Pritchard, James; From Shipwright To Naval Constructor - Iowa State ...

From Shipwright to Naval Constructor: The Professionalization of 18th-Century French Naval 

Shipbuilders 

Author(s): James Pritchard 

Source: Technology and Culture, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 1-25 

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Society for the History 

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From Shipwright to Naval Constructor: 

The Professionalization of 18th-Century 

French Naval Shipbuilders 

JAMES 

PRITCHARD 

Eighteenth-century naval officers thought that French warships 

were the finest in the world. Perceptive observers remarked on their 

attributes as early as the War of the Spanish Succession, when inferior 

French forces proved almost impossible to intercept. At the end of the 

century, French warships continued to display innovations that revealed 

their builders to be still in the forefront of naval ship design and 

construction.' A British admiral's comment, written in 1745, bears 

repeating: "I have never seen or heard ... that one of our ships alone, 

singly opposed to one of the enemy's of equal force, has taken her, 

and I have been in almost every action and skirmish since the year 

1718...."2 A recent scholar goes so far as to claim that French warships 

were not only the best on the seas then, but "probably as good as any 

produced before the advent of steam."3 But the surest proof of the 

high quality of French ships lay in the British practice of sometimes 

converting prizes into flagships and designating particular vessels as 

models on drafts of English ships.4 The reasons for the superiority of 

18th-century French warships, however, have not been well treated. 

DR. PRITCHARD is associate professor in the Department of History at Queen's University. 

The research for the article was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities 

Research Council of Canada, whose assistance the author gratefully acknowledges. He 

also thanks Mario Creet, George Richardson, John Sherwood, and three Technology and 

Culture referees for their criticism of earlier drafts. 

'Frederick Lane Robertson, The Evolution of Naval Armament (London, 1921), pp. 

40-41; Brian Lavery, The Ship of the Line, vol. 1, The Development of the Battlefleet, 1650- 

1850 (Annapolis, Md., 1983), pp. 84-85. 

2In Select Naval Documents, ed. H. W. Hodges and E. R. Hughes (Cambridge, 1936), 

p. 121; quoted in M. S. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 1713-1783 (London, 

1961), p. 148. 

3See J. B. Wolf, "Commentary," in Science, Technology and Warfare (Proceedings of the 

Third Military History Symposium, U. S. Air Force Academy, 1969), ed. M. D. Wright 

and L. J. Paszek (Washington, D.C., 1970), p. 39. 

4Christopher Lloyd, "Armed Forces and the Art of War," in The New Cambridge Modern 

History, vol. 8, The American and French Revolutions, 1763-1793, ed. A. Goodwin (Cam- 

C 1987 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 

0040-165X/87/2801-0002$01.00 

1

2 James Pritchard 

First, historians have not generally acknowledged the highly subjec- 

tive nature of the notion of superiority, and, second, they have offered 

unsatisfactory explanations for the development of excellence in 

French-warship construction. Recently, Robert Gardiner attempted to 

dispel "the myth of French design superiority in the age of sail," but he 

concluded only "that different needs produce different designs."5 Gar- 

diner reminds us that warship qualities-speed, stability, lightness, 

durability, seaworthiness, and firepower-can be had only at the ex- 

pense of one another and that the superiority of any of these qualities 

lies in the eye of the beholder. While British seagoing naval officers 

generally praised French prizes, dockyard officials and the Navy Board 

usually criticized the ships for possessing different qualities.6 

The admired characteristics of French ships were speed and fire- 

power. A 1764 comparison of length-to-breadth and breadth-to-depth 

ratios of French and British ships having twenty-six to eighty guns 

reveals that, in every case, the former were larger and the latter smaller 

in French warships.7 French warships were generally faster, at least in 

light winds, and also probably less stable, particularly in heavy seas, 

than their British counterparts. But they also deployed greater firepower. 

Commodore Charles Knowles once complained that "our 70gun 

ships are little superior to their ships of 52 guns."8 Another British 

officer noted about 1745 that, whereas British sixty-, seventy-, and 

eighty-gun ships fired general discharges weighing 918, 1,044, and 

1,312 pounds, respectively, similar discharges from French sixty-fours 

and seventy-fours weighed 1,103 and 1,705 pounds.9 Twenty years 

later, a French comparison showed that the same British warships 

yielded weights of 878, 1,312, and 1,438 livres, while the same French 

warships fired discharges weighing 1,020 and 1,676 livres.10 Yet, even 

bridge, 1965), p. 186; James Henderson, The Frigates: An Account of the Lesser Warships of 

the Warsfrom 1793-1815 (London, 1970), p. 17. Henderson asserts that several classes of 

late-18th-century British frigates followed from French originals; Robertson (n. 1 

above), p. 44, claims that captured French battleships served as models for British 

eighty-four- and seventy-four-gun ships and ended construction of any more sixty- and 

seventy-gun ships. 

5Robert Gardiner, "Frigate Design in the 18th Century," Warship: A QuarterlyJournal of 

Warship History, no. 12 (1979): 275. 

6Ibid., no. 10 (1979): 85. 

7Archives Nationales, Archives de la Marine (hereinafter Marine), B5, 11, "Comparai- 

son des vaisseaux francais avec les vaisseaux anglois en dimentions principales, en 

artillerie et en equipage, en 1764." 

8Lavery (n. 1 above), 1:90. 

9Ibid. 

'?Marine, B5, 11, "Comparaison des vaisseaux ...." In contrast to the English pound 

weighing 454 grams the French livre weighs 489 grams.

