Seven Elements That Have Changed the World (3 page)

But for thousands of years warships were still built out of fragile and flammable wood. In the background of the Currier & Ives lithograph, these wooden ships keep their distance, an outclassed and soon to be outdated instrument of war. The Battle of Hampton Roads was proof to the tens of thousands of troops, watching from the estuary banks, of the superior might of the ironclad. At the beginning of America’s Industrial Age, the
Virginia
and the
Monitor
were the realisation of the power of industrial iron armoury, a force which would go on to shape the politics and wars of the modern world.

Across the Atlantic, in Germany, the 1860s were the start of an era of great industrial progress and prosperity. The Industrial Revolution had swept out of Great Britain and across Europe. Sitting on the banks of the River Ruhr, the city of Essen was the industrial centre of Germany. Small hillside blast furnaces had been replaced by colossal industrial factories and the once medieval market town was expanding quickly. During the decade, Essen’s population rose by 150 per cent. One family, above all others, was responsible for this growth.

In 1587, Arndt Krupp joined the merchants’ guild of Essen. He was the founder of the Krupp dynasty that would last for nearly four hundred years and become the leader not only of Germany’s industrial prowess, but also of its machinery of war.

In their armament factories, Alfred Krupp, a descendant, forged the cannons for the wars led by Otto von Bismarck against Austria and France in 1866 and 1870. These weapons were decisive. The cast-iron artillery cannons of the Prussian army had twice the range and were far more accurate and more numerous than the French bronze pieces. In 1862, Bismarck famously declared that the German Empire would not be built on ‘speeches and majority decisions’ but on ‘blood and iron’.
¹¹
Whoever mastered iron, he believed, would master Europe.

In both world wars, Krupp’s armaments again proved critical. The vast arsenal of the German army underpinned her strategic campaigns against the enemy. At the start of the First World War, long-range Krupp cannons smashed Belgian forts on their way towards Paris. In the Second World War, Krupp siege guns would fire shells weighing seven tonnes a distance of up to 40 kilometres.
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The Krupp’s iron forges supplied the munitions that enabled Germany to make war. But wars were not only fought with iron, they were also fought over reserves of iron ore and coke. Smelting iron ore with coke produces iron and carbon dioxide. During the
industrial revolutions, securing these reserves became a preoccupation among European nations. No one wanted to fall behind in this period of unprecedented economic growth.

The Ruhr region, in which the Krupp dynasty thrived, contained vast reserves of coal and somewhat smaller reserves of iron ore. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these reserves became a source of great conflict, during which time France and Germany went to war three times.

In July 1870, France declared war on neighbouring Prussia. Prussia, with the bordering German Confederation states, which it often led, had become an increasing threat over the previous decade. Only four years
earlier, Prussia had invaded Austria, leading to the creation of the powerful North German Confederation. France’s once small and manageable neighbour now had both a formidable army and a flanking position on her border. Prussia’s population was growing rapidly and its heavy industries were becoming dominant. By 1867, coal mines in Prussia and Saxony (another member of the North German Confederation) were outproducing French mines by three to one. France was being squeezed and decided to go to war.

But France underestimated just how strong Prussia had become. In a matter of weeks, the Prussian army advanced to Paris. After a siege lasting several months, the city fell on 28 January 1871 and the war ended. Prussia had destroyed France’s military power and, as a requirement of the Treaty of Frankfurt, it was required to cede German-speaking Alsace Lorraine, which held valuable iron ore reserves. Only forty years later, France would fight against the now unified German Empire in the First World War. It would regain Alsace Lorraine, once again taking control of the region’s iron ore reserves. France was now able to increase its production of steel but as a result it became even more dependent on the coke and coal needed for smelting.
¹³
When Germany defaulted on war reparation payments, France retaliated by invading the Ruhr. This not only secured coal supplies, but also crippled Germany’s own industries. In response, Hitler began to remilitarise the Rhineland, in which the Ruhr sits. Wanting to avoid another war, France put up little resistance, giving Hitler the confidence to pursue a series of increasingly aggressive actions that ultimately led to the Second World War.
¹⁴

The Ruhr’s coke reserves were indispensable in the development of Europe’s iron and steel industries. But the same resources made it a battleground for almost eighty years. During this time, the Ruhr rose to become the industrial heartland of Europe, but the region’s success was also its downfall. In March 1943, the Allied forces made the first of what would become two hundred major air raids on Essen. More than 36,000 tonnes of incendiary and explosive bombs were dropped, the greater part of which landed on the eight square kilometres of Krupp factories. After the war, Essen became a bleak and cratered wasteland.
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But in little more than five years the Ruhr would be rebuilt and integrated into a
new political system that was designed to make iron a tool for peace rather than war.

On 9 May 1950, France’s Foreign Minister Robert Schuman made a historic announcement on the radio: France was ready to partner with Germany, and other nations, to form a new European heavy industry community. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War in the hope of ending decades of economic and military competition. By pooling coal and steel resources, Schuman hoped to create a common foundation for economic development which he believed would make war ‘not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible’.
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Regions that had long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they had been the most constant victims’ would now use iron to drive industrial development and raise living standards.
¹⁷
Schuman believed his simple yet bold plan would herald a new age of growth and prosperity.

