English ship design ca. 1600 – Mediterranean legacy

[-Waldemar-]

.​

Besides the archaeological remains of the Mary Rose, an English ship from the first half of the 16th century, and the numerous late 16th century designs by Mathew Baker included in the manuscript Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry, this anonymous plan, most likely from the turn of the 16/17th cent., is further evidence of the essentially Mediterranean roots of „Ancient English Shipwrightry”.

The original drawing is held in the Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet) under the inventory number G5868, and its existence was first communicated to the wider, English-speaking public by Hans Christian Bjerg in his paper A 'Royal Yacht', [in] The Mariner's Mirror 1975/1, pp. 94–96.

Among other things, on the drawing are also numerically recorded the basic dimensions of the ship – keel length 68 feet, 'bredth at the beme' 21 feet, draught 8 feet, and calculations of the resulting tonnage (114 tons). However, what is far more interesting is that already from a preliminary comparison of the concept of this design with early modern sources of Mediterranean origin, there are quite telling conclusions, virtually analogous to those of the Mary Rose and Mathew Baker's designs.

.​

 

[-Waldemar-]

.​

Let's start with the master frame, which was not constructed in the manner known from slightly later English works on naval architecture, but still using methods known from continental, particularly Mediterranean, sources.

The breadth of the ship was set at exactly 1/3 of the keel length and the draught at 8 feet, which in this case resulted in a fairly low hull, ensuring high lateral stiffness and also suitable for shallower waters.





Geometrically, the breadth of the design grid is not equal to the full breadth of the designed vessel, but roughly corresponds to the breadth of the hull at the level of the expected draught line. As for the contour of the master frame, the breadth sweep was drawn first, followed by the futtock sweep, reaching the base line as in 'typical' European designs, and finally the floor sweep , tangent to the futtock sweep and the base line. Importantly, the value of the breadth of the "square of the flat" (breadth of the floor), was not determined a priori, as in later designs, but is the resulting value.

In this context, it is worth recalling Phineas Pett's trial concerning the construction of the Prince 1610, conducted by the sovereign himself in 1609. One of the many accusations levelled against Pett was the inadequacy of the breadth of the floor. In his autobiography, Pett explains that in order to prove what it actually was, it was found necessary to plot the entire contour of the master frame at actual size on the mould loft, which inevitably must mean that the manner of plotting the master frame of the Prince 1610 and the ship on this plan are analogous.

As a parallel from the Mediterranean region – among other examples – it is also worth showing here an interesting design of an oared galleon from 1618 (Archivio di Stato, Venice). Although the drawing is more in the nature of a sketch than a precise plan, it illustrates well enough the striking similarities between Mediterranean and English practices even in this period. Here, too, the breadth of the design grid is smaller than the full breadth of the hull, and the contour of the master frame has been plotted in an identical manner.

.​

 

[Bryian]

This looks like an interesting project, and following with interest.

 

[Maarten]

Hi Waldemar,

Good to see you back. Interesting certainly will follow.

 

[-Waldemar-]

.​

Thank you Bryian and Maarten. Indeed, I think this very plan is of particular interest in terms of its historical potential. It perfectly shows the evolution in naval architecture in aspects that have not been known or realised so far.

* * *​

The very essence of the concept of shaping the hull surface is based here (apart from the most important line of the floor, of course) not on the line of the greatest breadth of the hull, which has virtually no design significance for the actual shaping of the underwater part of the hull, but instead on the use of the deck line. This choice has a profound justification precisely in the Mediterranean method of transforming the main frame by rotating the futtock template and would at the same time be fundamentally incompatible with the methods described in somewhat later works on naval architecture of English origin. This will be explained in more detail later, now the conceptual scheme of this design.





Apart from one case of mezzaluna, the simplest geometric forms are used throughout: straight lines, single arcs of a circle and combination curves of two arcs of a circle. The upper narrowing and rising line is in fact a deck line, resulting in the value of 21 feet in plan view, which is consistent with its dimension on the drawing of the master frame. In contrast, the maximum value of the length of the floor on the plan view is a few inches greater than that on the master frame drawing (12 feet compared to 11 feet 4 inches), which can most logically be explained by the need to accommodate the tapering of the keel towards its extremities, which is, in this respect, realistically drawn on this plan too, that is, featuring the taper (on its fore end the width of the keel is 8 „lacking” inches).

