Joseph Isherwood

Who was Joseph Isherwood?

Sir Joseph William Isherwood, 1st Baronet was a British naval architect. He invented the Isherwood System of longitudinal construction of ships and the Arcform System.

Isherwood was born in Hartlepool, the son of a grocer. He was educated at Luggs School in the town and at the age of fifteen entered the drawing office of the Hartlepool shipbuilders Edward Withy & Co. He served in several departments in that firm and in 1896 left to become a ship surveyor with Lloyd's Register of Shipping. Here he developed the Isherwood System, a new stronger, safer, and cheaper longitudinal girder form of ship construction designed to replace the traditional traverse construction method, which he patented in 1906.

In 1907 he left Lloyd's to join the board of the shipbuilders R. Craggs & Sons of Middlesbrough, but soon returned to London to practise as a naval architect. The first ship constructed using his system was the Paul Paix, completed in August 1908, the first of many. Isherwood made a number of other significant contributions to his profession, notably the arcform hull design, which he introduced in 1933.