Why Are Ships Painted Red?

you know one of the really interesting things about classic ocean liners like the Titanic or the Queen Mary is just how much of the ship sits underwater this is known as the ship's draft the distance from the waterline to the KE the ship's backbone Queen Mary had an incredible 39 ft or almost 12 M draft that's about the height of a three-story building one thing you might have noticed in pictures and paintings is the Striking color red we all know even subconsciously that ships seem to always be painted red below the waterline but why I mean ships exist at Sea why not paint it blue or green or something nautical is it to hide rust or some kind of weird ages old tradition that still followed blindly today well it's an interesting story or at least I think it is so sit back and relax as I your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs explain why ships are painted [Music] red ship sail on the sea I know it's a shocking Revelation it's a very unstable and unpredictable environment it's actually more unpredictable than Melbourne's weather if you're from here you'll understand that one waves can run stories tall and strip the paint from bare Steel Salt crusts and deposits rusts anything that isn't painted and turns it brown seawater rots wood and fabric it's a harsh unfriendly environment but a select few mad humans have been going out to the Sea for centuries the Mariner a strange specimen of humankind seems to enjoy this B kind of Lifestyle so when they set out to sea like their ancestors did back in the 1500s through to the 1800s their ships were fairly simple they relied on the Wind to get their speed but they were made out of Timber fairly dense and reliable Timber too like Oak te or mahogany but all timey ship Builders encountered a few unique problems see getting across the ocean as quickly as possible was a big deal in the centuries before steam engines and airplanes so every single bit of speed that could be squeezed out of a ship's design was Paramount pretty early on Sailors realized that ships sitting in Harbors waiting to be loaded or overhauled began to gather unwanted inhabitants yes of course they were rats but below the waterline something strange was happening seaweed Barnacles and thick Marine growth it began to build up on the ship's Hull aesthetically speaking nobody really cared but it had a huge impact on the ship's speed with clumps of marine growth on the hull the ship couldn't as easily slice through the water it would slow down so ships had to regular be scraped clean of these unwanted hitchhikers it was a problem back in 1600 and it remains a problem today it's hilarious to think that with all these years of technological advancement even in the Golden Age of the ocean liner the mammoth luxury ships like Queen Mary had to be regularly docked and scraped clean but in the days of sale it wasn't just Marine growth that had to be stopped the ship itself had to be protected from being eaten away shipw worms are a nasty little thing technically a kind of mollusk that eats ships specifically the wood that was used to build them back in the day sailing ships were made of Timber and over time these little critters would borrow in and do some serious damage the ancient Greeks had this issue their fancy Wooden Ships were being eaten away below the waterline so they started attaching lead plates for protection but by the days of sale lead in contact with iron bolts would cause galvanic corrosion so something else had to be used the answer was copper and sailing ships had thin copper plates nailed onto their wooden holes the copper could be easily replaced and the ships would still need to be dry docked for scraping to get all those nasty Barnacles off but at least now shipw worms had been mostly defeated and that's why in a lot of paintings and pictures ships from the Golden Age of sail either have a golden color at their waterline or kind of like a Milky green color because as copper ages in water it turns green nowadays shipwrecks from that period often have their wood long gone eaten Away by sea creatures and bacteria and all that's left behind is the copper sheathing that once would have protected it anyway I'm getting sidetracked as usual by the time Iron and Steel held ships had come along the copper sheathing wasn't necessary anymore because shipworm can't borrow into metal but using metal hulls presented new and exciting challenges for ships Builders and operators for one thing Marine growth was still a thing but now ships were getting bigger and bigger and scraping them would have to be a less common occurrence not only that but steel an iron rust they corrode in water which means an unprotected Hull would be eaten away and the ship could sink the answer was very simple and any ex Navy personnel watching this can confirm that the old adage is it's rusted you paint it but paint it with what you can't just use something like a house paint that stuff would be stripped right off by the water now a special kind of thick protective paint would need to be used and one was developed that could serve two special purposes and guess what color it was it was back in 1865 when a chap named Heinrich raan from Germany patented a paint formula that was designed specifically to protect the underside of ship's hulls by this point iron hulled ships were everywhere and a number of formulas have been put forward to varying degrees of success as many as 300 of them baran's mixture would be in use from 1865 for decades and it wasn't just any ordinary old