The Professionalization of French Naval Shipbuilders 

though the whole question of superiority is highly subjective, we may 

still ask how French warships acquired the qualities so admired by 

contemporaries. 

Earlier positivist historians claimed that the superiority of French 

warships followed government initiatives to import technology and 

sponsor scientific research into shipbuilding problems during the latter 

part of the 17th century.1 But cause and effect were assumed. Just 

how these enterprises led to superior ship construction has never been 

made clear. Military and naval requirements 

in the 16th and 17th 

centuries demanded growing scientific awareness and technical ability 

among executive and administrative personnel in the armies and 

navies of European powers.'2 But there can be no assumption that the 

demand was met or that utilitarian concerns necessarily improved the 

application of science to war making and to the impedimenta of war. 

According to John U. Nef, war does not stimulate progress in the 

sciences or technology but rather retards it.13 William H. McNeill, 

however, claims quite the reverse; military demands on the British 

economy, especially for iron production, did much to shape later 

phases of the Industrial Revolution.14 But McNeill refers to technology, 

and, when science was applied to gunnery, navigation, and even to 

naval education, little improvement occurred.15 On the other hand, the 

French met with such success in the matter of ship design and warship 

construction that they can be said to have established the profession of 

naval architecture. How and why the French achieved such envied and 

often-imitated quality in their warships during the first half of the 18th 

century demands explanation. 

Several historians have emphasized the absence of connections be- 

"John Fincham, A History of Naval Architecture to which Is Prefixed an Introductory 

Dissertation on the Application of Mathematical Science to the Art of Naval Construction (London: 

Whittaker and Co., 1851), pp. vii-xxviii, provides a classic illustration. 

'2Frederick B. Artz, The Development of Technical Education in France, 1500-1850 (Cambridge, 

Mass., 1966), pp. 40-55, provides a useful introduction to the topic and to the 

early literature. 

'3J. U. Nef, Western Civilization since the Renaissance: Peace, War, Industry and the Arts 

(New York [1950] 1963), pp. 220-21. 

'4William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 

1000 (Chicago, 1982), pp. 211-12. 

'5A. R. Hall, Ballistics in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1952), pp. 158-59, concludes 

that, far from an example of early science being directed by utilitarian considerations, 

ballistics served only as a mirror reflecting much of the most advanced scientific 

thought; its application to the art of war awaited the engineering revolution. On naval 

education, see Roger Hahn, "L'Enseignement scientifique des gardes de la marine au 

XVIIIe siecle," in Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVIII' siecle, ed. Rene 

Taton (Paris, 1964), pp. 547-58. 

3


tween science and technological change.'6 Others specifically concerned 

with the history of shipbuilding have identified nontechnical 

determinants as obstacles to technical progress. Richard Unger disputes 

the common opinion that shipwrights' lack of scientific knowledge 

was the primary cause of similarity between warships and cargo 

vessels before the 17th century. He shows clearly that differentiation 

existed throughout most of the Middle Ages and that it was international 

chaos at sea and increasing incidence of piracy in the 16th and 

early 17th centuries, rather than shipwrights' ignorance, that constrained 

specialization.'7 Two recent accounts of naval shipbuilding 

suggest, however, that superior French-warship construction was due 

to the early development of scientific education for naval constructors. 

But the authors employ an unsatisfactory, traditional, three-stage view 

of the technical development of naval architecture: first, shipwrights 

built with neither plans nor mathematical calculations; second, builders 

drew plans but, as yet, made no use of calculations; and, third, 

engineers both designed and computed on the basis of theoretical 

principles and mathematics.18 Such an interpretation 

both continues to 

assume that progress followed the application of science to war making 

and ignores the fact that superior construction occurred while ship- 

wrights remained in the first and second stages of development. 

This article rejects the standard view that French excellence and 

perceived superiority in naval shipbuilding during the 18th century 

were due to governmental efforts to import technology and foster the 

16See A. R. Hall, "Science, Technology and Warfare, 1400-1700" in Science, Technology 

and Warfare (n. 3 above), pp. 3-24. Also J. R. Hale's "Commentary," ibid., pp. 25-32, 

which supports Hall's argument; also T. S. Reynolds, "Scientific Influences on Technology: 

The Case of the Overshot Waterwheel, 1752-1754," Technology and Culture 20 (April 

1979): 270-95. For a strong statement on the connection between science and technology, 

see A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution 

(Manchester, 1969), esp. pp. 10-59. 

'7R. W. Unger, "Warships and Cargo Ships in Medieval Europe," Technology and 

Culture 22 (April 1981): 233-52. See also G. M. Walton, "Obstacles to Technical Diffusion 

in Ocean Shipping, 1675-1775," Explorations in Economic History 8 (Winter 1970/71): 

123-46; and F. C. Lane, "Progres technologiques et productivite dans les transports 

maritimes de la fin du Moyen-Age au debut des temps modernes," Revue historique, no. 

510 (1974), pp. 277-302. Both point to economic rather than international political 

factors. 

'8L. Denoix, "Charpentiers, constructeurs, ing6nieurs de vaisseaux," Academie de 

Marine, 1954-1955, 1: 5-18; and Paul Gille, "Les lcoles des constructeurs," in Le Navire 

et l'economie maritime du Moyen-Age au XVII' sicle, ed. M. Mollat (Paris, 1958), pp. 161-76. 