The ECSC was the first step in the formation of the European Union, whose twenty-seven member states now constitute the largest economy in the world.
¹⁸
It was Europe’s first major experiment in supranationalism, forming the foundation of a new entity which was both more stable and integrated. In return for sacrificing a degree of national sovereignty, members would reap economic and political benefits, not least the promise of peace.
¹⁹

The impact is apparent today in the surrounding areas of Essen, which has been transformed from the ‘forge’ into the ‘desk’ of the Ruhr. It is a comfortable, modern city, home to many of Germany’s largest corporations, not least of Aral, the face of BP in Germany. The Krupp family line had ended, but the name remains in the multinational conglomerate ThyssenKrupp. The Krupp Belt, once overflowing with industrial factories, is now home to the company’s modern headquarters and what remains of the region’s industrial past is now nothing more than a museum piece.
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The unity of the European Union and its predecessor entities has sustained an unprecedented period of peace.
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Nations have been bound together through not only the interdependence of trade but also the security of common laws. It all started with carbon, as found in coal, and steel,
as made from iron. It has been such a powerful tool for securing peace and prosperity because of the great extent to which these elements underpin modern society. Iron is everywhere, used in the construction of monumental skyscrapers, aeroplanes and wind turbines.
²²
And, for me, one colossus stands above all others as a symbol of steel’s might and an extraordinary example of what humanity has achieved with iron.

11 July 2005: it was the ninetieth anniversary of BP Shipping, and to celebrate we held a party at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, south-east London. Cocktails were served under the arches of the museum and guests ambled around the ‘Nelson & Napoleon’ exhibition, marking two hundred years since the Battle of Trafalgar. We sat down to dinner, under the glass dome of Neptune Court, and Bob Malone, the leader of BP Shipping, stood up to give a speech. A lot had happened in those ninety years: for example, BP had at one time owned and operated the world’s largest merchant fleet which, during the Second World War, had provided a good part of the transportation of fuel to the Allied forces.
²³

Bob finished speaking and we stood to toast the health of the company, but my thoughts were elsewhere. In the car on the way to the dinner that evening I had received a deeply worrying phone call from Tony Hayward, then leading BP’s exploration and production activities. It’s
Thunder Horse
,’ he said, referring to our pioneering offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. ‘It seems to be sinking.’

Thunder Horse PDQ
is the biggest semi-submersible offshore production platform in the world, 50 per cent bigger than the previous record holder in Norway.
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The hull alone is a 60,000-tonne mass of thick steel plate that holds a complex network of 50 kilometres of pipe work and 250 kilometres of cabling. This unprecedented construction was necessary to tap the Thunder Horse field, the biggest in the Gulf of Mexico with an expected production of a quarter of a million barrels of oil and 5.6 million cubic metres of natural gas each day. Only strong, abundant and cheap steel could be employed on such a scale and in such hostile marine conditions.

No existing vessel was big enough to transport
Thunder Horse’s
hull from the construction yard at Okpo, South Korea, to the Gulf of Mexico. The MV
Blue Marlin
, at the time one of the two biggest heavy-lift barges in the world, had to be modified by widening its hull and adding a new propulsion system. Even with the modifications,
Thunder Horse
still overhung the ship by 20 metres on either side. Too wide to fit through the Panama Canal and too tall to fit under the Suez Canal Bridge,
Thunder Horse
rode aback the MV
Blue Marlin
around the Cape of Good Hope, travelling 30,000 kilometres and arriving in the Gulf two months later.

In July 2005, six years after BP discovered the field, production was almost ready to be started up. But the Gulf is not only famous for holding some of the world’s richest oil reserves; it is also prone to a yearly battering by hurricanes. Hurricane Dennis was the first major hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic season, the most active one on record. On hearing news of its path towards
Thunder Horse
, BP had evacuated the platform. Picking up in intensity as it made its way towards the US coastline, Hurricane Dennis passed only 230 kilometres from
Thunder Horse
with wind speeds of up to 220 kilometres per hour. Now, as the storm cleared, the hulking mass of steel could be seen listing into the sea.

Back at the National Maritime Museum, Bob finished his speech and sat down. His phone was constantly vibrating, but he could not leave the table to find out what was happening. I had decided not to tell him what I knew until after dinner. A rescue effort could not be launched until the sea had calmed and we could get access to the platform; two or three hours would make no difference. As we were walking out of the door I told him of my conversation with Tony Hayward: ‘five billion dollars of investment could be sinking into Davy Jones’ Locker’. ‘I thought something was up,’ he said. ‘I’d better go and make a phone call.’

At first we could not understand what had happened:
Thunder Horse
had been designed to survive a ‘once-in-a-hundred-years’ storm.
²⁵
Sixty thousand tonnes of steel had been brought to its knees, but it was not the weather that was to blame.
Thunder Horse
was already listing at 16 degrees before the hurricane hit and the storm waves only served to worsen the situation. Both mechanical failure and human error had led to malfunctions of the hydraulic control system that keeps the great weight
of the platform in balance by moving water between ballast tanks. After several tense days of enquiry and action,
Thunder Horse
was resurrected and since then has stood unmoved by a yearly battering of hurricanes as an example of the immense strength of steel and the scale on which we use and trust it.

When filling up a car at a petrol station, or flicking the switch on a wall socket, most people rarely see how dependent our energy infrastructure is on steel. All the steps in the energy chain, from exploration to production to refining and generating electricity, rely on technology built with iron. But the strength of structures and pipes does not rest on iron alone. If made from pure iron, the atoms would easily slide over each other;
Thunder Horse
would collapse under its own weight. The strength of steel lies in getting the right balance between iron and carbon. Pure iron is soft, but adding carbon breaks up the lattice of iron atoms so that the atoms can no longer easily slide past each other, thus producing hard steel.
²⁶
Add too much carbon, however, and the iron, called cast iron, becomes brittle and shatters when it is struck.