Page 23 - Nicolaes Witsen & Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age

be deduced from the fact that only a small number of pas- sages (always the same) are quoted, and they are mostly misinterpreted and mi sused. However, this is not so sur - prising: aside from its many intriguing qualities, the book has one major handicap—it is almost unreadable, due to its totally c haotic structure, whic h consists of numerous layers of discourse moving in endles s concentric circles around a main theme, shipbuilding.
As indicated by the title, Witsen’s book contains two main parts, one about shipbuilding, the other about the management and operation of ships. The latter part deals with such general matters as the org anization and fu nc- tions of the crew , orders and how they are i ssued, food and rations, harbors, Dutch maritime victories, and so forth. We shall ignore thi s part and c oncentrate on the part about shipbuilding.
Of the almost three hundred pages that Witsen devotes to the subject of shipbuilding, we will also ignore sections that are irrelev ant to our understanding of seventeenth- century Dutch methods. For instance, the first seven chap- ters, comprising some fifty pages, deal with shipbuilding in antiquity, mainly the Roman era. The last of these chap- ters—concerning after which measurements ships were built one and a half cen turies ago (p. 42)—is actually Witsen’s translation of Oliveira’s imperfectly understood Latin work, Ars nautica. While these chapters might inter- est scholars in other fi elds, they fall outside the scope of this book. Lik ewise, chapters 14, 15, and 16 h ave been excluded, as they deal with Mediterranean galleys (trans- lated from F urttenbach and C rescentio), European ship- building (mainly from Dudley and F ournier), and, fi nally, Indian sailing craft.
The remaining two hundred pages on Dutch shipbuilding are presented in Engli sh in chapter 2 (which takes its title from Witsen’s chapter 8, How Ships are built in Holland today), but they have been rearranged in such a way as to provide the modern re ader with a muc h more tr ansparent and accessible version of the origin al edition. I h ave pro- vided commentary on Witsen’s text in order to sh are the knowledge I h ave gained by working with Witsen’s book and the cognate literature for some fourteen years after my purchase of the 1979 facsimile edition of Witsen.
What is the use of rewriting an old book? It is not that Witsen’s original text is without logic—he methodically begins with an il lustrated glossary of all technical terms and follows this with the formulas used in the shipyards to determine the shape of the ship’s components. He then applies these proportions to the building of a 134-foot pi- nas ship, which serves as an example of all the ship s of his time (for more about this type of ship, see “The Pinas as Example” later in thi s chapter). One c ould, according
to Witsen, build any ship after thi s example, provided the proper rules of construction are ob served. After list- ing a large number of examples of building specifications, Witsen continues with a sequential ly numbered descrip- tion of all the ph ases of the building proc ess, followed by practical directions regarding all the st ages up to the launching. This section i s followed by descriptions of others vessels, Dutch as well as foreign and se agoing as well as inland craft, then a treatise on ship measurement, and finally a sc ientific discourse on sever al phenomena that arise in shipbuilding and their “explanation.” Witsen then adds an inventory of necessary items for a medium- distance voyage—such as to Curaçao, Aleppo, Guinea or elsewhere (280 I 5)—in a pinas ship.
Witsen’s approach seems to offer a rel atively logical, if somewhat arbitrary description of the process for building a pinas. And it would h ave been s atisfactory if only Wit- sen had stuck to his devised plan. But straightaway, with the introductory descriptions of the ship’s parts, he loses himself in the me asurements, arrangement of the c abin, and the c onstruction of the c omplicated taffrail of the pinas. Moreover, crucial data for the c onstruction of the lower hull are hidden between the proportions of the com- ponents. Among the m easurements of the pinas we fi nd extensive contemplations on the way the quarter galleries were decorated before Witsen’s time, while armament de- tails must be deduced from the inventory at the end of the treatise. If these were the only sorts of inconsistencies, the readability of the work would not be seriously affected, but Witsen sometimes changes subject two to three times in one paragraph, often even in one sentence.
The structure of the book thus becomes chaotic, and whoever tries to re ad the text, even if well versed in the subject, almost immediately loses the thread of Witsen’s reasoning. At some places it is clear that his sources, such as Harlingen shipbuilder Jan Jacobszoon Vijzelaar, the Am- sterdam master shipbuilders Jan Ysbrantsz Hoogzaet and Jan Dirrikze Grebber, or the “f amous master Shipwright” Dirck Raven, have dictated large sections of the text. We can almost see Witsen diligently taking down their st ate- ments and raising his head at certain points to interrupt the shipbuilder w ith questions on m atters unclear to him—these are then inserted in the text. Later even more changes are inserted and joined with actual observations and measurements of the pinas, which Witsen must have seen firsthand. What remains is an impenetrable lump of half-digested information, digressions, and rumin ations, all presented to the reader as a book.10
As a result, it becomes altogether unclear when the text is dealing with general information or w ith specific data on the pin as, and we c an no longer find our way.
Introduction
5