The article by Martine Acerra, "Les Constructeurs de la marine, XVIIe-XVIIIe siecles," 

Revue historique 273 (1985): 283-304, appeared after this essay was accepted for publication 

and hints at something more than the traditional emphasis of scientific training on 

constructors in its conclusion.


application of theoretical inquiry into practical problems of ship de- 

sign. While acknowledging the importance of naval shipbuilders' 

education, it asks whether their improved training focused on something 

other than the development of mathematical treatments of 

mechanical problems and whether administrative and social changes 

affecting naval constructors themselves were not essential precursors 

to educational improvement. These changes-really processes best 

thought of as institutionalization and professionalization-appear to 

account more satisfactorily for the superior quality and innovation of 

French-warship construction during the early and middle parts of the 

18th century than does government-sponsored research or the mathematical 

treatment of ship design. Indeed, the formal establishment of a 

school of naval architecure and a corps of naval constructors in 1765 

arose less from a perceived need to train naval shipbuilders than from 

a need to acknowledge that they already existed in a new, special 

occupation requiring official recognition and enhanced social status. 

Their organization into a corps was the capstone of a process of 

professionalization that had been developing for at least half a century. 

The modern French navy was not clearly superior in the 1660s and 

1670s when Jean-Baptiste Colbert began his efforts to acquire highquality 

warships for his new navy.'9 The French did meet with a 

measure of success. In 1672, Charles II so admired Le Superbe during a 

visit to Portsmouth that he ordered Anthony Deane to build a ship as 

nearly like it as he could. The resulting seventy-gun warship, Harwich, 

proved to be the fastest vessel in the British fleet, and nine more sister 

ships were built.20 But such success owed much to luck; it by no means 

convinced Colbert of the superiority of French ship construction, 

knowledge of design, or building techniques. He continually urged his 

agents overseas to seek out, persuade, and even seduce talented foreign 

shipwrights to come and work in France.21 

Despite difficulties attracting workers, foreign influence on French 

practice was strong. It was on the basis of English tradition and example 

that Colbert ordered the length-to-breadth ratios of French 

warships increased.22 By the end of the 1670s, he knew that Deane, 

Charles II's chief naval shipbuilder, had developed a theory of shipbuilding. 

Deane is reputed to have been the first naval architect who 

'Charles de la Ronciere, Histoire de la marine francaise, 6 vols. (Paris, 1899-1932), 

5:373-79. A. Anthiaume, Le Navire, sa construction en France et principalement chez les 

Normands (Paris, 1922), pp. 225-50. 

20Sir Westcott Abell, The Shipwright's Trade (Cambridge, 1948), p. 54. 

2'Pierre Clement, ed., Lettres, instructions et memoires de Colbert publies d'apres les ordres de 

l'empereur, 8 vols. (Paris, 1864), 3, 1:100, 133, 153. 

22La Ronciere, Histoire de la marinefrancaise (n. 19 above), 5:376-77. 

5


could compute in advance the exact depth of water required to float a 

new vessel.23 Colbert urged Admiral Duquesne, his own grand maitre des 

constructions, to develop a similar theory for France, informing him that 

the matter was "the most important business of the navy."24 In brief, the 

acknowledged superiority of French-warship construction does not, 

despite successes, date from the period of Colbert's tenure as naval 

minister. Nevertheless, the professional foundations of the naval constructor 

do. 

From its inception, the Academie royale des sciences served two masters-science 

and the crown. Scientific inquiry quickly focused on 

problems indigenous to the navy, which, like the academy, was a 

product of the social and political forces generated during the 1660s. 

Roger Hahn has shown that Colbert very quickly employed members 

of the academy.25 In 1673, Father Ignace-Gaston Pardies, S.J., carried 

out highly theoretical work on the behavior of bodies moving in fluids 

with varying velocities.26 Colbert personally encouraged the discovery 

of "a theory on the subject of ship construction."27 From 1681 onward, 

conferences were held at Paris and in the dockyards in an attempt to 

place shipbuilding on a theoretical basis-but to no avail.28 At least one 

naval officer, Captain Bernard Renau d'Elissagaray, an engineer 

known for his design of the first bomb ketch, participated in these 

discussions and published the results of his efforts to discover the 

mechanical principles of ship handling.29 He also engaged Christian 

Huygens in a debate on Pardies's laws that drew in Jacques and Jean 

Bernoulli.30 

In 1697, the omnipresent Father Paul Hoste, S.J., published the 

results of his investigations into the relation between velocity and 

23G. P. B. Naish, "Ships and Shipbuilding," in A History of Technology, vol. 3, From the 

Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution c.1500-c.1750, ed. Charles Singer et al. (Oxford, 

1957), p. 488. 

24Clement, ed., Lettres de Colbert (n. 21 above), 3, 1:177ff. 

25Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 

1663-1803 (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 68-69. 

26I.-G. Pardies, Statique, ou la science des forces mouvantes (Paris, 1673); also in Oeuvres 

completes, published at Lyon, 1696, 1709, and 1725. 

27Clement, ed., Lettres de Colbert (n. 21 above), 3, 1:125-26ff. 

28Rene Memain, La Marine de guerre sous Louis XIV, le materiel, Rochefort, arsenal modele de 

Colbert (Paris, 1937), pp. 641-731, contains the most detailed discussion of the French 

struggle and failure to draw a theory of naval construction out of practice. 

29See ibid., pp. 709-12; and B. Renau d'Elissagaray, De la Theorie de la manueuvre des 

vaisseaux (Paris, 1689). 

