Doreltomin

Excellent looking model, if it weren't for the support would say a real plane! Also it was much feared by the Germans during the war, which called P38 "The two-tailed Devil".

Excellent looking model, if it weren't for the support would say a real plane! Also it was much feared by the Germans during the war, which called P38 "The two-tailed Devil".

I have seen that picture, thank you. I think this is just something i will have to figure out, which i am most of the way done with. I have also looked at every Amati Coca build log on the forum, and only one contains the image. Woodrat has been instrumental to me getting anything right. Stick around! 

Also it should be said that British railroad modelling uses 1:148 as N scale and their H0 is 1:76, while Japanese N scale is 1:150. To add more confusion to the lot, Brits also use "fine scales" which are composite, or otherwise said are defined as a relation between an imperial and a metric unit. For instance "2mm" stands for "one foot for 2mm" or 1:152,4. 

Hello, am wondering if you are still struggling to get the correct ratios for the Mataro ship? This was just a votive model with little interest to look like a real ship of that times, being meant to be hung up in the altar of a church, but judging upon its details it was built by someone with real knowledge on shipbuilding, therefore it was "selectively compressed" regarding its length. Some time ago while doing a little fumbling on the subject stumbled upon a paper which discussed the correct proportions the real ship should have had for navigation. I don't remember details but I can look after if you are interested.

It is now time to work on the tender, before making any more progress on the snowplow itself. The tender must be built and the close coupling to the main chassis must be tuned perfectly. The various lines linking both units, must also be created as they are not included in the kit.
 
The tender chassis is made of two layers of wood assemblies, as described by the plan: 
 

 
And this is where we are.....
 

 
Yves

Also it should be said that British railroad modelling uses 1:148 as N scale and their H0 is 1:76, while Japanese N scale is 1:150. To add more confusion to the lot, Brits also use "fine scales" which are composite, or otherwise said are defined as a relation between an imperial and a metric unit. For instance "2mm" stands for "one foot for 2mm" or 1:152,4. 

Hello, am wondering if you are still struggling to get the correct ratios for the Mataro ship? This was just a votive model with little interest to look like a real ship of that times, being meant to be hung up in the altar of a church, but judging upon its details it was built by someone with real knowledge on shipbuilding, therefore it was "selectively compressed" regarding its length. Some time ago while doing a little fumbling on the subject stumbled upon a paper which discussed the correct proportions the real ship should have had for navigation. I don't remember details but I can look after if you are interested.

Hello, am wondering if you are still struggling to get the correct ratios for the Mataro ship? This was just a votive model with little interest to look like a real ship of that times, being meant to be hung up in the altar of a church, but judging upon its details it was built by someone with real knowledge on shipbuilding, therefore it was "selectively compressed" regarding its length. Some time ago while doing a little fumbling on the subject stumbled upon a paper which discussed the correct proportions the real ship should have had for navigation. I don't remember details but I can look after if you are interested.

Also it should be said that British railroad modelling uses 1:148 as N scale and their H0 is 1:76, while Japanese N scale is 1:150. To add more confusion to the lot, Brits also use "fine scales" which are composite, or otherwise said are defined as a relation between an imperial and a metric unit. For instance "2mm" stands for "one foot for 2mm" or 1:152,4. 

Also it should be said that British railroad modelling uses 1:148 as N scale and their H0 is 1:76, while Japanese N scale is 1:150. To add more confusion to the lot, Brits also use "fine scales" which are composite, or otherwise said are defined as a relation between an imperial and a metric unit. For instance "2mm" stands for "one foot for 2mm" or 1:152,4. 

Furthermore, if your question refers to the inlet of the waterways, this is solved in various ways depending of the type of ship. If the ship and/or the waterways are wood, the inlet may be made from a lead tube and is left unpainted. For steel ships, the inlet is typically made of a steel tube welded in place and painted in the same colour as the waterways.

Also it should be said that British railroad modelling uses 1:148 as N scale and their H0 is 1:76, while Japanese N scale is 1:150. To add more confusion to the lot, Brits also use "fine scales" which are composite, or otherwise said are defined as a relation between an imperial and a metric unit. For instance "2mm" stands for "one foot for 2mm" or 1:152,4. 

Also it should be said that British railroad modelling uses 1:148 as N scale and their H0 is 1:76, while Japanese N scale is 1:150. To add more confusion to the lot, Brits also use "fine scales" which are composite, or otherwise said are defined as a relation between an imperial and a metric unit. For instance "2mm" stands for "one foot for 2mm" or 1:152,4. 

Also it should be said that British railroad modelling uses 1:148 as N scale and their H0 is 1:76, while Japanese N scale is 1:150. To add more confusion to the lot, Brits also use "fine scales" which are composite, or otherwise said are defined as a relation between an imperial and a metric unit. For instance "2mm" stands for "one foot for 2mm" or 1:152,4. 

With Michael's skills, repairing the lifeboats should not be a problem. The hardest damage to fix is the subtle stuff, as well as amateur previous 'repairs'. In parenthesis, I have a model here with significant hull damage. Some bright spark 'fixed' the hole using expanding polyurethane foam!

Hello all,
 
Part 3
 
We repeated in part 1 that Hoving in his book of 1994 claimed that:
 
"It appears that Witsen, who had knowledge of the mathematical methods used elsewhere in Europe, designed this formula himself, out of status considerations, or out of the urge to find explanations for existing phenomenae."
 
And in part 2 we found Hoving's substantiation for his 1994 claim:
 
"Witsen borrowed his mysterious construction of the "Dutch" main frame from Georges Fournier's Hydrographie (1646)"
 
Let's find out if it makes sense to say that Witsen "borrowed" from Fournier; to say that Witsen stole from Fournier.
 
Here is the third part of my critical comments on:
 
 
Ab Hoving, Dutch Shipbuilding in the Seventeenth Century, in: Nautical Research Journal, 53.1, spring 2008.
 
Witsen and Fournier
 
If I understand correctly, Hoving's reason for claiming that Witsen 'borrowed' from Fournier is that Witsen copied work from Oliveira, Furttenbach and Dudley without mentioning them as his sources, and therefore Witsen must have copied work from Fournier also without mentioning Fournier as his source, and presented Fournier's work as his own.
It certainly is true that Witsen copied work from Oliveira, Furttenbach, Dudley and Fournier, but it is also very clear that he did so: Witsen copied the figures from these four authors on his own copper plates and had these printed for his books.
Witsen may not have mentined the authors of the original figures, but he did not present the figures of the other authors as his own work either. In all these cases it is very clear that Witsen made direct copies from the other author's work; as Hoving himself says: "on many occasions it is easy to determine that he "borrowed" from other authors".
To get more to the point, in the case of Georges Fournier's 'Hydrographie': Witsen names "P. Fournier" on page 4 of his foreword of his book of 1671, Witsen translates Fournier's description of ship design beginning on page 196 of his book of 1671, and Witsen gives four figures of Fournier's 'Hydrographie' on plate LXXXII of his book of 1671. Here are those four copied figures:

Witsen, Aeloude ..., 1671, detail of Plate LXXXII, opposite page 198. Witsen's copies of four figures from Fournier's 'Hydrographie'.
 
