Naval Architecture (History)

This paper is devoted to the debatable issue of presence versus absence of a keel in the construction of Egyptian ships of the dynastic period. It analyses ship representations and models dating to the 18th-20th dynasties of the New Kingdom that can serve as evidence for the introduction of a keel in Egyptian shipbuilding, and introduces new archaeological material that sheds more light on the question.

"""Ship 17 of Thonis-Hercaleion is the first vessel from the submerged city of Heracleion-Thonis in Egypt yet excavated. The peculiar constructional features of this ship, which dates to the Late Period (664–332 BC), allow us to argue for a new type of construction that finds parallels in Herodotus’ description of a Nilotic freighter called baris (History, 2.96, c.450 BC). The aim of this article is to present the main characteristics of this construction without going too far into technical details.
Keywords: Maritime archaeology, Ancient shipbuilding, Ancient shipwrecks, Naval architecture (History), Late Period in Egypt, Herodotus."""

Riksäpplet deals with a shipwreck that has a neglected position in the grand narrative of the history of the Swedish navy. The story of its destiny and the missing accounts in scholarly and popular works in history says something about heritage processes within Swedish maritime archaeology.
On 5 June 1676 Riksäpplet came loose and adrift from its moorings outside Dalarö Sea fortress. The hull struck a rock and sank. The loss was considered both ignominious and embarrassing and the ship’s fate has been overlooked in all major history books. The rock onto which Riksäpplet sank was named ‘Äpplet’ after the incident, and the wreck itself has become an integrated component of the underwater seascape. As a consequence the wreckage has never enjoyed a proper ‘discovery’ or undergone documentation under the sensational forms that many other famous shipwrecks have, even though they have sunk in more inconvenient places.
In Eriksson’s study the official handling of Riksäpplet’s wrecked body is compared to the more wellknown ships Kronan and Svärdet, which both sank during battle only days before. Eriksson draws on different motifs and driving forces behind the study of naval wrecks from the period from his comparison, and the differences are discussed. Riksäpplet has never achieved a prominent position with the romanticising works of history that honour the national heroes and their deeds which are associated with this era of the Swedish Empire. The first half of the book thus sets out to unpack the ideas that have led to the relative disinterest in Riksäpplet in comparison to other shipwrecks.
The second half of the book sets out to analyse Riksäpplet from a specific archaeological perspective, with focus on the ship as material culture. Eriksson’s departure is to explore the relatively low budget fieldwork that has been done at the wreck site. He the combines those facts with a survey of the artefacts recovered from the wreck, of which all are kept in museum archives and private collections. This, in addition to his studies of preserved written correspondence concerning the construction of the ship, has brought new insights into seventeenth-century shipbuilding and how the balance between the global political superpowers affected this trade. In this context Riksäpplet has great potential to show how military alliances are materialized through ships’ architecture.

Method of reconstruction for ancient ships: new tools and new analyzes for restitution in nautical archeology.

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Méthode de restitution des navires antiques : nouveaux outils et nouvelles analyses des restitutions en archéologie navale.

"Studying the design of  La Belle  was to a great extent a circular process—much like a design spiral in modern naval architecture. The discovery of new information, whether in the process of the reconstruction of the archaeological remains or from documentary research, necessitated a reexamination and/or a reworking of earlier recordings, preliminary reconstructions, and working hypotheses. This process ultimately spiraled toward the method that I believe was used to design La Belle . It is beyond the scope of a single chapter to fully discuss the entire design process for a ship. Consequently, here I will focus on the longitudinal timbers—the keel, sternpost, and stem. While not a complete reconstruction, these are sufficient to explain the value of understanding the design process in reconstructing a shipwreck.

For each step in the process I will attempt to answer the following question: what would the designer have to know or do to take the next step in the design of the hull? I will endeavor to adhere to the progressive logic of the design sequence. I followed the same approach in originally working out the design method in order not to be biased by the fact that I was starting with the end result of the design process—the surviving articulated timber remains. It is dangerous to search for combinations of curves that fit archaeological remains without trying to explain how the original designer would have generated and used these curves..."

Resumen. El objetivo del presente estudio es comprender la etapa formativa de la industria de la construcción naval española en Asia, a partir de la percepción oficial acerca de la riqueza y la utilidad de los recursos madereros existentes en las islas Filipinas, así como de los mecanismos desarrollados para la movilización de recursos, humanos y forestales, durante este período formativo, y sus consecuencias sociales y políticas. Se propone también confrontar la legislación promulgada para normar la movilización de mano de obra para el uso de recursos forestales, los testimonios al respecto de la calidad y utilidad náutica de los distintos tipos de maderas y, finalmente, las manifestaciones de la tensión generada por la construcción naval entre las instituciones constitutivas del orden colonial en Filipinas durante el siglo XVI y la primera mitad del siglo XVII. Palabras clave: maderas, construcción naval, sureste asiático, Filipinas, encomienda.

