Hi all, bit of a randomly specific question here.
For context, I'm a PhD student researching marine invasive species that mainly spread through fouling ballast water tanks in ships. I'm looking at areas that have seen shipping transport for millenia (north east Europe and northwest Pacific), but these species wouldn't have been transported in great number until the adoption of water as ballast. I'm using genetic techniques to build an invasion pathway history, but want to see if what I've built roughly corresponds to the actual shipping history of the regions.
To that end, does anyone here have any insight as to when ballast water began being used en masse by the shipping community? From what I've found online, the 1800s pops up as a rough idea, but there's nothing more specific than that.
Hi naval architect here: The use of water ballast in ships really begins with the advent of iron and steal hulled ships. Prior to this ships used mostly large rocks, earth, or chunks of metal as ballast.
There were several reasons for this, but the biggest was that storing liquids securely in wood is difficult. Barrels are the only viable option and these take up a lot of space for their weight and degrade over time. Far easier and safer just to throw a bunch of rocks in the bottom. Metal storage tanks can be made water tight in almost any shape.
Another factor is the weight of cargo relative to the size of the ship. For open ocean vessels in the age of wooden ships, the weight of cargo was small compared to the total weight of the ship. Compare this to oil or ore carries today where most of the ship is cargo storage space. Look at pictures of loaded and unloaded oil tankers and you will see what I mean. When you have such a large difference in displacement between loaded and in-loaded stability really starts to be a problem so a ballast system that can be rapidly adjusted with pumps becomes more important.
So the short answer is that pumped water ballast comes with the advent of iron hulled ships. Sorry I don't have an exact date. If I had to guess I would say it starts in the 1830s really took off sometime in the 1860s. That said the other implied part of your question is when did it become common for iron hulled merchant ships traveling internationally. This is a slightly different question which depends more on the advent of efficient steam engines. I would suggest that a reasonably defendable start date for your question is the first trans Atlantic voyage of the great western in 1838, or the SS Great Britain in 1845.
Edit: just reread your question and noticed the regions of interest. The pacific saw steel hulled merchant shipping much later due to the difficulties in providing coal over such a large area. Expect to find later start dates in the Pacific.