 
From this it is clear that there is absolutely no doubt that Witsen copied the work of Fournier. And, although Witsen gives no credit to Fournier in his main text, he does not present Fournier's work as his own work either.
 
But Hoving is making another claim in the case of Witsen copying the work of Fournier as well: Witsen presented the work of Fournier as his own; according to Hoving, Witsen presented Fournier's method for designing the main frame as the method Dutch shipwrights used to design their main frames.
Presenting someone's work without mentioning the author is not the same as presenting someone's work and claiming it as your own.
Hoving says in his article that Witsen on the one hand copied Fournier's work openly, like he did with the work of Oliveira, Furttenbach and Dudley, but on the other hand stole Fournier's work while claiming it as his own.
I think that is an extraordinary claim, a claim Hoving does not substantiate in his article, he just states as a fact that: "Witsen borrowed his mysterious construction of the "Dutch" main frame from Georges Fournier's Hydrographie (1646)."
 
So let's try to do mister Hoving's job and try to find out if it is justified to say that Witsen stole the construction of the main frame from Fournier.
 
While the easiest way to find out if Witsen stole his figure W from Fournier's figure would be to compare the figures of both authors, Hoving does not present Fournier's original figure in his article; he only shows Witsen's figure W. So we have to find Fournier's figure ourselves.
 
Fournier's figure was first published in the chapter "How to trace the main frame of a Ship, in the modern way" of his 'Hydrographie' of 1643. (There is no 'Hydrographie' of 1646 as Hoving claims) That same figure was published in Fournier's second edition of his book of 1667. Here it is:

Fournier, Hydrographie, 1667, detail of page 20.
 
 
We now have all the ingredients to compare Fournier's figure with Witsen's figure W. To make the comparison even easier I made the following sketch in which both figures show a ship with a  width of 44 feet:

Sketch of Fournier's figure next to Witsen's figure W. Since Fournier does not give information about how the deadrise in his figure was determined, I did not show it in this figure.
 
 
You can judge for yourself if the figure of Fournier was stolen by Witsen to make his figure W.
Allow me to give my opinion though: Fournier using a circle with a diameter equal to the width of the ship is not very Dutch. As Grebber and Witsen show, the diameter of this circle was determined by the distance the second futtock hung from the width of the ship in the bilge.
Also, the deadrise Fournier shows in his original figure is not very Dutch: Dutch bottom timbers have flat undersides.
For me Fournier using arcs of circles and straight lines, and Witsen using arcs of circles and straight lines can hardly be enough to claim that Witsen stole his main frame design method from Fournier. So my conslusion would be: Witsen did not steal his main frame design method from Fournier.
 
Another question also arises: if we suppose that Witsen stole Fournier's main frame design, why would Witsen have stopped there? There was much more to steal from Fournier: Fournier also explains the method for determining the diminishing of all the other frames, which method Witsen also describes extensively in his book on page 197 and shows in his figure C on plate LXXXII. Witsen could have stolen this method of Fournier also of course, but he decided to not do this.
 
It would have been nice if Hoving would have given an explanation for why he thinks Witsen stole his method for designing the main frame from Fournier; we are left completely in the dark now. Making accusations like these, without providing even the slightest evidence, is really unacceptable. Let's move on ...
 
 
Why Hoving calls Witsen's method "mysterious" is a mystery to me. If the method is stolen from Fournier, it is no longer a mystery where it came from. And Witsen's method in itself is not "mysterious": Witsen is very clear in the description of his method.
 
I suppose Hoving places "Dutch" between parentheses because he thinks Witsen's method is not Dutch. He probably wants us to believe it's French.
 
Hoving says that it is unfortunate for Witsen that "Dutch shipbuilders did not create geometrical constructions". But Witsen explicitely said they did, so maybe it is more appropriate to say that it is unfortunate for mister Hoving that Dutch shipbuilders did create geometrical frame constructions.
It is also unfortunate for mister Hoving that Rembrandt's portrait of master shipwright of the VOC Jan Rijcksen, painted 10 years before Fournier published the first edition of his 'Hydrographie', shows a Dutch shipbuilder creating geometrical frame constructions. To me it seems highly unlikely that Jan Rijcksen also "borrowed" his design methods from Fournier.
 
Hoving saying that Witsen "had to invent a "scientific" system" "that showed no lesser scientific quality than those he found in foreign books and manuscripts" makes no sense to me.
 
 
Hoving, still in the paragraph "Design of the Main Frame", page 29, II:
"Witsen draws a mold, using the shape of already standing futtocks, and these additional futtocks could easily be planed to the right shape if necessary; (Figure 16)".
 
Witsen does not say that he 'draws a mold using the shape of already standing futtocks'. Witsen actually says this about the mold of the futtocks on page 60 of his book of 1671 (my translation):
 
"D the second futtock; which makes the width, and depth of the ship, for example, if one places the mold of the second futtock, put a nail on the depth of the ship, and let a plumb hang down from there, and measure on the bilge how much it hangs from the nail; because the ship is wide over the bilges 27 feet, and has a width of 29 feet over all, hanging from each side one foot. Or if one takes the width 27 feet, and each side hanging 1 foot, gives 29 feet."
 
This text from Witsen shows that he is talking about the main frame, and that the mold of the second futtock is placed before the second futtock is placed itself. Hence the mold is made before the second futtock is made.
 
The "Figure 16" Hoving refers to is a drawing of a mold included in Witsen's book. Hoving's caption for Witsen's mold says:
 
"Figure 16. In his list of tools Witsen depicts a mold, probably for a futtock or a deck beam. It consists of a thin plank, the shape of which can easily be adjusted with a plane."
 
Witsen says this about the mold that Hoving shows in his 'Figure 16' (1671, page 185, I, my translation):
 
"33 A Mold."
 
From this we simply can not tell what this mold was made for.
 
 
Hoving, still in the paragraph "Design of the Main Frame", page 30, II:
"Top timbers formed the upper part of the ship. Their shapes were found with the aid of ribbands, running forward from the stern top timber, which were placed previously."
 