Abstract. The purpose of this study is to understand the formation of the Spanish shipbuilding industry in the south Pacific during the sixteenth century. It deals with early Spanish assesments of the timber resources of the Philippines; the shipbuilding expertise of the local populations; their ability to produce essential manufactures, and the importance of the Spanish access to the SouthEast Asian intertional market. It also seeks to explain the social consequences of forced labour, and the negative impact it seemed to have in the official perception of the quality of Philippine shipbuilding timbers. It also examines the legislation issued by the crown to deal with these problems, and its interaction with the Spanish religious orders established in the islands during the first half of the seventeenth century.

The world is in the clutches of climate change.  Species go extinct each day due to human activity.  We are consuming non-renewable resources at an alarming rate.  Sustainability, conservation and environmental stewardship have, arguably, never been more important.  The Province of Manitoba does not have a specific high school course for environmental education.  There are, however, related outcomes within the current science and social studies curricula.  Has the curriculum created a populace with the necessary knowledge, attitudes and skills to begin to act for environmental change?  In this mixed-method study I used surveys, focus group interviews with students, and one-on-one interviews with teachers to determine if grade 10 students are acting in positive ways toward the environment as a result of the science curriculum.  In addition, do students and teachers perceive science to be the course most important in dealing with environmental education?  In order to verify self-reported behaviours of students, an unobtrusive measure was devised to assess the recycling habits of grade 9 and 10 students.  While students from both grades exhibited almost the same environmental
knowledge and attitudes, the grade tens were more alarmed about the state of the environment and less naïve about their abilities to have individual impact.  Although both groups reported several pro-environmental behaviours, neither group recycled materials after a luncheon.

El presente estudio tiene por objetivo ofrecer una interpretación
estructural del funcionamiento de la industria de construcción
naval española en el sureste asiático, desde la perspectiva específica del
uso de sus recursos madereros y su vínculo con la explotación del trabajo
indígena, así como comprender las causas de la progresiva transferencia
de esta industria, desde los astilleros americanos a las islas Filipinas y,
posteriormente, también a otras regiones del Pacífico sur. Estos propósitos
intersectan con otros temas estructurales, directamente vinculados con la
industria de construcción naval en Filipinas y con el régimen establecido por
la administración española para la explotación de sus recursos forestales: la
estructura administrativa, civil y religiosa del establecimiento hispano en ese
archipiélago, su vinculación con las reducciones a poblado de sus habitantes, y las diversas tentativas, tanto teóricas como prácticas, por integrarlo más
profundamente en las estructuras políticas y mercantiles del Pacífico sur.

Los numerosos rasgos sorprendentes de los templos griegos antiguos se entienden como algo natural si suponemos que los templos proceden de barcos de guerra reales, no metafóricos, volteados y varados sobre soportes (hay suficientes paralelos etnográficos de esta práctica). Además de algún indicio en las fuentes literarias y en el vocabulario, el argumento definitivo que sostiene esta afirmación es la comparación entre los penteconteros de la época geométrica y los templos dóricos y jónicos: la forma del entablamento en su conjunto, el aspecto de ventana de las metopas, los escudos que cuelgan en el arquitrabe, la sutil curvatura longitudinal, el tamaño de los templos y la distribución de su interior, su simetría axial, la creación de la perístasis, el número y distribución de las columnas, la éntasis, la ubicación de las esculturas y de la estatua de culto principal... La estatua principal procede del ancla sagrada, que se usó como proyectil en las batallas navales en el mar Egeo antes de la invención del espolón; esta práctica se puede rastrear en muchas leyendas heroicas. Los templos griegos son, más que edificios, esculturas en piedra de barcos varados que proclaman la familiaridad de los griegos con el mar y su dominio, su talasocracia.

