Jeremiah Owen (22 February 1802 – 2 August 1850) was a mathematician, naval architect and Chief Metallurgist to the Admiralty during the first half of the nineteenth century. Owen took part in the debates over the professionalization of naval architecture in the Royal Navy and was active in campaigns for Polish human rights in the 1830s. He his chiefly known for his scientific work on metals in the design of naval vessels.
Early life
Jeremiah Owen was the eldest son of the architect and engineer Jacob Owen and his wife Mary Underhill, through whom he was related to the mystic and pacifist Evelyn Underhill, Bishop Francis Underhill, the Professor of Anatomy and President of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh Charles Edward Underhill, and the jurist and author, Sir Arthur Underhill. Owen was born in London in 1802, and spent his formative years in Portsmouth, where his father held several positions in the Royal Engineers before becoming principal architect and engineer, under John Fox Burgoyne’s leadership of the board of public works in Ireland. Unlike many of his brothers who became prominent architects in England and Ireland, Owen chose to follow a career in the navy and Admiralty.
Education
Owen's path to becoming a naval architect seems largely to have been accidental. In 1816, when he was 14, the School of Naval Architecture was established at the Portsmouth Naval Base as part of the Royal Naval College. The new school enrolled scholars from age 14 and accepted him into the programme following a competitive examination. Training in advanced Euclidean Geometry (as well as the study of French, History, and Geography) earned scholars the moniker the 'Euclid Boys' from some quarters of the Navy. Until this time, it seems likely that he would follow one of his father's career paths in civil engineering or architecture, either within the Royal Engineers or by joining the elder Owen's private architectural practice based in Portsmouth, as did his younger brother Thomas Ellis Owen. Owen excelled in his chosen field. Graduating in 1825, he become one of the most prominent graduates of the school in the 1830s and 1840s.
Debate over professionalising naval architecture
Almost from the beginning of his time at the School of Naval Architecture, Owen was drawn into the political struggle over the role of educational training as a pathway to the officer class. Though established almost a century earlier, the Royal Naval College and the School for Naval Architecture was embroiled in an ever more wounding political assault from Whigs in the 1820s and 1830s as to the institutions' utility to the Royal Navy.
This attack on the college and school, which eventually led to their closures in 1837, traded on the belief that traditional models of naval apprenticeship offered the best route for training the officer class and master ship-wrights. Under this model, historians W.H Dickinson and D.K. Brown have argued, family ties and patronage, rather than meritocracy, were regarded as the favored method of recruitment.
Contribution to the Seppings debate
Whig reforms of the Royal Navy which would bring about the dismissal of the eminent naval architect Robert Seppings as Surveyor of the Navy formed the immediate context for Owen's first known intervention in the wider debate in 1832. Sepping's support for scientific training in naval architecture, was matched by the dislike for the School of Naval Architecture by his proposed replacement, William Symonds. At the second meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in June, Owen had encouraged the Association's members to promote the idea of large-scale scientific experimentation within government circles. His 'Remarks upon the Neglect of Naval Architecture in Great Britain' were read alongside George Harvey's suggestion for the 'cooperation of men of science [to study the subject of Naval Architecture], under the auspices of a public Board.' Neither Owen nor Harvey's suggestion found traction within the Navy. Their interventions had also come too late to help Seppings who had been forced to resign his position just six days earlier. The appointment of Symonds, an amateur ship designer, in Seppings’ place sealed the fate of the school.