Page 22 - Nicolaes Witsen & Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age

Chapter 1
after Witsen. Titled De Nederlandsche Scheepsbouw-Konst Open Gestelt (Dutch Shipbuilding Unveiled), the book has been quite justly recommended, not only for being muc h more structured than Witsen’s but also a s the work of someone who had a better and closer knowledg e of the subject than the aristocrat, diplomat, politician, cartogra- pher, and lawyer Nicolaes Witsen. It is certainly true that Van Yk’s book is more c onsistent and much clearer in its structure; but as for the notion that Van Yk was better in- formed, I beg to differ.
Anyone who tries to work with both book s from the standpoint of practical shipbuilding will quickly find that Witsen goes much farther than Van Yk, however wel l in- formed the latter may have been. Van Yk leaves much un- explained, probably because of the tendency of experts to assume too much as common knowledge, whereas Wit- sen elaborates on ever y detail with the innoc ence of an interested layman. His approach is therefore much more useful to us, with our restricted knowledge of the subject, than the approach of his expert fellow writer, Van Yk.
Besides the treatises of Witsen and Van Yk there have been other seventeenth- century works on the subject. Several are anonymous, suc h as Evenredige Toerusting van Schepen ten Oorlog Bijder See (Proportional Equi- page of Men-of-War), a manuscript dated 1660;6 Holland- sche Scheepsbouw (Dutch Shipbuilding) of 1678, which largely reiterates Witsen’s treatise; De volmaakte boots- man . . . (The P erfect Boatswain) of 1680; Taackelasie boeckje . . . (Rigging Book let) of 1690; and Nieuwe Hol- landsche Scheepsbouw (New Dut ch Shipbuilding) of 1695, followed in 1697 by the qualitatively much superior work of Van Yk.
Witsen and Other European Authors
Although Witsen’s book was the first treatise on naval ar- chitecture to be publi shed in the Netherlands, it was not among the earliest such works in Europe. There have been manuscripts and books on the subject since the fifteenth century.7
The first known Engli sh manuscript was that of Mat- thew Baker, Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry, which dates from the sixteenth century and is now in the Pepys Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge. The six- teenth century also s aw the fi rst Spanish work on ship- building, Diego García de P alacio’s Instrucción Náutica (1587) as well as the f amous Portuguese manuscripts of Fernando Oliveira, Ars nautica (c. 15 70) and Livro da fábrica das Naos (c. 1580).
In Italy the le ading works included B artolomeo Cres- centio’s Nautica Mediterranea (1607), Pantero Pantera’s L’Armata navale (1614), and the Engli shman Robert Dud-
ley’s Dell’ Arcano del M are (1646). Joseph F urttenbach published his Architectura navalis in Germ any in 16 29, and in France Ithier Hobier (De la Construction d’une gal- laire et de son équipage, 1622), Jean Boisseau (Descrip- tion d’un Navire Royal , 1637), and Georges Fournier would be the first three to dedicate a book to the subject of ship- building; Fournier’s Hydrographie (1643) was reprinted many times. Sweden’s contribution to shipbuilding litera- ture is relatively late, with Åke Rålamb’s Skeps byggerij from 1691.
But England most certainly tops the list of discourses on shipbuilding w ith the work s of John Smith (1626), Thomas Heywood (1637), Simon Smith (1641), Henry Bond (1642), Henry Mainwaring (1644), Thomas Miller (1660), Edward Bushnell (1664), and E dward Hayward (1665).8 Bushnell’s work was already into its thir d printing when Anthony Deane wrote hi s Doctrine of Naval Ar chitecture in 1670, and it is this work that bears the closest resem- blance to Witsen’s book.9 Like Witsen, Deane describes the building of a ship (in his case, a third-rate man-of-war) by elucidating its design step by step. There are additional similarities between the two: Deane, like Witsen, became mayor of his native town (Harwich), and, like his counter- part in Holland, he was Peter the Great’s mentor when the czar came to England to study shipbuilding.
There is no doubt that Witsen took his bearings in several libraries before starting on his own book and, as noted earlier, drew generously from the material he found there. But it would be non sense to cl aim that his book consists mainly of plagiarized information. He wanted to collect whatever was known on the subject and publish his findings in a c omprehensive historical work. That we are more interested today in the material relating to spe- cific construction techniques of Witsen’s own period i s partly due to our different perspective toward the infor - mation he presents. In chapter 2 I have tried to select and make accessible the information in Witsen’s treatise that is relevant to Dutch shipbuilding in his time.
Aeloude en Hedendaegse Scheeps-bouw en Bestier
Nicolaes Witsen’s Aeloude en He dendaegse Scheeps- bouw en Bestier is a much-quoted source of information. It is mentioned in ever y study of seventeenth-century Dutch shipbuilding, and quite rightly so. The book was not only the first Dutch work to be published on the subject of shipbuilding, but in addition to countless building speci- fications and curios ities, it contains the e arliest known description of the building method used in those day s. Even so, it has actually been read by only a few , as c an
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