The contours of the stern were placed on the diagram according to modern projection rules, nevertheless already suggested in one of Mathew Baker's designs, where the stern mainline was drawn perpendicular to the sternpost, as can be seen in the reproduction below. Thus, all the important design dimensions on all the projections are found to be fairly well harmonised with each other, taking into account, of course, the inevitable inaccuracies of manual drawing.

.​

 

[ChrisP]

Ships of this class of design were "race-built" and proved their worth for example when putting the ponderous Spanish ships of the Armada to flight. At that time England had no overseas empire and resorted to "privateering" which was no more than piracy licensed by the Queen and favourite targets were the Spanish treasure ships returning from South America laden with gold. I had not linked the race-built ships with Mediterranean ship design, but now you have mentioned it, it makes sense.

 

[-Waldemar-]

.​

Thank you Chris for outlining the operational considerations of 'race-built' ships, but there is more at stake here, namely the ways in which ships of all types were actually designed in England during this period and the chronology of the dynamics of change. The surviving designs of David Balfour from the first decades of the 17th century and the galley-frigate design from the period of Charles I are still to be examined in this respect. The point is that each of the known methods (known as Mediterranean, English, Dutch etc.) allowed the construction of ships of 'any' proportions and of any form of upperworks (within practical limits, of course).

.​

 

[shota70]

Dear Waldemar
It's looks like an interesting project, and following with interest

 

[Roman]

Very nice analysis; shipbuilding in Western Europe was in reality a salad bowl from which most seafaring nations of the period fed. When the Spanish needed to supply their fleets it was not uncommon for them to purchase ships from the Dutch or the French or capturing some prizes and refitting them for use in the various Armadas. Privateering was practiced by the English, Dutch, French and even the Spanish. It would have been inevitable to not copy or be influenced by captured vessels. Even as late as the 1750’s espionage of naval technology was practiced by the nations mentioned. The trips of Jorge Juan to Britain comes to mind and other Briton’s come to mind. They all copied one another just like we do today. There are two works that would have been known to those folks: the first is Disquisiciones Náuticas” Arte de Navegar 1500’s México and “Arte de Fabricar Reales” by the most prominent of the Spanish naval architects if we can call them that, late 1600’s. Let’s not forget the Basque influence!
Sorry for being long winded but I think this is a fascinating subject!

 

[Velachero]

Muy interesante

 

[rick robbins]

I always wondered about this, & thought there had to be some connection. The ship designers in England were familiar to Mediterranean design, & knew how maneuverable & easy sailing their designs were, & had to have gotten some good ideas from them. Am I wrong here?
Rick1011

 

[-Waldemar-]

.​

I always wondered about this, & thought there had to be some connection. The ship designers in England were familiar to Mediterranean design, & knew how maneuverable & easy sailing their designs were, & had to have gotten some good ideas from them. Am I wrong here?
Rick1011

Perfectly right, especially regarding the exchange of ideas probably in all possible directions, however, the exact details of these processes are not yet precisely known, including when and how England developed its own school of shipbuilding. It seems not all the sources have yet been researched to this end, which is what I am trying to at least partially complete. Thank you for your interest in this quite challenging area.

* * *​

Before going any further, i.e. even before attempting to reconstruct the entire shape of the ship's hull from this plan, it is still worth looking at the galley-frigate plan (from the British National Maritime Museum) from the reign of Charles I (1625–1649), particularly its master frame (unfortunately, the lack of a plan view on this plan prevents a full analysis and reconstruction of this equally interesting design).





The hull of this galley-frigate was given more capacity (at the expense of the ship's sailing properties) by increasing the length of the floor from 1/2 to 3/5 of the breadth of the hull, and the position of the decks had to be rearranged vertically to suit the ship's rowing characteristics. Nevertheless, the very essence of the design method, as well as the ratio of hull breadth to keel length (1:3) and even some of the proportions of the sweeps of the master frame are identical to those of the ship ca. 1600 (based on all this, and other details, it can even be assumed that the same designer is involved). Also, the characteristic line of the 'breadth at the beam' remains integral to the design, and the level of the line of greatest breadth is not even marked on the drawing.