The many surprising features of Ancient Greek temples are understood as a matter of course if we interpret that temples originated in real warships, not metaphoric ones, overturned and stored upon supports; there are enough ethnographic parallels for such a practice. As well as certain references in literary sources and in vocabulary, the definitive argument that supports this claim is the comparison between penteconters from the Geometric period and Doric and Ionic temples: the shape of the whole entablature, the window aspect of metopes, the shields hanging on the architrave, the longitudinal light curvature, the size of the temples and the distribution of their interior, its axial symmetry, the creation of peristasis, the number and distribution of columns, the placement of sculptures and the main worship statue, etc. The principal statue comes from the sacred anchor, which would be used as a projectile in the naval battles in the Aegean Sea for centuries before the invention of the ram; this practice can be traced in many heroic legends. Greek temples are more than buildings: they are sculptures in stone of beached ships which proclaim the Greeks’ familiarity with the sea and their mastery of it. In other words, their thalassocracy.

Archaeologist Joel Klenck describes a monumental wood structure, smaller wood edifices, and a cave site are located at elevations between 3,900 and 4,600 meters above sea level on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey. These archaeological sites exhibit excellent preservation, evidence an origin during the Late Epipaleolithic Period (13,100-9,600 B.C.), and at the monumental wood structure, indicate veneration by later cultures. Artifacts from the monumental wood structure and cave site reflect a range of botanical remains, wood tools, bone artifacts, textiles, and nonceramic vessels made of organic materials. The plan materials, and architectural features from the wooden structure reflect a range of architectural types that continue into the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (9600-8500 B.C.) and later periods.

This is an end-of-season progress report on the excavation of two wreck sites of the 17th century off Mogincual and the island of Mozambique. MOG-003, tentatively identified as the São Jose (1622) and IDM-003, tentatively identified as the Nossa Senhora da Consolação (1608), and the survey and assessment of IDM-017, possibly the Santa Teresa de Jesús (1622).

Paper looks into the specific ways of dealing with the past in re-enactments of historical sea-journeys, e.g. journeys of discovery. They, like other forms of re-enactments, are experiments in documenting and reflecting on historic conditions of life. Beyond that, re-enactments generate memories and connect historic topics to the present. There is a poignant difference between re-enactments that try to establish a more precise understanding of specific historic constructions, maintenance, or usages and those that focus on emotional understanding of past events and their meaning for today's culture.

D’abord employée par les archéologues, la pratique expérimentale dans les sciences historiques visait initialement à vérifier le bien-fondé d’une hypothèse en la testant concrètement dans le cadre d’un protocole reproductible. Longtemps cantonnée à la recherche en technologie préhistorique, cette pratique s’est ensuite étendue aux quatre grandes périodes historiques ainsi qu’à des disciplines autres que la seule archéologie des techniques. Si, récemment, la pratique de l’expérimentation s’est étendue à la plupart des disciplines en sciences humaines et sociales, aucun cadre théorique n’y a encore été établi.
Cet ouvrage a pour principal objectif de susciter la discussion autour des fondements mêmes de la démarche expérimentale. Dans chacune des disciplines convoquées, il interroge les postulats théoriques qui ont justifié l’adoption d’une telle pratique.
Les différentes contributions regroupées ici ont été écrites par des praticiens qui ont tous été confrontés à des degrés et sous des angles différents aux problématiques de l’expérimentation, que celle-ci fasse l’objet d’observation (sciences sociales) ou constitue une pratique exceptionnelle (sciences humaines). Elles contribuent à dresser un bilan des pratiques qui ont cours dans la recherche, qu’elle soit fondamentale ou appliquée.

This study focuses on the construction of the
largest ship produced in the new shipyard in
Belém, the Ship of the line Nossa Senhora de
Belém e S. José (1766-1805) by the shipbuilder
Luís Isidoro de Gouveia, whose history is closely
linked to the creation of Pará’s Arsenal. With
the publication of these new data, both documentary
and iconographic, it is intended to
bring new light to the study the study of Naval
Construction in the eighteenth century and in
particular, to the Arsenal of Belém do Pará.

In this dissertation, I argue against the conventional view that economic activity during the Archaic Period of Greek history (8th c. to the early 5th c. BCE) was a by-product of broader social and political developments, but instead constituted an essential element in the transformation of the Greek world. I examine the contemporary literary sources (the Homeric epics and the poetry of Hesiod and Theognis) as well as the material record (shipwrecks, ceramics) in which I identify the outlines of an ideological struggle between the traditional landed nobility and an emerging class of free, landholding farmers that centered on establishing norms for economic activity favorable to the respective groups. Meanwhile, the archaeological evidence demonstrates the existence and growth of sophisticated distribution networks that were capable of responding to specific regional consumer demands, as well as communicating consumer preferences to producers who in turn altered their production strategies in response to those demands. Ultimately, these conditions presented opportunities for the acquisition of wealth by previously marginalized groups, who then leveraged their newfound wealth to bring about changes to the prevailing power structure; the expansion of maritime trade in this period broke the monopolistic control of resources by the traditional landed nobility and led to a more egalitarian distribution of wealth, which in turn contributed to a shift in the balance of power that was a central element in the growth of democracy and the rise of the polis. Consequently, no examination of archaic Greek history would be complete without a fuller appreciation of the powerful impact of expanding maritime trade in the broader transformation of Greek society during the Archaic Period.