kind of paint because its 10th ingredient was arsenic raan's formula Ed these ingredients wood alcohol or methylated Spirits shellac thick turpentine linseed oil common Rosen which is a kind of resin Gip poot which is another kind of resin tar Spirit Tallow Venetian red remember this one arsenic zinc oxide and Mercury oxide now those are some pretty serious ingredients using shellac and two kinds of resin meant that the paint would be insanely Hardy once allowed to dry and set in place and the Arsenic and Mercury oxide would make the paint toxic to marine life Barnacles and Marine growth wouldn't accumulate because they'd be poison n over time the paint would need to be touched up of course but it would mean ship's undersides would need to be scraped way less often it's that ninth ingredient though Venetian red that gave the formula its color Venetian red is a pigment the color of paint that dates back to ancient times for one simple reason it's naturally occurring it's made from iron oxide that you can find in rocks because of that it is insanely abundant and crazy cheap to make it's been used in everything from cave paintings to Medieval art in the 1600s the British army began to use it to dye their jackets for easy identification in battle this was the birth of the infamous Red Coats a tradition that continues to this day Phoenician red is extremely durable the whole point of the paint formula was durability after all the ships would be expected to go many months in between dry docking and repainting so the paint had to last the formula the mixture of durable pigments and oxides resulted in a red paint that protected the ships from corrosion and Marine growth and greatly increase their durability and the special paint was called anti fowling so now you have a striking color that is born out of necessity but pretty soon it becomes tradition ship's holes just become red some companies even begin to use it as a branding tool despite the hardiness of the paint the waterline around the ship is an area of a lot of action tugboats lighters and tenders they all bump and scrape along the ship's Hull very often in the golden days of ocean liners that area ended up looking like a real mess the card line didn't like this about their ships in the late 1800s they wanted Theirs to look the smartest in the world so they introduced a thing called a boot topping a boot topping is an added layer of paint in any color that sits on top of the anti fowling because it looks good antifouling on ships isn't a bright red it's a kind of dull rusty color but kunard line wanted their ships to look special so they introduced a bright red boot topping with a thin white line on photos of their ships in Dry Dock you can just see where the antifouling ends and and the boot topping begins they emphasize this in their postcards and their posters with bright red water lines and smart card red funnels the ships looked very smart indeed this is a tradition that card continues to this day Queen Mary 2 the only operational ocean liner in the world sails with a bright red boot topping sitting on top of her antifoul other ships have used some strange boot topping colors at one point the Queen Elizabeth 2 had a blue boot topping which the public hated so much the qard line changed it right back to Red in the 50s and 60s Orient lines ships used a green boot topping hell most cruise ships Today Show a blue boot topping at the water line you might think the whole Underside is blue but it's just for looks get the cruise ship in dry do and most of the time you'll find it's all an illusion and the underside is that same old dull red of course nowadays there are so many pigments and choices that a ship's antifoul can really be painted any color but using a naturally occurring pigment like Venetian red is the cheapest option and after all why break with tradition of course using Arsenic and modern day antifoul is generally frowned upon there are a whole host of biocides used in antifouling of modern ships poisons designed to kill Marine growth before it can grow on the hole occasionally though a bioside is deemed too harmful and it's banned this year a bioside called cyber Trine was banned in ships because studies found that it was building up and was surprise surprise extremely toxic to marine animals and organisms nowadays organic biocides are preferred but it's shocking what we've put into the ocean in the quest to prevent our ships from rusting everything from heavy metals to lead and arsenic to the pesticide DDT so I ship's red well because it's cheap it's durable and now it's a tradition after all if it a broke don't fix it ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs thank you so much for watching this video If you enjoyed it please leave a comment below don't forget to subscribe to the channel because we get new videos out weekly if you want to support my work and get really cool perks like behind the scenes and Early Access please visit my patreon in the link in the description below or sign up as a YouTube member come and join the crew as always stay safe stay happy I'll see you again next time

Channel: Oceanliner Designs

Views: 1,390,618

Keywords: great ocean liners, maritime history, ocean liners, famous oceanliners, ships documentary, history of ships, engineering, history, ships, documentary, origins explained, world history project, animated history, open educational resources, titanic, shipwreck, sinking, boats, ocean, disaster, tragedy

Id: 05NL_yKpVcU

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2024