The shape of the first top timbers was obviously not taken from the ribbands; these first top timbers supported the ribbands which were placed against them. The shape of the top timbers was taken from the design.
This is clear from the building sequence Witsen presents in his chapter 11 (page 145, I, my translation):
 
"36. Set de Stut-Mallen.", "36. Place the molds of the top timbers",
 
before he mentions:
 
"39. Maeckt Senten om, Schooren en Swiepingen aen.", "39. Place the ribbands around, supports and spalls."
 
And on page 152, I Witsen confirms this by saying (my translation):
 
"When the deck beams are laid, one makes the lower scaffolding on top of the deck beams, ans place the Frame-top timbers ...
The top timbers placed, one nails across, and nails supports on the insides, with one end on the deck beam, and the other to the top timber, and then brings ribbands around to determine the run of the upper wales, and then places the other top timbers, ...".
 
So the molds of the top timbers were placed before the ribbands were placed, their shapes could not have been taken form the ribbands. As Hoving confirms himself in his book of 1994, page 110 (my translation):
 
"These top timber molds would not have consisted of much more than planks sawn in curves, but their purpose was clear: this was the moment when the ship above the waterline was shaped."
 
The "stern top timbers" mentioned by Hoving, the top timbers that are part of the transom assembly, were already made in step 9, and placed in step 13 of the building process Witsen describes on page 144 of his book of 1671 (also see Hoving, 1994, page 78 and 82). So their shapes had to be determined very early in the building process. Rembrandt's painting of 1633 shows a design for these 'stern top timbers' on the drawing in front of Jan Rijcksen.
 
 
Hoving continues:
"Conclusion
We have tried to depict the method of construction employed by Dutch shipwrights in the seventeenth century. The idea that no well thought-out reconstruction of these ships can be made because of lack of drafts is incorrect. Instead of looking for drafts, the researcher should investigate the building method in use at that time, which can be found in written sources. ...".
 
The big problem with Hoving's depiction of "the method of construction employed by Dutch shipwrights in the seventeenth century" is that it does not depict "the building method in use at that time, which can be found in written sources".
Since Hoving discards the design method Witsen so clearly describes in his "written source", Hoving does not describe "the building method in use at that time, which can be found in written sources".
We have seen that Hoving discards Witsen's design method on very dubious grounds: by just saying that "Witsen borrowed his mysterious construction of the "Dutch" main frame from Georges Fournier's Hydrographie", without providing any evidence for this assertion.
 
The final result is that Hoving's description of the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method is not the same as Witsen's description of the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method.
To say it differently: in this article Hoving does not describe the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method in the same way as the only valid source for the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method describes it.
 
Hoving's advice to "investigate the building method in use at the time, which can be found in written sources" "instead of looking for drafts", raises a question: why does Hoving oppose these two options of research? Why does Hoving wants us to choose between these two options of research? Why can't we just do both: 'investigate the building method in use at that time, which can be found in written sources' and look for drafts?
And there are of course also written sources that combine both, that show 'the building method in use at that time' and show drafts; Nicolaes Cornelisz Witsen's 'Aeloude en Hedendaegsche Scheeps-Bouw en Bestier' of 1671 is an obvious example.
 
 
Hoving says this in the second part of his "Conclusion":
"Model building experiments can compensate for lack of direct experience and enable research into the variety of shapes of seventeenth century ships, as clearly was proven in the Duyfken project. Once on its ways, "the ship practically builds itself, " as the Fremantle shipwright, Bill Leonard remarked. It may seem to be a cumbersome method, but the eventual reward, retracing seventeenth-century Dutch ship shapes, is most satisfying."
 
Well... as we've seen, the "retracing" of the "authentic seventeenth-century Dutch ship shapes" was done on the drawing board, with the help of mister Hoving, before the Duyfken replica was built.
 
 
This conclude my research into this important Hoving article. I think I am allowed to say that the intention of Hoving's article is to prove that the building method defined the design of the ship; that the use of the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method defined the design of the ship.
I am afraid I have to disagree: Witsen shows that the design was made on paper, and that the ship was build according to that design by using the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method.
But, in this article, Hoving strongly rejects the use of any design on paper in the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method, even emphasizing that the reader "need not look for original drafts, because he will not find any".
Hoving's conviction that it is impossible to find "original drafts" probably explains his rejection of any prove for the use of these "original drafts" in Dutch shell first shipbuilding.
 
 
P.S.
Although Witsen mentions the use of molds in several cases, Hoving seems to have a strong tendency to reject the use of molds in the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method. My question to you is if we should consider the use of molds in construction as a form of premeditated design. 
 
 
To be continued,
 
Jules
 
 
 
 

Hello all,
 
This is part 2 about Hoving's article of 2008, the article which holds Hoving's substantiation for his 1994 claim. Here is the second part of my critical comments on:
 
 
Ab Hoving, Dutch Shipbuilding in the Seventeenth Century, in: Nautical Research Journal, 53.1, spring 2008.
 
Hoving, in the long paragraph "Design of the Main Frame", says this on page 27, II:
"Design of the Main Frame
The reader must have noticed that a shipbuilder who applied the method described here never saw a ship's frame as an entity. The parts that formed his frames, even the principal frame, were installed individually into the hull during the building process and never formed isolated shapes that could be identified as frames. As we saw, the buikstuk that reinforced the bottom was fitted after the bottom was built and its shape was copied from the inside of the bottom."
 
The 'shipbuilder who applied the the method described here' did see the ship's frame as an entity: on paper. What Hoving calls the 'principal frame', which I guess is the main frame, is shown by Witsen in his figure W.
We must remember that Hoving claims to show the Dutch shell first shipbuiding method as described by Nicolaes Witsen in this article, and since Witsen clearly shows that a design of the 'principal frame' was made on paper, Hoving should mention this.
 
That the shape of the buikstuk was determined by the shape of the bottom, and not by the design on paper, has to be contested: Witsen shows us that the bottom did not shape the buikstuk, but that the buikstuk shaped the bottom: the shape of the buikstuk was predesigned on paper.
And, as we've seen, when Hoving built his model of the '106-foot long war-yacht' he did not determine the shape of the buikstuk by taking the shape of the bottom he had built, but by taking the shape of the buikstuk of the preliminary design he had made.
Witsen shows how the shape of the buikstuk was determined on paper in his figure W, and also shows an isolated buikstuk on plate XXVI (between pages 56 and 57) of his book of 1671:

Witsen, Aeloude ..., 1671, Plate XXVII, 'Buyk stuk'. Bottom timber.
 