30La Ronciere, Histoire de la marinefrancaise (n. 19 above), 6:87-88. See A. Anthiaume, 

Le Navire, sa propulsion en France et principalement chez les Normands (Paris, 1924), 

pp. 170-73, for an analysis of Renau's work; also Fincham (n. 11 above), pp. xiii-xv.


resistance in fluids, the effect of form on resistance, stability, and 

stowage, the properties affecting pitching, and the best form of a ship's 

bow.3' Hoste's explanation of why ships do not capsize even though 

their center of gravity is above their center of hydrostatic thrust was 

wrong.32 But his work and that of his contemporaries amply demon- 

strate the strong presence of institution-sponsored scientific research 

and the government's desire to establish shipbuilding on a theoretical 

basis during the last quarter of the 17th century. Hoste's work also 

shows, however, that success did not reward their efforts. 

Moreover, any benefits achieved were enjoyed by academicians 

rather than by the navy. The needs of the French state and the French 

intellectual milieu contributed increasingly to the academicians' rapid 

rise to eminence. The mechanical principles of ship handling con- 

tinued to attract their attention. Discussions of Renau's errors gave rise 

to Jean Bernoulli's new theory of ship handling, which, too sophisti- 

cated for sailors and shipbuilders, resulted in yet another work, by 

Henri Pitot.33 By the 1730s, individual academicians rather than naval 

officers or shipbuilders provided the expert advice that the navy de- 

partment sought. "The distinguishing feature," according to Roger 

Hahn, "seems not to have been their particular position in the government 

hierarchy but their professional skills and the government's faith 

in their impartiality."34 Yet, mathematical description of the theoretical 

principles of la manceuvre, the disposition of sails, and the positioning of 

rudders made not the slightest contribution to the improvement of 

warships. 

The actual construction of warships continued to be carried out after 

age-old practices by shipwrights who received their training by apprenticeship 

and remained wedded to the ancient mystery of their craft. 

The introduction of foreign shipwrights into French arsenals and the 

recall of French carpenters from abroad in order to meet Colbert's new 

demands undoubtedly contributed a high degree of skill to the production 

of warships. Nevertheless, any argument in favor of the efficacious 

role of technological diffusion must remain modest. The introduction 

3'Paul Hoste, Theorie de la construction des vaisseaux, published with L'Art des armees 

navales ou traite des evolutions navales (Lyon, 1697). 

32Paul Gille, "Sea and River Transportation," in A History of Technology and Invention; 

Progress through the Ages, vol. 2, The First Stages of Mechanization, ed. Maurice Daumas (New 

York, 1969), p. 380. 

33Jean Bernoulli, Essai d'une nouvelle theorie de la manceuvre des vaisseaux avec quelques 

lettres sur le mesme sujet (Basle, 1714), which gave rise to Pitot's La Thtorie de la manueuvre des 

vaisseaux reduit en pratique ou les principes et les regles pour naviguer le plus avantageusement 

qu'il est possible (Paris, 1731). See Anthiaume (n. 30 above), pp. 174-77. 

34Hahn (n. 25 above), pp. 68-69. 

7


of foreign techniques and technicians into new environments was only 

as effective as the receptiveness of the new locations, which, as Carlo 

Cipolla points out, depends on human and social considerations that 

are most difficult to determine. Moreover, Cipolla excludes 17thcentury 

France when emphasizing the relation between tolerance and 

receptiveness.35 Although foreign techniques were introduced into 

French arsenals from Malta, the Barbary Coast, Barcelona, Holland, 

and England, and by foreign craftsmen, ships' carpenters, anchor 

forgers, ropemakers, and even a salvage operator and his gear, the 

mere presence of technological transfer provides little explanation of 

later French success. 

On the other hand, the navy benefited from the lack of strong 

traditions of large-ship building in France and the introduction of 

foreigners from both northern and southern Europe. Possessing only 

local customs and practices, French shipwrights had no strong tradition 

of building large transoceanic vessels.36 Perhaps the chief endowment 

of foreign craftsmen was an appreciation for innovation that led 

to fruitful eclecticism. By contrast, the presence of strong craft traditions 

in English shipyards, as well as pressing demands for increased 

production, are important reasons adduced for the absence of innovation 

in British naval construction.37 Yet, while newly inspired French 

naval shipwrights were ideally situated to receive an impulse from a 

vigorous government-directed science, no such thing occurred. 

During the 1680s, schools of construction were established in the 

three major naval arsenals with the avowed purpose of teaching 

officers the rules of shipbuilding. But instructors appeared to devote 

themselves to debates over the proportions of ships and to theoretical 

inquiries into the movement of solids at sea.38 In 1684, the Marquis de 

Langeron was appointed inspecteur des constructions navales both to instruct 

shipwrights in the correct way to draft plans and profiles and in 

the rules for determining ship proportions and to receive new ideas on 

construction.39 The Naval Ordinance of 1689 established inspecteurs of 

35Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000- 

1700 (New York, 1976), pp. 174-81 

3La Ronciiere (n. 30 above), 5:373-75. 

37Abell (n. 20 above), p. 102; and Daniel A. Baugh, British NavalAdministration in the Age 

of Walpole (Princeton, N.J., 1965), pp. 252-53. Alexander McKee, "The Influence of 

British Naval Strategy on Ship Design: 1400-1850," in A History of Seafaring Based on 

Underwater Archaeology, ed. George F. Bass (New York, 1972), p. 226, claims that "except 

for the Tudor period England lagged rather than led in ship design, first behind the 

Dutch and then behind the French." 

