Contemporary guide to decorations on ships, 1711

[bruce d]

Title = ' The ship-builders assistant : or, some essays towards compleating the art of marine architecture Sutherland, William, (1711)'

This document is incomplete but does include a chapter entitled 'Of Beauty'. I was hooked immediately. There are guides to acceptable styles of imagery used on stairs, rails and figureheads. I did not realise there were industry standards for decorating newels on stairs!

It is not a downloadable PDF but can be viewed page-by-page up to the point where (apparantly) the record is corrupted. The link below should take you to the opening of the 'Of Beauty' chapter but don't ignore the earlier pages.

 

https://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/library/AE4UUGBR/pageimg&viewMode=image&pn=93&mode=imagepath

[trippwj]

Finding a good copy of Sutherland has always been difficult. The ECHO – Cultural Heritage Online website has his 1711 and 1717 editions in images (tedious, but if someone really was bored each image can be downloaded and assembled into the final book). I don't recall if the plates were present in these versions.

 

I have found the 1748 edition on Google Books, however it suffers the same issues as most of the digitized volumes with fold out plates distorted or not scanned in full.

 

Sutherland, William. 1748. Marine Architecture: Or, the Ship-Builder’s Assistant: Containing Directions for Carrying on a Ship, from the First Laying of the Keel, to Her Actual Going to Sea, Etc. [With a Folding Plate.]. W. & J. Mount & T. Page. https://books.google.com/books?id=57BWAAAAcAAJ.

 

There have been a few reprints made during the 1980"s and 90's and a few "print on demand" versions which are difficult to use (printed to smal size rather than original size, and plates also greatly reduced).

 

Bruzelius (see topic on his site) has some extracts from Sutherland which may be useful, and there was an interesting article some years back in The Northern Mariner looking at developing the drawings for a ship based on Sutherland (

Kenchington, Trevor John. 1993. “The Structures of English Wooden Ships: William Sutherland’s Ship, circa 1710.” The Northern Mariner 3 (1): 1–43.

 

Lastly, for those interested, the Mariner's Mirror had an article about Sutherland which may be of interest.

 

Mallagh, Cris. 2014. “Some Aspects of the Life and Career of William Sutherland.” The Mariner’s Mirror 100 (1): 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2014.866372.

[allanyed]

As Wayne said, each page can be saved from the link above and a book put together.    If one wants it in printed form rather than reading on the computer, it is cheaper to buy the  book for about $25 for hardcover and a tad less for paperback rather than burning up ink and paper at home.  Not to confuse Echo with Ecco, but the print size in the Ecco (Eighteenth Century Collections Online)  copy that  I have is sufficiently large for my old eyes but there may be versions out there that are not so good as Wayne kindly points out.   The plates are indeed on the smaller side as they are not fold outs.  

Allan