 
Hoving continues:
"It is true that the shape of the two sitters at each side of the bottom seems open to free choice but, if we realize that the formula stipulated that for every ten feet of ship's length the width of the bilge was one inch less than the total beam and its height was one tenth of the depth, then we realize that there was not much room for variation."
 
Witsen in his figure W clearly describes how the flat and the bilge, and how the bilge and the side of the ship should be designed smoothly.
I would not say there "was not much room for variation" in the choice of the width of the bilge, so I think we can say that "the shape of the two sitters at each side of the bottom" was "open to free choice". Witsen also clearly shows in his figure W how the shape of these two sitters was chosen: by using a pair of compasses: the shape of the sitters was an arc of a circle.
 
The height of the bilge being 'one tenth of the depth' must be a misprint; it should read, according to Witsen, 'approximately one third of the depth'.
 
 
Hoving continues:
"Once the bottom and bilges were constructed and reinforced with frame sections and ceiling, additional futtocks were erected on top of the structure and a very important temporary mold, the scheerstrook (master ribband), was fitted to connect their tops."
 
Hoving does not say how the shape of these 'additional futtocks' was determined. Witsen shows in his figure X that the second futtocks were shaped according to the design of the main frame made in figure W, and, as we've seen with Lemée (2006), Witsen talks about molds for the second futtocks; we will get to that soon, again.
 
 
Hoving, still in the paragraph "Design of the Main Frame", on page 28, I:
"The decision about the shape of the main frame was separated into different stages, therefore allowing last minute modifications to the shape of the hull. That is why it is so odd that Witsen draws a complicated construction in his book to show how a Dutch shipwright constructed his main frame. (Witsen 1671, Plate LII, W, Figure 13)."
 
Hoving can not simply claim that "the decision about the shape of the main frame was separated into different stages" because his article does not in any way show that "the decision about the shape of the main frame was separated into different stages." And, again, Witsen shows the contrary, Witsen shows that "the decision about the shape of the main frame was" not "separated into different stages": "the decision about the shape of the main frame was" made before the building of the ship started, on paper.
 
I would not say Witsen's figure W shows "a complicated construction" as Hoving claims. I hope I have shown in earlier posts that it is very easy to apply Witsen's design method as shown in his figure W.
 
The "Figure 13" Hoving refers to is Witsen's figure W, no more, no less. Here it is with Hoving's caption:

Hoving presents Witsen's figure W without its context, again. Hoving decided to not show the figures V, X, Z and AA that follow Witsen's figure W; the figures that explain how the design shown in figure W was incorporated in the build of the ship.
 
 
Hoving continues:
"This interesting construction has been the source of many misunderstandings. Many researchers have tried to connect Witsen's drawing to data from building contracts, painstakingly looking for the points from where Witsen's curves had to be drawn, and totally ignoring the question of the actual validity of his 'method'.
If the shape of the main frame indeed was the product of a geometric construction, what would be more obvious than presenting the length of the radii in the contract or, at least, the exact location of the points from which the arcs had to be struck? As in the case of the design of the stem, not even the vaguest reference to the use of compasses can be found in a single contract."
 
I dot know which researchers Hoving refers to, but a lot of researchers have passed in my last posts and I do seem to remember they were 'painstakingly looking for the points from where Witsen's curves had to be drawn'. To name but two of these researchers: Dik and Blom.
 
That many researchers seem to ignore 'the question of the actual validity' of Witsen's 'method', as Hoving says, can be easily explained: there is no reason to 'question the actual validity' of Witsen's method.
 
I already explained in an answer to a question from Amateur in an earlier post that I would not expect design specifications in a contract: it makes the customer responsible for the functioning of the design.
Customers defining radii and 'points form which the arcs had to be struck' would probably have to be qualified shipwrights themselves.
Hoving's "not even the vaguest reference to the use of compasses can be found in a single contract" would imply that the customers should define what design equipment should be used by the shipwright; these customers must have been very rare.
I do not know if it was usual to include information about 'points from which arcs had to be struck' or about 'the use of compasses' in contracts for ships built with other building methods than the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method though. Maybe a forum member can help here and show one of these contracts.
 
 
Hoving continues:
"Picking an arbitrary contract to see what actually was written about the shape of the main frame
- for instance, the contract for "a Ship named Prins Willem, Anno 1630 den 20 Januarius" (Witsen 1671, 106) -
we read: "The bottom is 24 feet wide, rises 9 inches, the bilge 5 feet 4 inches high, 33 feet wide. The futtocks end at the top 2 feet beyond the bilge." This ...
Did the shipwright need paper and compasses? No, on the contrary, using compasses and trying to find the points from which the radii should be struck is only misleading and deceptive. Does the entire wording of the contract give the impression that all these data play a role in a geometrical construction? Certainly not, the data are scattered over the contract, which usually was written in an order that followed that of the actual building process."
 
Let me remind you of what Hoving said in 1994 about Rembrandt's portrait of master shipwright of the VOC Jan Rijcksen using paper and compasses in 1633: "The paper in the hand of the master builder shows the graphic representation of what usually can be found in a written contract."
It looks like Hoving is rejecting his own vision of 1994 now, in 2008, but that does not mean that his vision of 1994 is no longer valid. As we've seen in an earlier post: Rijcksen is clearly making technical drawings and he built his ships with the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method.
 
About Hoving's the "data are scattered over the contract"-argument; in the case of the contract Hoving chose, the contract for 'Prins Willem' of 1630, the data are not scattered over the contract; as Hoving shows himself: the data are given in two consecutive sentences.
And yet, even if the data was scattered over the contract, Hoving, as we've seen, used this same data to make a 'geometrical construction' before he started to build his models of the 'Speeljacht' and the '106-foot long war-yacht', making it even more likely that the 17th-century shipwright did the same.
 
For those who doubt if the information given in the contract of the 'Prins Willem' of 1630 is sufficient to make a design of the main frame, here is that design, made according to Witsen's design method:

Design of the main frame of Prins Willem, 1630. First the arc of the second futtock is drawn, then the arc of the lower futtocks is drawn, then the line of the flat is drawn from the keel tangent to the arc of the lower futtocks: two arcs and a straight line, smooth transitions. I dare to declare that I have not been "painstakingly looking for the points from where Witsen's curves have to be drawn".
 
