Local knowledge, global change: a study of Lloyd’s Register surveyors 1834-1860

Today's maritime industry is focussed on technological, engineering and governance challenges as it faces up to the dauntingly complex processes of decarbonisation. One way we can unpick and contextualise these challenges is to consider how governance bodies at all levels dealt with similar sweeping technological change in the past. As with all work that puts historical research to this kind of use, the intended outcome is not so much a list of "dos and don'ts" (although there may be some) as a way of understanding what is possible, and what should the guiding principles be.

Dr Elin Jones's report explores how standardisation and centralisation intertwined over the first half of the nineteenth century in the UK maritime industry, as steam gradually replaced sail (much more gradually than zero carbon fuels will have to be introduced).Focusing on the period 1834 – 1860, Elin charts the conception of the surveyor as an ‘agent of standardisation’ when steam-powered paddle ships, screw-steamers and iron-clad vessels were being developed apace in Britain’s shipyards, and when the concept of the ‘objective surveyor’ was in its infancy. Taken as a whole, the report forms an examination of relationships between corporate governance and local realities during a period of maritime industrialisation.