38Memain (n. 28 above), pp. 702-704. 

39Didier Neuville, Etat sommaire des archives de la marine anterieurs a la Revolution (Paris, 

1898; Kraus Reprint, 1977), pp. 579-80.


constructions on a more formal basis, but the end results were minimal. 

These officials verified and directed the training of shipwrights in the 

dockyards. But their duties included too much else for shipbuilders to 

receive much of their time. Their chief task seems to have been to 

clarify to young aspiring naval officers (gardes de la marine) what they 

were supposed to learn about warship construction from socially in- 

ferior shipwrights.40 Gardes can only have been dilettantes at best. Any 

instruction provided to, or absorbed by, gardes made no contribution to 

ship design or to construction. Unfortunately, most histories attribute 

material progress to the development of scientific education, assuming 

(after the Marquis de Condorcet) that teaching programs and curriculum 

development lead directly to improved technology.41 Such may be 

the case, but it needs demonstration. The path to improved construction 

was entirely different. 

Early in the 17th century, an effort was begun to obtain shipbuilders' 

secrets. Books like Father Fournier's Hydrographie (published in 1643), 

however, only printed recipes for tracing ship patterns.42 This work 

continued under Colbert. In 1677, Sieur Dassie published L'Architecture 

navale, but "there was not a single principle, deduced from 

science, employed to determine any of the conditions stated in that 

work."43 In 1702, however, there appeared Nicolas Aubin's Dictionnaire 

de la marine, which placed greater emphasis on definitions and 

descriptions.44 Aubin's work and even that of his predecessors represent 

the collective effort of many to pry loose shipwrights' skills and 

transform their secrets to rationally apprehensible knowledge. This 

effort to collect, organize, and rationalize current shipbuilding knowl- 

edge and to disseminate it via the printed page rather than by mathe- 

matical investigation of mechanical principles was a crucial first step 

toward improved ship construction and a more significant contribu- 

tion than the theoretical work of Father Hoste and his contemporaries. 

Hoste himself summed up his frustration after nearly twenty years of 

effort: "It is by luck that a good ship is built," he wrote, "for those who 

still make them are no better than those who build without knowing 

how to read or write."45 

40Memain (n. 28 above), p. 713; and Neuville, p. 395, n. 3. 

41E.g., Gille, "Les Ecoles des constructeurs" (n. 18 above), passim. 

42Ibid., p. 161. 

43Sr. [F.] Dassie, L'Architecture navale, contenant la maniere de construire les navires, galeres et 

chaloupes et la definition de plusieurs autres especes de vaisseau (Paris [1677] 1695); see 

Fincham (n. 11 above), pp. xi-xii. 

44Nicolas Aubin, Dictionnaire de la marine contenant les termes de la navigation et de 

l'architecture navale (Amsterdam, 1702); second and third editions appeared at Amsterdam 

in 1736 and The Hague in 1742, respectively. 

45Paul Hoste, "Introduction," Theorie de la construction des vaisseaux," quoted in Memain 

9


A second important step followed in 1717, when master shipwrights 

began to climb the dockyard hierarchy. Designated mattres charpentiers 

in the 1689 naval ordinance, shipwrights originally held the same social 

status as petty officers, boatswains, and master caulkers and drillers. 

But soon after Louis XIV's death the Naval Council, seeking to encourage 

fils de famille (sons from respectable families) to enter the trade, 

ordered master shipwrights to be known henceforth as master constructors 

(mattres-constructeurs). The council also authorized the first 

shipwright in each of the three great arsenals to carry the title, "Chief 

of Construction and Repair," and to style himself as sieur, or "mister."46 

These administrative developments represented a conscious effort to 

place the most senior shipwrights in the service in the lowest ranks of 

polite society. 

The designation maitre harkened back to the earlier, subordinate 

social position of craftsman within the naval hierarchy, but the appellation 

constructeur foreshadowed the future professional. The double 

term illustrates a recognition by the shipwright's "betters" that something 

had altered: shipbuilders were no longer mere craftsmen. But, if 

naval shipwrights were no longer craftsmen, what were they? They 

were not engineers for engineers were already members in good 

standing in polite society. With more than 50 percent of their number 

in the nobility, there could be no doubt of their standing.47 

Moreover, engineers had never built ships and did not know how to. 

Colbert had appointed engineers for hydrographic surveys, chart 

making, maritime fortifications, hydraulic works, and building construction 

in the arsenals. The first naval engineers possessed no common 

or uniform title, nor did a corps of naval engineers exist. 

Ingenieurs-geographes and architectes ingenieurs coexisted with simple 

ingenieurs de la marine. The same person employed on hydrographic 

surveys might be found working on the construction of maritime 

fortifications. Some engineers had been army officers, teachers of 

hydrography, and even naval scriveners, and, in at least one instance, a 

former military engineer, Renau d'Elissagaray, obtained senior naval 

rank as capitaine de vaisseau.48 But, engineers had nothing to do with 

shipbuilding. 

Soon after the beginning of the 18th century, however, the naval 

shipwright no longer fitted traditional categories of ideological think- 

(n. 28 above), p. 731. 

46Neuville, Etat sommaire (n. 39 above), p. 396; Anthiaume (n. 19 above), p. 310. 

47Anne Blanchard, Les Ingenieurs du "Roy" de Louis XIV a Louis XVI (Montpellier, 1979), 

p. 237. 