 
And then we get to the part of the article which holds Hoving's substantion for his 1994 claim, so I feel the need to give an extensive excerpt of Hoving's text here:
 
Hoving, still in the paragraph "Design of the Main Frame", says on page 29, I:
"But why did Witsen depict his geometrical method, captioned with the text: "how the division on paper is made, before the ships are built"? We must realize that Witsen did not write his book as a shipbuilder's manual. His purpose was to concentrate all the knowledge about shipbuilding available in his time into one book, and he took material and inspiration from a handful of earlier scholars, whose books he found in the Vossius Library at Leiden, where he studied law.
On many occasions it is easy to determine that he "borrowed" from other authors without bothering to mention his sources. The sequence of drawings in the chapter "How Ships Were Built for a Hundred and Fifty Years" was copied entirely from Fernando Oliveira's O Livro da Fabrica das Naus (circa 1580) The drawings for the construction of galleys are copied from Joseph Furttenbach's Architectura Navalis (1629). The sections of English ships in plates LXXXIII and LXXXIV originate from Robert Dudley's Arcano dell' Mare (1646) and Witsen borrowed his mysterious construction of the "Dutch" main frame from Georges Fournier's Hydrographie (1646).
Witsen was a scientist, looking for a representative main frame construction that showed no lesser scientific quality than those he found in foreign books and manuscripts. Unfortunately for him, Dutch shipbuilders did not create geometrical frame constructions. Their main frame shapes were generated organically from the traditional handicraft method of construction they employed, which is why Witsen had to invent a "scientific" system."
 
According to Hoving, Witsen did not write his book as a shipbuilder's manual. But, Witsen's description of the design of the main frame and his figure W are placed in Witsen's chapter 11, which is called "How the ship's parts are assembled thereafter", and that chapter clearly talks about all the consecutive building steps of the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method. This chapter 11 can actually be read as a shipbuilder's manual.
Hoving himself used Witsen's chapter 11 as the foundation for making his description of the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method in his book 'Nicolaes Witsens Scheeps-Bouw-Konst Open Gestelt' of 1994, and for this article of 2008.
 
And then we come to Hoving's substantiation for his 1994 claim: "Witsen borrowed his mysterious construction of the "Dutch" main frame from Georges Fournier's Hydrographie (1646)."
 
Let's find out if it makes sense to say that Witsen 'borrowed' from Fournier; to say that Witsen stole from Fournier.
 
To be continued,
 
Jules
 

Hello all,
 
After we have seen in a former post that it is common in a part of the archaeological world to ignore Witsen's description of how the main frame was designed when working according to the Dutch shell first shipbuilding method, and to ignore Witsen's figure W, we will today have a short look at another Hoving-publication and a treatise of a history student from Belgium.
 
Ab Hoving & Gerbrand de Vries, Bouw van replica's een waardevolle herontdekking van traditionele bouwmethoden, in: Cornelis Cornelisz van Uitgeest, Uitvinder aan de basis van de Gouden Eeuw, 2004.
 
In their article 'Building of replicas a valuable rediscovery of traditional building methods', which was published as chapter 9 in: 'Cornelis Cornelisz van Uitgeest, inventor at the basis of the Golden Age', Hoving and De Vries say this on page 180, I (my translation):
 
"It becomes completely incomprehensible when we look at a wooden ship. You can barely imagine that the builder did not have a picture in his head of what the ship should look like when finished. And still the largest sea castles were built without even a simple sketch. 
With nothing more than a number of groundrules and formulas and sometimes some moulds, our ancestors built ships with which they placed the Netherlands at the absolute top of the seafaring nations for some time.
...
Concerning shipbuilding we are in luck. Near the end of the seventeenth century there were a couple of authors who described the process of building a ship step by step, and together with archaeological material, images in paintings, drawings and archival material, ...".
 
And yet again we find the fabricated illusion that the "couple of authors who described the process of building a ship step by step" "near the end of the century" described that "the largest sea castles were made without even a simple sketch".
The "couple of authors" Hoving and De Vries refer to must certainly include Nicolaes Witsen, and Witsen, as we know, describes how "a simple design sketch" was used in Dutch shell first shipbuilding. Hoving and De Vries, certainly aware of what Witsen wrote, simply decided to leave this information out of their story.
 
Hoving and De Vries amplify their 'vision' on page 183,II (my translation):
 
"And thus the shipbuilder determined, completely without drawings, the definitive shape of his ship hull, by which the design process was in fact divided into small steps, and every step was determined by a certain number of traditional ground rules and methods that were handed down to him. The ship arose under his hands, without an image on paper or without a model."
 
No comment.
 
FYI: Cornelis Cornelisz Uitgeest invented the wind-powered sawmill in 1593. His invention propelled shipbuilding in the Netherlands.
 
 
Benoit Strubbe, Oorlogsscheepsbouw en werven in Zeeland tijdens de Engels-Staatse Oorlogen (1650-1674) (treatise University of Gent), 2007.
 
In his 'Warship building and shipyards in Zeeland during the Anglo-Dutch wars (1650-1674)', Strubbe says this in his chapter "V.3 Historical wooden shipbuilding", on page 45 (my translation):
 
"The English and the Dutch had, during the seventeenth century, the best shipbuilders between them. Their ships were rarely built based on preliminary drawings. A graphic design was almost never present. In our time this can hardly be imagined, but in the seventeenth century this was not surprising. How did they proceed to build a ship? Well, the English and the Dutch built their ships on the basis of a predetermined contract.105"
 
Strubbe's footnote 105 says: "HOVING A.J., Nicolaes Witsens scheeps-bouw-konst open gestelt, Franeker, 1994, p.32."
 
Again we find the statement 'no preliminary drawings were used', in combination with the source 'Hoving 1994'.
 
While Strubbe used Van Yk's work of 1697 for his treatise, Strubbe does not even mention Witsen's work of 1671 anymore, he replaced Witsen's work with Hoving's work of 1994; he replaced the primary source with the secondary source. And this while Strubbe was surely able to read that primary source; he simply chose not to do so.
Witsen's book of 1671 is still, for good measure, mentioned in the 'Published Sources' of Strubbe's treatise, on page 13, but it is never refered to in any of Strubbe's 366 footnotes; instead Strubbe refers to Hoving's book of 1994. With the aforementioned result: essential passages in Witsen's text about the use of technical drawings in Dutch shell first shipbuilding, which are left out or discredited by Hoving in his work of 1994, can no longer be found in a treatise of a history student.
 
Benoit Strubbe graduated with honors in 2007.
 
To be continued, 
 
Jules

Good Morning Jules;
 
Thank you for the post no. 53. Some very clear points are made here, ones to keep in mind when Dutch shipbuilding methods are being discussed. It would seem to be rather a shame (to say the least) that available 17th century sources have been, and will presumably continue to be, misinterpreted through what seems to be a combination of both wilful and negligent misinterpretation. 
 
