George Wightwick Rendel

George Wightwick Rendel (1833 - 9 October 1902) was a British engineer, and naval architect. He was closely associated with the Tyneside industrialist and armaments manufacturer, William George Armstrong.

Family

The son of the civil engineer James Meadows Rendel and his wife Catherine Harris. He was educated at Harrow. His brothers were Alexander Meadows Rendel, Hamilton Rendel and the Liberal MP Stuart Rendel, 1st Baron Rendel.

Elswick Ordnance Company

In 1859 Sir William Armstrong formed the Elswick Ordnance Company in order to supply guns for the British Army. Armstrong had been appointed as Engineer of Rifled Ordnance to the War Department, and to avoid a conflict of interests, he had no financial interest in the new company. George Rendell was one of three partners in the business, along with George Cruddas and Richard Lambert. Armstrong had been helped in his early career by James Rendell, and treated his son as a protégée. George lived in Armstrong’s house in Jesmond, Newcastle for three years. In 1864 the Elswick Ordnance Company was merged with Armstrong’s original company to form Sir W.G. Armstrong and Company. George Rendell was one of seven partners in the new company, and was in joint charge of the ordnance departments, together with Captain Andrew Noble.citebook |author=Dougan, David |date=1970 |title=The Great Gun-Maker |publisher=Sandhill Press Ltd |isbn=0946098239]

hip design

In 1867 Armstrong signed an agreement with a local shipbuilder, Dr. Charles Mitchell, whereby Mitchell’s shipyard would build warships and Armstrong’s company would provide the armaments. George Rendell was put in charge of the new venture and he designed the early ships produced by it. These were gunboats produced for the British Admiralty as well as for Italy, Brazil and Chile. The first of these was H.M.S. Staunch, delivered in 1868. Armstong’s Elswick yard became well known for its construction of cruisers, and Rendell designed many of these. He designed a series of 1,350 ton unarmoured 16 knot cruisers for the Chinese and Chilean navies. Following this, together with Armstrong, he designed the world’s first protected cruiser, the prototype being the “Esmeralda”. The design had an arched steel protective deck running from stem to stern just below the waterline. All of the vital parts of the ship were placed below the protective deck. The ship also had cork-filled cellular compartments to aid with buoyancy. The Esmeralda was built for Chile, but was bought by the Japanese and became the “Idzumi”. The Japanese navy in particular took several Rendell designed cruisers, with which they defeated the Russian navy at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905.citebook |author=McKenzie, Peter |date=1983 |title=W.G. Armstrong |publisher=Longhirst Press |isbn=]

Naval guns

Rendell worked on the design of large naval guns, using hydraulics to reduce the number of men required to work the guns and the space required. This was first tried on H.M.S. Thunderer, which was able to have 38 ton guns fitted, instead of the 35 ton guns originally planned. His hydraulic systems were subsequently used in all Royal Navy ships as well as the ships of several foreign navies.

Resignation

Rendell resigned from Armstrong’s company in 1882, when Armstrong decided to make Andrew Noble sole manager of the Ordnance Department. In fact, Rendell loathed Noble, as did his brothers, who also worked for Armstrong. George became a Civil Lord of the Admiralty, but was persuaded to rejoin the company in 1888, in order to manage a new armaments factory, built as a subsidiary, at Pozzuoli, near Naples in Italy.

In 1900 Armstrong died, and Andrew Noble succeeded him as chairman of the company, now known as Sir W.G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd. After Armstrong’s death, the old acrimony between the Rendells and Andrew Noble came to the fore, with George and his brothers criticising Noble’s management of the company. The dispute between the two sides was not resolved until several years after George’s death.

George Rendell married twice and had nine children, including Sir George William Rendel. He died at Sandown, Isle of Wight, on 9 October 1902.

References