Finally, it is no coincidence that on all of these plans (including the ship of Italian origin), the internal contours of the frames were also drawn on the master frame drawing, as in this method of design these contours also acted as a conceptual (as opposed to structural) element.






As a result, the conceptual method of construction of the master frame of this galley-frigate, virtually identical to the c.1600 plan analysed, warrants the conclusion that the Mediterranean method continued to be used for shipbuilding in England still in the second quarter of the 17th century, including for the government fleet, by prominent designers capable of drawing up technical plans on paper in advance, which was not yet common practice at the time.

.​

 

[Martes]

The ship designers in England were familiar to Mediterranean design, & knew how maneuverable & easy sailing their designs were, & had to have gotten some good ideas from them. Am I wrong here?

I am several days overdue with this post, but it's certainly time to write it.

The relationship between the English shipbuilding and Mediterranean one is old, deep and... complicated.

In the days of Henry V (reign 1413-1422) several Genoese carracks were taken and the King ran into a dead end with their maintenance:

The hulls of Mediterranean ships like the carrack were built in a way that was quite different from the clinker construction of northern Europe. Mediterranean shipbuilders used skeleton or carvel construction, where a skeleton of frames was erected first, and the planks were then nailed to this. The planks were laid flush, butted against each other, not overlapping like clinker ones. The technique had been around for centuries, but was not adopted in northern Europe until the mid-fifteenth century. It’s clear that the English shipwrights of Henry V’s time did not have a clue as to how to repair the hulls of the captured carracks. Their craft was wedded to one kind of technology, and skeleton construction was alien to them. The government threw a lot of money at the carrack problem, and Mediterranean shipwrights were employed to undertake repairs, but it was not enough. Of seven carracks available at the end of 1417, only two remained seaworthy in 1422, and two of the other five had sunk because of their poor condition.

>The government threw a lot of money at the carrack problem
One piece of royal largesse that was dispensed was the grant of annual salaries to nineteen royal shipmasters on 12 August (1417)

(Ian Friel - Henry V's Navy)

Note that they did take the money, but still didn't make the repairs.

Then Edward IV (reign 1461-1470)

...offered a reward to Bristol shipwrights to construct a carvel ship on the Portuguese model, encouraged an expansion of maritime trade, petitioned the Pope to such an effect and settled foreign craftsmen in England so they could pass their skills. Despite this, and more probably due to the unrest caused by Edward's death, at the time of Henry VIII's accession clinker-built ships still appear to be dominant in English form, though not for royal Great Ships.

(Douglas McElvogue - Tudor Warship Mary Rose)

Then Henry VIII (reign 1509-1547)

'… but since the change of weapons and fight, Henry the Eighth, making use of Italian Shipwrights, and encouraging his own people to build strong ships of war to carry great ordnance, by that means established a puissant Navy …’
Report of Royal Commission on the Navy, 1618

(Alexander McKee - King Henry VIII’s Mary Rose)

What we see is constant involvement of Mediterranean specialists and importation of techniques, and each time it is forced by the king on the very much unwilling English shipbuilders (which can, in a sense, explain the eventual split between military and merchant shipbuilding schools in Britain)

Apart from an inventory which gives the numbers of her masts and yards, there are only two clues to the Regent’s design, a building warrant which states that she is to be made “like unto a ship called the Columbe of France” (of which nothing is known either) and a note that she was made by a “novel construction … with ordnance and fittings”

McKee continues, and we can see that to copy French ships is a very venerable tradition and goes much earlier than known 18th century examples. The Regent was one of the royal ships built by Henry VII (reign 1485-1509), ordered in 1486.

 

[Roman]

I am several days overdue with this post, but it's certainly time to write it.

The relationship between the English shipbuilding and Mediterranean one is old, deep and... complicated.

In the days of Henry V (reign 1413-1422) several Genoese carracks were taken and the King ran into a dead end with their maintenance:

The hulls of Mediterranean ships like the carrack were built in a way that was quite different from the clinker construction of northern Europe. Mediterranean shipbuilders used skeleton or carvel construction, where a skeleton of frames was erected first, and the planks were then nailed to this. The planks were laid flush, butted against each other, not overlapping like clinker ones. The technique had been around for centuries, but was not adopted in northern Europe until the mid-fifteenth century. It’s clear that the English shipwrights of Henry V’s time did not have a clue as to how to repair the hulls of the captured carracks. Their craft was wedded to one kind of technology, and skeleton construction was alien to them. The government threw a lot of money at the carrack problem, and Mediterranean shipwrights were employed to undertake repairs, but it was not enough. Of seven carracks available at the end of 1417, only two remained seaworthy in 1422, and two of the other five had sunk because of their poor condition.