English records have also been considerably reduced by fires: at least two at the Navy Office, and the disastrous fire at the Cotton Library, where many Medieval, Tudor and early Stuart documents had been collected. 
 
Keep up the good work!
 
All the best,
 
Mark P

Hello Jules, many, many thanks again for taking your time to explain the subtleties of Dutch ship design and also to translate the relevant bits and pieces from Dutch to proper English. Some may not feel it, but reading from a three centuries old text isn't the same as just knowing the language. I do not know exactly how much the Dutch language changed in these three centuries, but as a non-Dutch speaker, I can understand the meaning of a Dutch simple sentence like "Geen fiets hier", yet I could have not by any means understand all the subtleties of Witsen's text without your compassionate translation so this is why your effort is much appreciated. 
 
Also I have seen some fellow members compare the "Dutch system of designing ships" which you are introducing here with others, mainly the one developed in England - and even as a "proof" produced some fine examples of naval plans developed around 1815-1825 from which a medium-experienced modeller could build a splendid authentic model, saying that compared with these, the "Dutch system" may seem crude.
 
My friends, have you ever noticed that our host here speaks specifically about the system presented by Witsen in his two books: 'Aeloude en Hedendaegsche Scheeps-Bouw en Bestier' published in 1671, with a second more enlarged and completed version 'Architectura Navalis', published in 1690. This is specifically 17th century and there's an old saying along the lines "you can't compare pears with apples" or whatever fruit suits you.
 
I also remember my father in the late '60's using his slide rule with an uncanny dexterity, yet in the '80's during my school days I had to buy myself a handheld calculator while learning doing the structural calculations which my father did by his rule. Also, forgive my father for I have sinned, even if he taught me too how to use it and I still have his rule somewhere, I can't remember anymore how to use it as the calculator is much easier. Therefore in much the same way 19th century navy drawings cannot be compared with any 17th century "system" simply because the first have some 100 more years of drafting expertise added to them. 
 
So just let me ask you the following: if you had to go to a dentist, would you prefer one which uses the latest 21-th century tech, or someone whose cabinet employs technologies and techniques which stop to 1980? It's just 43 years ago now, less than half a century, yet their technologies have had a good advance.  
 
So, speaking about ship designs, please return to 1671 and show me a single original draft of a ship from any nation, be it Spanish, Venitian, French or English, of similar age and also similar or better in complexity than these Dutch drafts which our friend Jules is presenting us here. I bet you can't find any. Most 17th century English ship plans are either drafts of real 17th century ships as taken off in their 18th century yards, or genuine bits or pieces left by sheer chance by some of the 17th century shipwrights, which generally speaking are NOT enough to build a complete ship if you don't add knowledge for the said ships from other sources.
 
During the 17th century shipwrights of most nationalities cautiously kept to themselves their "secrets of trade" and there are just some happy exceptions to the rule which can help us to understand how not only they designed their ships, but also how ship drafting evolved from mere scratches on a wooden board to the wonderful complete drafts available in the 19th century. 
 
One more remark about the Dutch system of "shell first", or alternatively, "bottom first" as it was specifically called in some books. The "shell first" is mainly the old system which was used for ships around all Europe; it was first spread in the Mediterranean by the Minoans and Phoenicians and everybody used it in the same way for several centuries and it's still in use for traditional boats today, although this is almost a dead art now.  I remember seeing some ten to twenty years ago a little movie showing the build of a Portuguese traditional riverine boat in the same way.
 
It was specifically during the 17th century that the English, based on a wide array of foreign sources too, developed a practical and successful method to raise a plan off an existing ship in order to replicate it. This is the whole trick. But Jules' drawings clearly demonstrate that the Dutch were able at this point to do the same, so it may never be clear whether the Dutch took this art from the English or it was the opposite, or even they both learned from the same third source.  So even if Witsen's method may look crude, he was fully able to build a whole ship using his methods, and after having built one ship, he could have raised the curves from existing frames and was perfectly able to replicate his design, if it proved successful, or to slightly modify it to obtain some desired properties. 
 
Also what is shown here is that the Dutch were perfectly able to develop ship lines which suited their own shallow waters. These Dutch ship lines are completely different of any ship lines the English or other nations did use at the same time -  and also if you read attentively what Jules presented when dealing with the yachts presented by Witsen, their shipwrights were perfectly able to adapt their designs from the Dutch shallow waters to the Swedish waters. Too bad the design of the Swedish royal yacht Lejonet isn't shown in the book, although a portrait of that fine craft survives in a painting done by Backhuysen which is now kept in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. 
 
Best wishes and keep your wonderful History lesson coming, Jules!
Doreltomin
 

Hi Jules, 
 
Thank you for continuing your lesson on Dutch shipbuilding techniques, it is very much appreciated! Also, while I can't really add anything on the subject as all period sources are written in Dutch, and even 17th century one, which I can't read,  just a few thoughts on the general topic of "building without plans". I have seen various kinds of professionals at work, from carpenters to blacksmiths, to furniture restorers, scissormakers or jewellers. I believe any good blacksmith with good experience on it would do a horseshoe without any plan, based on his own experience. Also it takes only one master plus an apprentice to do it, so virtually everything comes of a single mind. It may also be true for cartwheel makers, who generally speaking work in a team, or even the makers of the carts themselves, when all the details are traditional and known to all workers in the shop.
 
This may also be true even for small traditional boats. I lived part of my life in a city by the Black Sea shore here in Romania, which also used to have a small fleet of fishermen boats. I never saw one of these fishermen boats being actually built, only repaired (this is sadly a dying art) yet it is obvious they only follow a known pattern. Even more, some time  ago while being in a small city in neigbouring Bulgaria I saw the structure of a traditional boat half finished and thrown away to rot in a backyard. It was absolutely the same "blueprint" so to say, despite the fact that it was some hundred kilometers south and in a different country. So these traditional makers are completely able to do a traditional thing in their own way without any plan, following only a standard procedure. The old people a talked with, which did still remember the old days when you could visit a boat shop and order a traditional boat told me the first question a boat builder would pose to the customer would have been "how many (frames) the boat you want to be?"- this is just another way to say the length of the boat, considering the distance between frames is already known and "traditional". Now, the problem is in a boat shop would probably work up to four to five people, all led by the master boat builder, which would take them a reasonable amount of time in building one boat - several weeks for instance.
 