In 1744, the Venetian sea captain Gerolamo Maria Balbi (1693– 1761) presented the Senate with a project to build a galea alla ponentina (" galley of Western design ") that would join the Venetian fleet based in Corfu. The Senate approved Balbi's project hoping that the galley of new design would restore Venice's maritime reputation after the losses of the war against the Ottomans in 1718. The construction of the galley by the Venetian shipwright Giovan Battista Fausto lasted more than two years and was sent to Corfu in 1746. However, the newly built galley proved to be unseaworthy due to its faulty design and was sent back to Venice where it lay abandoned in the Arsenal until its dismissal in 1753. This article discusses Balbi's galley, which offers a unique glimpse into the technical experimentation in ship design in the Arsenal during the last decades of the Republic of Venice.

The writings that most closely belong to the discipline of history, and in particular the history of shipbuilding, are papers containing arguments quite different from each other, or very informative or very specialized. The scientist is often embarrassed in reading these books because they are written from a humanistic, and they are not scientific-technical papers, sometimes they are complemented with mathematical formulas and diagrams written in obsolete languages, designed to discern the paths of history passed, and adjacent to a discipline that looks to the near future and not in the past, a history too often forgotten. The Scientia navalis or Naval Science, which Leonhard Euler (1707 - 1783) was a teacher and somewhat precursor, from time immemorial languishing on the shelves of libraries, neglected by scholars. This occurred because the discipline has come to self-awareness, especially in the contemporary age, when, following the example of the Galilean revolution, the community of surveyors and scholars of mechanics oriented his attention to the problems of shipbuilding and vessel operations, which at first seemed disciplines entrusted only to the skill of the shipwright, carpenters and the Masters and Shipmasters on board ships, as well as to the wisdom of tradition. History, however, is a fascinating and fruitful field of study for some guidance because by understanding what has been achieved in the past, has been able to establish a more consistent definition of science and technology to be used in applied in the design and construction. Even for shipbuilding, in fact, the sedimentation of knowledge of the past passed down orally by the shipwright to their students and then taught in the schools of Naval Engineering in France scrolls and founded by Jean- Baptiste Colbert (1619 - 1683) Secretary of the French Navy in the seventeenth century, has been able to point the way to address and solve static and structural problems, but also those related to material behaviour and then, thanks to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, those relating to navigation and manoeuvring of vessels. Only in this way it was possible to achieve those goals of technical and technological developments that have allowed the massive shipbuilding industry in the nineteenth century, following the same “logic” that guided the ancient builders and shipwrights, thus obtaining accurate and effective design and construction solutions.

MA Thesis in Maritime History (Faculty of Letters, Lisbon University FLUL, 2014) - revised version

The present thesis Shipwrecks of the “Carreira da Índia” (1595-1623) – Sources
for the Study in Portuguese Maritime History deals with factors which caused losses of
ships of the Carreira da Índia which linked the European metropolis Lisbon with its
Goa based Estado da Índia between 1595 and 1623. Although Portuguese-Asiatic
shipping was formally separated from the Habsburg Empire during the Union of the
Two Iberian Crowns (1580-1640), the European policies of the Spanish Kings,
especially towards the United Provinces and the Netherlands had its influence and
effects on the Portuguese side.
Shipwrecks, either on the outward bound or homeward bound voyages had
occurred for various reasons since the early days of the Carreira da Índia yet the
emergence of the two private European Companies, the Dutch United East India
Company (founded in 1602) and the British East India Company (founded in 1600)
were a new momentum by which’s characteristics of concurrence and struggle for
supremacy of the European-Asiatic spice trade, losses of Portuguese ships were caused
by planned and executed military operations as well.
Focusing on the geographical region of the Mozambique Channel in which the
losses have taken place, the thesis combines a historiographical approach with records
of underwater archaeology analyzing questions related to the political environment and
planed military operations in which shipwrecks have occurred as well as causes of
shipwrecks observing ship building and design modifications and effects related to
economic patterns such as the monetary flows of the Portuguese outward bound
shipping during the period of observation.

Naufragios da Careira da Índia (1595-1623)