>The government threw a lot of money at the carrack problem
One piece of royal largesse that was dispensed was the grant of annual salaries to nineteen royal shipmasters on 12 August (1417)

(Ian Friel - Henry V's Navy)

Note that they did take the money, but still didn't make the repairs.

Then Edward IV (reign 1461-1470)

...offered a reward to Bristol shipwrights to construct a carvel ship on the Portuguese model, encouraged an expansion of maritime trade, petitioned the Pope to such an effect and settled foreign craftsmen in England so they could pass their skills. Despite this, and more probably due to the unrest caused by Edward's death, at the time of Henry VIII's accession clinker-built ships still appear to be dominant in English form, though not for royal Great Ships.

(Douglas McElvogue - Tudor Warship Mary Rose)

Then Henry VIII (reign 1509-1547)

'… but since the change of weapons and fight, Henry the Eighth, making use of Italian Shipwrights, and encouraging his own people to build strong ships of war to carry great ordnance, by that means established a puissant Navy …’
Report of Royal Commission on the Navy, 1618

(Alexander McKee - King Henry VIII’s Mary Rose)

What we see is constant involvement of Mediterranean specialists and importation of techniques, and each time it is forced by the king on the very much unwilling English shipbuilders (which can, in a sense, explain the eventual split between military and merchant shipbuilding schools in Britain)

Apart from an inventory which gives the numbers of her masts and yards, there are only two clues to the Regent’s design, a building warrant which states that she is to be made “like unto a ship called the Columbe of France” (of which nothing is known either) and a note that she was made by a “novel construction … with ordnance and fittings”

McKee continues, and we can see that to copy French ships is a very venerable tradition and goes much earlier than known 18th century examples. The Regent was one of the royal ships built by Henry VII (reign 1485-1509), ordered in 1486.

You are finding much earlier influence than the 1600’s. What you expose makes sense but finding graphic work is a serious undertaking. I wonder if something similar to Saint Joseph’s template would have been employed for the development of the body lines!

 

[-Waldemar-]

.​

You are finding much earlier influence than the 1600’s. What you expose makes sense but finding graphic work is a serious undertaking. I wonder if something similar to Saint Joseph’s template would have been employed for the development of the body lines!

Yes it is true, the material or graphic remains are as meagre as the written ones in this respect. However, those that have survived are already quite telling. I refer, of course, to the archaeological remains of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's ship, built according to the Mediterranean method (I should have copied my thread on this from another forum here long ago). Alongside this, a whole series of designs by Mathew Baker, who even travelled personally to Italy to learn the trade. In addition to these, somewhat less interpretatively expressive sources, such as Mary Gonson's (a ship from the first decades of the 16th century) very detailed dimensional specification. All these must be exploited to the maximum.

.​

 

[-Waldemar-]

.​

I am several days overdue with this post, but it's certainly time to write it.

Many thanks Martes for bringing all these events to mind. Perhaps it is only thanks to your post that this thread has found its proper, or at least clearer, historical context. Well, and thanks to that I can better focus on geometry...

.​

 

[Martes]

What you expose makes sense but finding graphic work is a serious undertaking.

It's obviously very difficult, but we do have the Mary Rose, as @- Waldemar - has pointed out, and what Ian Friel usually relies on - bureaucratic documents, such as orders and invoices that can give at least some information about the ships, their builders and considerations for their design.

But let us return to the 17 century and see what @- Waldemar - uncovers

 

[Velachero]

Muy interesante.

 

[-Waldemar-]

.​

This post is particularly difficult, for several reasons. Anyway...