But this would have been not possible for larger ships, which would need much bigger teams to build them, not only because a small number of people would take a completely unrealistic time horizon to do all the tasks, but also because bigger ships would need bigger pieces of wood which are simply not possible to move and to put in the right place just by a handful of people. So, when a master builder has to lead a bigger team, he can divide the tasks and give pieces of the ship to different builders, which may then be brought together. But to make sure the pieces fit, they have to be DESIGNED in some way, otherwise they would NOT fit. This is where design becomes compulsory. You can make a perfect horseshoe with no plan, if you have already done five to ten horseshoes a day for several years. It may also be true for traditional boats or cartwheels.
 
But all blacksmiths I have seen make a small plan, even if it's only scribbled in chalk on their table, if they want to make something different, which they have not done before. This is also true for jewellers, which usually do a small sketch just for themselves before starting to cut gold or silver. This also applies for our modeller fellows which would do a careful planning, which would often include a small sketch, before starting to cut an expensive piece of exotic wood. So making a plan is a natural thing - it comes probably of our way of thinking. Also, if a plan may not be necessary when working alone, it becomes crucial if you have to work in a team with someone else. Otherwise, how could a team member understand the piece you need? 
 
So I come here to some conclusions:
 
Firstly, doing a plan is a natural way of our brain to imagine something new. This plan doesn't necessarily need to be done with a pencil on a piece of paper. It can be done in various ways. Remember that paper was not always as available as it is today, nor were pencils, quills, ink, rulers, compasses and various other drafting tools. It may have been that shipbuilders traditionally used wax tablets for their draft, or a flat piece of plank on which you do your lines in chalk or a piece of coal. Moreover, having a plan done on paper or even in parchment would NOT help too much if brought on the shipyard, which is usually outside in the rain and aside some water.  You can imagine how difficult would be to deploy a big sheet of paper if it rains or the wind is blowing. So if the shipwright had a plan, he would jealously keep it to himself safely home and refer to it when he will need it. I don't believe there may have been a guild's rule to destroy the design after the ship was made. Yet, I believe the were rules which said the plans were private property of the shipwright and he would keep to himself.
 
It is not different today with architects, which have to provide copies of their plans to their customers for the building permit to be issued and then for the house to be built But the originals of these plans are private property of the architect and there may be a legal bound that both the customer and the architect will not give the plans to any third party. 
 
So I believe each shipwright may have had an archive (of sorts) regarding his builds, which would jealously keep to himself as it encompassed his tricks of the trade. It doesn't have to be a large archive with carefully drawn plans of ships, it may have been just a stack of leaflets with calculations regarding the ship's dimensions. 
 
Secondly, it has been said that the shipwright was able to do the shape of the hull just by pinching the floor boards and then do some tricks with the leeboard and such. Yes, it may have been like that for the first build, but then if the ship shape went right, why wouldn't the shipwright note just for himself the shape of each frame, to easier reproduce a successful design? Moreover, how would a shipwright ensure the ship he is doing would be symmetrical on both sides, except if he has a way to "measure" the shape and replicate on the other side?    
 
Thirdly, how would you convey your design to another member of the team if you can't draft it in some way, to tell the EXACT shape of the wooden member you need for your build?
 
So these are just some things to ponder while claiming "shipbuilders did their tricks without any plans". Also, the plan doesn't necessarily have to be done in paper.
 
It has been also claimed that Greek temples from the classic period were built without plans, because, obviously, no plan of this survived. Yet lately in an unfinished Greek temple, a scribbling have been found on a marble wall, which proved to be exactly the plan of the said temple. After the temple would have been finished, the wall would have been polished flat and the scribbling erased, but since it was left unfinished, the "plan" survived!
 
 

Hi Jules, 
 
Thank you for continuing your lesson on Dutch shipbuilding techniques, it is very much appreciated! Also, while I can't really add anything on the subject as all period sources are written in Dutch, and even 17th century one, which I can't read,  just a few thoughts on the general topic of "building without plans". I have seen various kinds of professionals at work, from carpenters to blacksmiths, to furniture restorers, scissormakers or jewellers. I believe any good blacksmith with good experience on it would do a horseshoe without any plan, based on his own experience. Also it takes only one master plus an apprentice to do it, so virtually everything comes of a single mind. It may also be true for cartwheel makers, who generally speaking work in a team, or even the makers of the carts themselves, when all the details are traditional and known to all workers in the shop.
 
This may also be true even for small traditional boats. I lived part of my life in a city by the Black Sea shore here in Romania, which also used to have a small fleet of fishermen boats. I never saw one of these fishermen boats being actually built, only repaired (this is sadly a dying art) yet it is obvious they only follow a known pattern. Even more, some time  ago while being in a small city in neigbouring Bulgaria I saw the structure of a traditional boat half finished and thrown away to rot in a backyard. It was absolutely the same "blueprint" so to say, despite the fact that it was some hundred kilometers south and in a different country. So these traditional makers are completely able to do a traditional thing in their own way without any plan, following only a standard procedure. The old people a talked with, which did still remember the old days when you could visit a boat shop and order a traditional boat told me the first question a boat builder would pose to the customer would have been "how many (frames) the boat you want to be?"- this is just another way to say the length of the boat, considering the distance between frames is already known and "traditional". Now, the problem is in a boat shop would probably work up to four to five people, all led by the master boat builder, which would take them a reasonable amount of time in building one boat - several weeks for instance.
 
But this would have been not possible for larger ships, which would need much bigger teams to build them, not only because a small number of people would take a completely unrealistic time horizon to do all the tasks, but also because bigger ships would need bigger pieces of wood which are simply not possible to move and to put in the right place just by a handful of people. So, when a master builder has to lead a bigger team, he can divide the tasks and give pieces of the ship to different builders, which may then be brought together. But to make sure the pieces fit, they have to be DESIGNED in some way, otherwise they would NOT fit. This is where design becomes compulsory. You can make a perfect horseshoe with no plan, if you have already done five to ten horseshoes a day for several years. It may also be true for traditional boats or cartwheels.
 
But all blacksmiths I have seen make a small plan, even if it's only scribbled in chalk on their table, if they want to make something different, which they have not done before. This is also true for jewellers, which usually do a small sketch just for themselves before starting to cut gold or silver. This also applies for our modeller fellows which would do a careful planning, which would often include a small sketch, before starting to cut an expensive piece of exotic wood. So making a plan is a natural thing - it comes probably of our way of thinking. Also, if a plan may not be necessary when working alone, it becomes crucial if you have to work in a team with someone else. Otherwise, how could a team member understand the piece you need? 
 
