Page 251 - Nicolaes Witsen & Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age

four 1 Conclusion
In the preceding chapters, the por tion of Witsen’s treatise devoted to seventeenth-century shipbuilding was re arranged and expl ained where nec es- sary (and pos sible, of course). As noted in chapter 1, thi s translated material represents only a fraction of the wide-ranging work, which goes far beyond the subject of shipbuilding. Apart from lengthy discourses in which Witsen happily displays his knowledge of the ancient world or presents sections borrowed liber- ally from other work s, there is much to be found about life on board a s well— discipline, food, ranks and functions of the officers and crew, port facilities, and sea battles. All these topics, like naval architecture, were studied and recorded by Witsen firsthand and have prime historical importance. Witsen is clear and lucid in these sections, perfectly accessible for today’s Dutch readers, so I refer them to Witsen himself. For foreign readers, these portions of Witsen’s treatise should be t ackled by someone who i s especially knowledgeable about these subjects.
Some final remarks should be made here, the first of which concerns the tra- ditional shell-first building method described in the previous chapters. At the beginning of the eighteenth c entury an infl uential group of naval officers, led by Admiral Cornelis Schrijver, sought to reform Dutch shipbuilding along British lines. By building from pl ans conceived at the dr awing board, n aval architec- ture would become more scientific, and experiences gained with former designs could be passed on to new designs, which would enhance progress in shipbuild- ing. Dutch shipbuilding could then catch up with other European countries.
It seems far from certain that the Dutch had suddenly slipped so f ar behind in those days, with foreign orders for ships to be built still coming in on a regular basis. More obvious is that the admirals wanted a tighter grip on the shipbuild- ing process, which had been entirely in the hands of shipbuilders in the sev- enteenthcentury.Itisalsodubiouswhethertheintroductionof mathematical equations was the key to progress, which was not easily acquired.
The translator of this book, Alan Lemmers, and I prepared a repor t about the transition from the shell-first method to the frame-first method of the admiralties using drafts.1
It describes the slow proc ess by which drafting techniques were introduc ed in eighteenth-century Holland, aided by the ingenuity of (among others) a R ot- terdam shipbuilding f amily, the Van Zwijndregts. With the aid of a rec overed manuscript and the m atching drafts found elsewhere, we were ab le to develop a picture of the dr afting techniques that led to the fi rst men-of-war in Hol land built from an on-paper design process. The introduction of this process was slow
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