48Neuville, Etat sommaire, pp. 390-92.


ing. The boundaries of his social status were becoming both fluid and 

distinct-the first stage of any occupation's route to professionalization.49 

The appellation constructeur recognized senior naval 

shipbuilders as more than skilled craftsmen and reflected the inability 

of a socially conservative naval department to accord the social recognition 

implied in the appellation ingenieur. The double term maitreconstructeur 

reflected the ambiguity between social inferiority and technical 

expertise. 

While we may puzzle over such carefully graded distinctions, the 

gradations were real. By 1727, following the death of each of the 

titleholders, Secretary of State for the Navy Comte de-Maurepas suppressed 

the title of chief of construction and repairs.50 Elevated status 

clearly remained more personal than occupational, and Maurepas had 

second thoughts about continuing the practice. No provisions for 

special education and training of master shipbuilders in the navy 

occurred during the next decade. But, early in the 1740s, Maurepas, by 

now a minister of state as well as secretary of state for the department, 

reversed his earlier position and went a step beyond the Naval Council 

to increase shipwrights' social status. In 1741, he suppressed the designation 

maitre and allowed the term constructeur to stand alone to 

denote occupation, rank, and elevated social position within the navy's 

hierarchy. The same year also saw the chief constructor at Brest become 

a chevalier of Saint Louis.51 

Maurepas's intention, like the Naval Council's a quarter of a century 

before, was quite explicit: "I have obtained distinguished titles for 

those who appeared the most worthy in order to excite the emulation 

of others and to engage young men of wit and talent to embrace this 

profession, so important and worthy of consideration. But as they 

might be pained to see themselves confused with ordinary masters, I 

have had them listed as constructors while suppressing the word, 

'master,' which in future will be omitted from their warrants."52 Naval 

constructors were clearly employed doing something officially deemed 

suitable for members of polite society. In Maurepas's opinion, the most 

worthy shipbuilders had left the mysterious world of arts et metiers and 

entered the world of the professions. By 1740, naval shipwrights met 

several core criteria for their occupation to be described as a profession; 

the remainder followed during the next quarter-century. Profes- 

49Talcott Parsons, "Professions," International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, ed. David 

L. Sills (New York, 1968), 12:536. 

50Neuville, Etat sommaire (n. 39 above), pp. 396-97; and Anthiaume (n. 19 above), 

p. 310. 

35Anthiaume (n. 19 above), p. 331. 

52Neuville, Ltat sommaire (n. 39 above), p. 397. 

11


sional knowledge is cumulative, and junior grades of sous-constructeur 

and eleve-constructeur accompanied Maurepas's important reform. Formal 

technical training, however, still remained a matter of apprenticeship. 

No strong intellectual component, generally acknowledged to 

be a crucial criterion of professionalism, yet existed.3 Nevertheless, 

naval shipwrights were entering the world of the professions based on 

the application to daily life of organized, taught, rationally apprehended 

knowledge.54 

Coincidentally, the most important innovations in warship construc- 

tion during the 18th century appeared at about the same time. The 

first of the famous French seventy-fours had been laid down in 1719, 

but Le Terrible, the first to mount twenty-eight 36-pounders on her 

lower gun deck, appeared in 1737.55 Four years later, "the first modern 

frigate," La Medee, the first single-decked vessel to mount twenty-six 

guns of a single caliber (8-pounders), came off the ways at Brest.?6 And, 

in 1744, Le Tonnant, the first eighty-gun ship to mount guns of a single 

heavy caliber on each of two continuous decks, was launched at 

Toulon.57 No direct causal relation is claimed between shipwrights' 

improved social status and innovative shipbuilding. For one thing, the 

latter had been going on for a long time. The French discontinued 

building their old fifth-rates, two-decked frigates having up to thirtysix 

guns, as early as 1695 and introduced new demi-batterie frigates of 

thirty to thirty-six guns early in the new century before finally developing 

La Medee.58 Naval shipbuilding was clearly no hit-or-miss affair or 

even a question of simply finding best practice among known recipes 

for tracing ship plans or routines for determining proportions and 

dimensions. 

During the second quarter of the 18th century, when major innova- 

tions in ship design appeared, French naval shipwrights began to 

escape the ambiguity of being viewed as both professional experts and 

social inferiors. Despite complaints that some were rude and unfit for 

polite society, the presence of shipwrights seated among senior naval 

officers at councils of construction in the dockyards-and their ability 

53A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson, "Professions," in Encyclopedia of the Social 

Sciences, ed. E. R. A. Seligman (New York [1933] 1967), 11:476. 

54Parsons, "Professions" (n. 49 above), 12:536. 

55Lavery (n. 1 above), 1:81. 

56Jean Boudriot, "L'Evolution de la fr6gate dans la marine francaise 1660-1850," in 

Five Hundred Years of Nautical Science 1400-1900, ed. Derek House (Greenwich: National 

Maritime Museum, 1981), pp. 231-33. 

57E. Taillemite, "The Golden Age," in The Great Age of Sail, ed. J. Jobe, trans. M. Kelly 

(New York, 1967), p. 149. 

58Boudriot, "Evolution," pp. 230-31.


to argue and win their case for innovative designs-testified to the 

social change. 

The conseils de construction probably deserve greater consideration in 

the process of professionalization of naval constructors than has 

hitherto been allowed. It had to be here that noble officers became 

aware that their social inferiors were doing something quite different 

from ordinary master craftsmen. Moreover, these councils, established 

by royal decree, were embedded in the institutional processes of a 

steadily expanding naval administration. 