So I come here to some conclusions:
 
Firstly, doing a plan is a natural way of our brain to imagine something new. This plan doesn't necessarily need to be done with a pencil on a piece of paper. It can be done in various ways. Remember that paper was not always as available as it is today, nor were pencils, quills, ink, rulers, compasses and various other drafting tools. It may have been that shipbuilders traditionally used wax tablets for their draft, or a flat piece of plank on which you do your lines in chalk or a piece of coal. Moreover, having a plan done on paper or even in parchment would NOT help too much if brought on the shipyard, which is usually outside in the rain and aside some water.  You can imagine how difficult would be to deploy a big sheet of paper if it rains or the wind is blowing. So if the shipwright had a plan, he would jealously keep it to himself safely home and refer to it when he will need it. I don't believe there may have been a guild's rule to destroy the design after the ship was made. Yet, I believe the were rules which said the plans were private property of the shipwright and he would keep to himself.
 
It is not different today with architects, which have to provide copies of their plans to their customers for the building permit to be issued and then for the house to be built But the originals of these plans are private property of the architect and there may be a legal bound that both the customer and the architect will not give the plans to any third party. 
 
So I believe each shipwright may have had an archive (of sorts) regarding his builds, which would jealously keep to himself as it encompassed his tricks of the trade. It doesn't have to be a large archive with carefully drawn plans of ships, it may have been just a stack of leaflets with calculations regarding the ship's dimensions. 
 
Secondly, it has been said that the shipwright was able to do the shape of the hull just by pinching the floor boards and then do some tricks with the leeboard and such. Yes, it may have been like that for the first build, but then if the ship shape went right, why wouldn't the shipwright note just for himself the shape of each frame, to easier reproduce a successful design? Moreover, how would a shipwright ensure the ship he is doing would be symmetrical on both sides, except if he has a way to "measure" the shape and replicate on the other side?    
 
Thirdly, how would you convey your design to another member of the team if you can't draft it in some way, to tell the EXACT shape of the wooden member you need for your build?
 
So these are just some things to ponder while claiming "shipbuilders did their tricks without any plans". Also, the plan doesn't necessarily have to be done in paper.
 
It has been also claimed that Greek temples from the classic period were built without plans, because, obviously, no plan of this survived. Yet lately in an unfinished Greek temple, a scribbling have been found on a marble wall, which proved to be exactly the plan of the said temple. After the temple would have been finished, the wall would have been polished flat and the scribbling erased, but since it was left unfinished, the "plan" survived!
 
 

Hello MTaylor,
 
Thank you for your questions. Sorry for taking so long in replying.
 
Let me repeat your first question:
 
"1) Given all the wars that went through Europe over the centuries, is it likely that many (most) records were destroyed?"
 
About Dutch naval records, I am afraid it was not because of wars that most records were destroyed. To repeat after J. de Hullu, archivist of the National Archives in The Hague from 1902-1924, specializing in the archives of the Admiralty, the VOC and the WIC: "From the start, one would almost say, the archives of the Admiralty Colleges were doomed."
22 February 1604: fire in the Admiralty of Rotterdam.
12 January 1771: fire in the Admiralty of Friesland in Harlingen.
8 January 1844: fire in the centralized Archives of the Admiralties in the Department of the Navy in The Hague.
 
I have spent a lot of time going through the burnt remnants of these naval records, mostly on microfilm, in the National Archives in The Hague.
 
The VOC-archives have fared better. I will show an example of the use of technical drawings in Dutch shell first shipbuilding from these archives in a future post.
 
 
And your second question:
 
"2) Guilds in many ways were secret societies, so if build plans were made, would it be realistic to think they were destroyed when the ship was launched? I do believe that much knowledge in the past was word of mouth and not recorded in an archival form."
 
Regarding the guilds, again, a big problem for research arises. To study Dutch shell first shipbuilding we have to turn mostly to the Guild of the Shipcarpenters in Amsterdam. Nowadays the archives of this guild are kept in the minicipal archive of the City of Amsterdam. This is what the municipal archive of Amsterdam says about the archive of the Guild of the Shipcarpenters of Amsterdam on its website: "Not much is left of the archive. Just some of the financial registers are kept in the municipal archives."
 
I have never heard that the Guild of the Shipcarpenters in Amsterdam recommended destroying build plans after the ships were built. If the Guild recommended destroying, its recommendation must not have been followed, for example: Witsen shows a lot of build plans in his book of 1671, the Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam holds a lot of seventeenth century build plans in its collection, I know build plans were kept at an artist's place in Amsterdam in 1669, and I know of a handbook of a shipwright of the second half of the seventeenth century that holds coordinates of built sloops, and build plans of ships and their construction. To me, all these sources show that build plans were not destroyed after building the ship, but that the build plans were used as "an archival form", as you call it.
I will dedicate future posts to the design drawings at the artist's place and the handbook of the shipwright to show what I mean.
 
"Knowledge was not recorded in an archival form". I do not know about your memory capacity right now, but my memory capacity is certainly not enough to hold all the data of one ship, let alone of several ships. Drawings were made in architecture, be it in house building or ship building, in the seventeenth century because they served a purpose: they expanded the memory capacity; once the drawing is made you can forget about the data used to make that drawing. These drawings for me are a form of knowledge "recorded in an archival form", as you call it.
 
Why do we accept that drawings were made in seventeenth century house building, and why don't we accept that drawings were made in seventeenth century ship building?
Here is for example a design drawing made by the 'City carpenter', we would call him city architect now, of the city of Leiden Willem van der Helm in 1669:

'City carpenter' Willem van der Helm made design drawings for buildings and bridges for the city of Leiden from 1662 to the early 1670s, and, as we can see, also made a design drawing for the yacht of the city of Leiden in 1669. (From: Elske Gerristen, 'De grondt, standt teeckeninge ende profyl geteeckent op de cleene maet', UvA).
Gerristen says: "Every city had her own city yacht that had to be replaced regularly. The city carpenter usually provided the designs."
I think 'building architect/naval architect' Willem van der Helm shows us that there was no 'hard' separation in design activity in 1669.
 
In general I think we have to keep a very open mind to study design activity in the seventeenth century. When we assume that 'knowledge in the past was word of mouth and not recorded in archival form', as you suggest, the will to research is the victim: when we assume that there are no 'records in archival form', I am pretty sure we will not find any 'records in archival form'.
 
Regarding Dutch ship design activity, we first of all have to accept that Rembrandt shows us design activity of a shipwright in 1633, and that Witsen shows us design activity of shipwrights in 1671. I notice that, for some, it is very hard to even accept those two facts.
 
I hope this answers your questions. If not, please do not hesitate to ask some more.
 
Kind regards,
 
Jules
 

Thanks for the answer.  I appreciate it.