It is only now that the concept of the ca. 1600 ship plan has been read, that it is possible to attempt a realistic reconstruction of the shape of the entire hull. The peculiarities of the Mediterranean method inevitably require the inclusion of later treatments of an already non-graphic nature, practically applied during the actual construction of the ship in real size. The point is that the established shape of the master frame (in the sketch or even in the designer's imagination), served primarily to prepare the wooden templates in natural scale, and these in turn to determine the contours of the other frames. Such a state of affairs had momentous conceptual consequences, as it limited the individual curvatures of the frames thus 'reduced' to fixed radii and, as a further consequence, could normally only be used for the central part of the ship's hull (the two ends of the hull had already been shaped more or less empirically with ribbands or battens).

The Mediterranean method is not homogeneous and can have many variations. It is best to use the sources (particularly useful are e.g. Trombetta 1445, de Nicolò 1550, Oliveira 1580, Lavanha 1608–1615, Fernandez 1616, Dudley 1646), and if they prove too hermetic, a good alternative are the excellent modern studies, particularly relevant in this case, e.g. by Sergio Bellabarba, Jean Boudriot, Éric Rieth, Filipe Castro and Taras Pevny. The latter, in particular, has recently made an attempts to scientifically revise already too long-repeated false stereotypes concerning the shipbuilding practices in early modern England.

As far as the English manuscript sources from this period are concerned, Mathew Baker's manuscript from the late 16th century is expected to be the most relevant, unfortunately, however, it is guarded almost like a top state secret and, as a result, virtually inaccessible. The so-called Newton/Scott manuscripts, apparently incorrectly dated by today's scholars (should be a couple of decades later than ca. 1600), are of little help in this case. Nevertheless, an anonymous manuscript from 1620–1625 (the so-called Salisbury manuscript), while already describing new, emerging practices specific to the English school, still uses important elements of a conceptual nature inherited from hitherto Mediterranean practices. It has to be said that this results in a certain design schizophrenia in places, but it is precisely this state of affairs that provides an excellent explanation for the so far unclear chronology of the development of naval architecture in early modern England.

For the reconstruction of the hull shape, I finally decided to use the Venetian 'partisone' method, due to the numerous historically, archaeologically (eg. Mary Rose) and scripturally (eg. Baker's Fragments...) confirmed instances of this particular Mediterranean method being used in England. The essence of this method is the sliding of the futtock template along the bilge/floor curve, and the value of this rotation is limited by the breadth of the hull at the „bocca” level (also indicated as „deck line” or „breadth at the beam” in previous diagrams); an alternative is the simple tilting of the futtock template. The configuration of the wooden templates, on the other hand, was taken from the Salisbury manuscript.

The geometric transformations applied here mean that it would not be possible to align the frame templates to the „bocca” point and at the same time to the point of the actual greatest breadth of the hull while maintaining the tangency of the individual templates, unless one increases the number of templates involved and at the same time carries out prior calculations, which are in fact completely unnecessary for this variant, and the time-consuming and complexity of which would be no small challenge even today. It so happens that on the analysed plan of c. 1600, only the „bocca” line is defined, and by selecting the templates in the configuration shown in the diagram below (i.e. of just three components), the greatest breadth of the hull (actual) is shaped „automatically”.





Note: the design of the ca. 1600 ship features an anomaly – the „bocca” line should normally be placed at or below the junction of the breadth sweep and the futtock sweep for the geometry to work perfectly. However, this anomaly is small enough to have significant consequences.

.​

 

[-Waldemar-]

.​

Perhaps for possible sceptics, below still a graphic example of the master frame from the mid-16th century Italian manuscript Arte de far Vasselli by Todaro de Nicolò (http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/MPIWG:7KTSNYA6).





Although the proportions used here (specific to period, region, ship type, designer) are admittedly somewhat different, nevertheless the core of the design concept itself remains the same. On this particular diagram from the Italian manuscript, one can see not only the same, similarly arranged design elements and the identical way of plotting the contours of the master frame as on the English plan of c. 1600, but also the scale for the controlled sliding of the futtock template along the bilge arc (note: upperworks, being relatively unimportant to the design concept, are not included in this diagram).



A similar, although much shorter scale (indicated by the letters P, S) can also be found in the shipbuilding manual (ca. 1610) by the Chief Engineer of the kingdom of Portugal – João Baptista Lavanha. It is evident from the text description that the effect of using this scale was to change the geometry of the frames by sliding the shown here futtock template along the bilge arc in a controlled way.

​

.​