Page 259 - Nicolaes Witsen & Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age

Figure A.1.
Witsen, 1688. From Jan Wagenaar, Vaderlandsche Historie, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam, 1770).
Engraved portrait of
study. With a few rem arks Witsen leaps from antiquity to about AD 1500 to pur - sue to hi s own er a. This last period pr ovides the most rewarding information for us today, mainly due to the sourc es Witsen used. Where he obt ained his information is largely unknown, but it is unique material and in many parts first- hand. As noted earlier, Witsen’s father was interested in shipbuilding and had amassed a c ollection of drawings and other m aterial. Obviously the son m ade use of this material, but he also ventured out on his own: he claims to have had many conversations with shipwrights. With the information he obtained he tried to capture the tr ade on paper , which makes the book a prime sourc e for ship- building in the seventeenth century. The book also had a glossary (which in fact was the first Dutch maritime lexicon), an appendix with supplementary informa- tion, and finally an index.
Variations on Witsen
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