 November 1810 with the traditional wreath laying. Today 135 years after his passing his work still remains superior to even today’s strongest computers cannot to replace model tests in their entirety by CFD calculations.
William Froude was an engineer and naval architect who captured and formulated the principals of ship resistance, propulsion and efficiency. He spent a great deal of painstaking attention to detail which ensured the accuracy of his work.
The Admiralty who was in command of the Royal Navy in England, assigned Froude to conduct a series of experiments on the resistance of models. Froude then introduced tow tank experiments and devoted his energy on conducting these experiments to determine the resistance and propulsion one model scale ships. This method is still used at the highest level in research and development today to simulate real sea conditions.
In 1876 he received the gold medal of the Royal Society for “his researches, both theoretical and experimental, on the Behaviour of Ships”
In the late 1800’s when South Africa was still a British colony Froude visited Simonstown on the invitation of Commodore Richards, as a leisure trip on the H.M.S. Boadicea and was about to return to England, refreshed in body and mind, when he was seized with an attack of dysentery (which is the inflammation of intestines), and unfortunately died at Admiralty House, Simon’s Town, after a short illness, on the 4th of May, 1879.
His body was followed to the grave in the Naval Cemetery by the officers and men of Her Majesty’s ships then in Simon’s Bay, in recognition of the great services he had rendered to the Royal Navy and was buried with full naval honours
His work lives on among us with his name imbedded in classroom, statues, and institutions in almost every maritime university around the world and is a privilege to pay our respects for him today.
