William Westcott Rundell


William Westcott Rundell, sometimes W W Rundell was an inventor and engineer from Falmouth in Cornwall. He is best known for his work on the magnetism, particularly of adjustment needed for compasses on iron ships. He also campaigned for the better training of ships crews.

Life and work

The son of a shipwright, he was born at Stoke Damerel. In 1845 he was appointed secretary of The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. He resigned in 1855 to take the position of secretary at the Liverpool Compass Committee. Concurrently he was the Secretary of underwriters Registry for Iron vessels, Liverpool.
In 1855 and 1886, Rundell presented two reports to the Board of Trade and the Houses of Parliament giving his observations on the deviation of the compass in vessels having the compasses corrected by magnets.
At the 1851 Great Exhibition, Rundell exhibitied a carbonized cast-iron magnet
He proposed a way of marking ships to mark percentages of every ships volume as a guide to determine her freeboard
He conducted experiments on the with Frederick J Evans RN.
The work with Evans related to dealing with the disturbing elements arising from the iron and the magnetisation of the ships. Evans published his work in conjunction with Archibald Smith
In 1889, Rundell created charts showing the horizontal variation in the magnetic force acting on a ship's compass needle by the iron within the ship for HMS Polyphemus, HMS Curlew and HMS Dreadnought are held at National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
He published many articles in The Engineer between 1857 and 1883.

Papers published