The germ of the idea for conseils de construction, as much else, was 

planted in Colbert's correspondence, this time in letters dated 1670 

and 1671 and addressed to naval intendants at each arsenal. Colbert 

ordered that a council "on the actual situation [sur lefait] of constructions" 

be established in each dockyard. Its only members were to be 

"those naval officers and carpenters who have the most experience and 

who can best speak about it."59 A reglement of March 1671 established 

the councils on a permanent footing in each arsenal, thereby institu- 

tionalizing a system that forced members of two groups, normally at a 

great social distance, to deal with one another.60 Institutional arrangement 

and administrative procedure bridged a social abyss of such 

dimensions that it is inconceivable that professional connections could 

ever have been made without them. 

Not that relations among senior, aristocratic naval officers and naval 

constructors went smoothly. During the 1680s, the councils of construction 

competed for attention with newly established schools of 

construction, and registers of their deliberations contain little of a 

precise nature.61 Scientific inquiry appeared to dominate discussions, 

as witnessed by the appearance of Renau d'Elissagaray's book. The 

social distance between senior aristocratic officers and senior master 

shipwrights was enormous. As late at 1746, the behavior of constructors 

at Brest left Lieutenant-general des armees navales Duc d'Anville torn 

between praise and criticism. On the one hand, they alone of the men 

in charge did anything useful, but, on the other hand, they did as they 

pleased and listened to no one. They had nothing to do with the 

harbormaster, shifted workers from job to job without permission or 

informing anyone, and addressed even general-grade officers with 

impertinence. "The title of engineer," he complained, "turns their 

heads."62 Nor was innovation always appreciated. Toward the end of 

'"Clement, Lettres de Colbert (n. 21 above), 3: 300, 308, 309, n. 1. 

9"Anthiaume (n. 19 above), pp. 261-62. 

i'Memain (n. 28 above), p. 703. 

62Public Archives of Canada, M. G. 18, N. 11, "D'Anville Papers," no. 14, "observa- 

tions" (on preparations in the spring of 1746), f. 3. 

13


the Seven Years' War, Chefd'escadre Maximin de Bompar displayed "a 

violent prejudice" against the design of the newly proposed Le Languedoc 

of eighty guns. Bompar insisted that the prime characteristic of 

any flagship was strength to protect its squadron rather than speed. In 

comparison to Le Foudroyant, laid down fourteen years before, the new 

ship, though of the same class, was 8 feet longer at the keel and 2 feet 

broader amidships. Whereas, in the past, first-rates, mounting 100- 

116 guns, possessed keel-lengths of no more than 176 feet, Le Languedoc's 

builder proposed one of 180 feet.63 

Innovations also upset conservative elements among naval administrative 

officers. Some did not understand what was happening. They 

viewed changes from the terms and clauses of 1689 with apprehension 

and sometimes interpreted constructors' innovations as insubordination. 

The intendant at Rochefort during the early 1750s, Sebastien 

Lenormant de Mezy, mirrored such fears and attitudes. In his opinion, 

the search for speed led builders to give warships the proportions and 

characteristics of frigates. Ships of the line, he claimed, were losing 

their tightness and their ability to carry heavy ordnance and large sail 

areas, and their keels displayed a tendency to hog or arch. Height of 

lower gun decks above the waterline and heaviness of scantlings were 

sacrificed to speed and grace. New ships could not carry their lower 

batteries on second and third voyages; they had to be constantly rebuilt 

in order to last. By seeking to increase firepower, constructors lost for 

new frigates their qualities of fineness, lightness, and speed, and they 

assumed the characteristics of ships of the line.64 Similar complaints 

came from the intendant of Toulon. Charles-Marin Hurson criticized 

constructors who ignored the experience of seagoing officers by charging 

that they paid too much attention to their own preoccupation with 

"gracefulness and speed, without insisting enough on robustness and 

ease of different manoeuvres which they know only by theory."65 

Nevertheless, because naval constructors and senior administrators 

and naval officers met in the arsenals and clashed in councils of construction, 

they gained an appreciation of each other and of the benefits 

to be obtained from professionalization, and thereby the former began 

to move into the fringes of polite, educated society to the relatively new 

position of engineer. These social and administrative developments, 

rather than the theoretical inquiries of academicians, were crucial 

63Toulon, Archives de la Marine (hereafter Toulon), Serie 1A', 214, ff. 29-9', 48 

Comm" Gen' Dasque to Duc de Choiseul, March 28 and May 2, 1762. 

6Bibliotheque nationale, n.a.f., no. 126, "Memoire sur le service, et l'administration du 

Port, et arcenal de la marine a Rochefort," pp. 132-35. 

65Toulon, S6rie 1A', 214, Hurson to Choiseul, March 28, 1762.


prerequisites for any contact between science and ship design. In brief, 

scientists did not become shipbuilders; shipbuilders became engineers. 

To say this is not to suggest that a direct application of science to 

technology occurred but rather that only after the appearance of 

nontechnical developments of an institutional and social nature could 

science have any impact at all-even indirectly, through 

the establish- 

ment of schools in which the principles of basic science were taught. 

Academician Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau's work became 

particularly significant in the new environment. During the 1730s, he 

had inquired into several topics at Maurepas's direction: the causes and 

means of preventing dry rot in ships, the quality and utilization of 

steamers to curve wooden timbers employed in frames, the preservation 

of ships' masts, the manufacture of rope, and the conservation of 

water at sea. His inquiries led him to England and to Holland as well as 

to French arsenals and the dockyards of the India Company at Lorient. 

He observed and also gave demonstrations to persuade shipbuilders to 

adopt more rational construction procedures.9 But Duhamel's inspec- 

tions also revealed the extent of the lack of training among the navy's 

builders. The Duc d'Anville's complaint about Blaise Olivier, the chief 

constructor at Brest, was probably true: "he does everything in his 

head, [and] has much talent, it is true, but [he] doesn't want to listen to 

any representation from anyone." He added, "his seconds are quite 

incompetent in their craft and very impudent...."67 

Unlike other academicians, Duhamel did not investigate the me- 

chanical principles of ship handling or seek to develop a theoretical 

description of shipbuilding. Instead, he recommended to Maurepas 

the establishment of a petit ecole, or elementary school. The first was set 

up at Toulon in 1741, and a second quickly followed at Paris, where 

Duhamel taught specially selected apprentice shipwrights the elements 

of mathematics, physics, and design and introduced them to a general 

mathematical culture. The chief constructors of the three major naval 

dockyards during the 1750s were all former students.68 

Although the search for the mechanical principles of la manceuvre 

had been under way since the mid-1670s, the results remained quite 

limited. Yet several important theoretical discoveries in ship design 

rapidly appeared after Pierre Bouguer's Traite de la mature des vaisseaux 

"Michel Allard, Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau et le ministere de la marine (Montreal, 

1970), pp. 34-48. For a more extended appreciation of Duhamel's multi-faceted career 

see also C. C. Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime (Princeton, 

N.J., 1980), pp. 339-48. 

67See note 62 above. 

68Neuville, Etat sommaire (n. 39 above), p. 398. 

15


in 1727.69 Interest in hydrostatics-the science of fluid equilibriumand 

hydraulics-the science of fluid motion-continued to attract 

some of the greatest minds of the era. Jean and Daniel Bernoulli's 

Hydrodynamica appeared in 1738, and their Hydraulics four years later. 

D'Alembert published his Traite de l'equilibre et du mouvement desfluides 

in 1744 and followed it eight years later with Essai d'une nouvelle theorie 

de la resistance desfluides. Leonhard Euler's Scientia navalis appeared in 

1749. Most important of all, in 1746, Bouguer published his Traite du 

navire, de sa construction et des ses mouvements, which presented an accurate 

method for calculating displacement, and announced his discovery 

of the metacenter of ships-that point in space whose position in a 

ship relative to its center of gravity governs its stability.70 Still, the 

presence of all this mathematical knowledge cannot explain the success 

of French application. 

Duhamel considered Bouguer's work and that of Euler, who published 

in Latin, to be far beyond the capacity of his students to absorb. 

Indeed, he referred to these authors as "transcendent geometers" 

engaged in "sublime speculations."71 In keeping with his program, 

Duhamel collected ship models from the ports and, in 1748, housed 

them with his school in the Louvre. Six years later, he published his first 

textbook, Elements d'architecture navale, ou traite pratique de la construction 

des vaisseaux. The Elements is the first training manual for aspiring naval 

constructors ever produced. It is quite different from the numerous 

theoretical investigations into hydrodynamics and hydrostatics that 

had appeared during the previous three-quarters of a century. Indeed, 

as much as possible, Duhamel avoided recourse to mathematical principles 

chiefly because Bouguer and Euler had treated the theoretical 

part of naval architecture so elegantly and completely that there was no 

immediate need to follow up their work but also because he sought to 

make his textbook useful to his students.72 Duhamel relied instead on 

the organization of basic concepts and stressed respect for rational 

inquiry into limits of everyday building techniques. He sought to 

replace routine with best practice. He seemed to reject the Cartesian 

dream that improved shipbuilding could be developed by "applying" 

science. 

69See Roland Lamontagne, La Vie et l'aeuvre de Pierre Bouguer (Montreal, 1962); also by 

the same author, L'Atlantiquejusqu'au temps deMaurepas (Montreal, 1968), pp. 95-126 for 

an extract from Bouguer's Traite du navire. 

70Rene Taton, ed., The Beginnings of Modern Science from 1450 to 1800, trans. A. J. 

Pomerans (New York [1958] 1964), pp. 429-33. 

7'Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Elements d'architecture navale, ou traite pratique de 

la construction des vaisseaux ([Paris, 1754]; 2d ed., Paris, 1758; [reprint Grenoble, 19701), 

p. vi. 

72Ibid.


Traditional views of the history of engineering, like the ones presented 

earlier in this article, emphasize that only after mechanics and 

inventors abandoned habitual practices and trial and error in favor of 

searching for theoretical principles and employing mathematical calculations 

can they be said to be engineers. Eighteenth-century nonen- 

gineers are said to operate "much as the artisans of the Middle Ages, by 

trial and error." These are the words of James B. Conant, who finds 

this reprehensible because such people often possessed "the possibility 

of applying theoretical principles and using mathematical calculations." 

Instead, they were mere "tinkerers."73 Recently, historians of 

technology have dispelled the myth of the "tinkerer" and drawn attention 

to the theoretical knowledge and widespread scientific attitudes 

among many skilled craftsmen and brilliant artisans of the 18th 

century.74 Yet the older view persists, while the notion of applied 

science often remains distressingly vague.75 

The central idea in the notion of applied science is that the trial-anderror 

process is clear and distinct from applying theoretical principles 

and mathematical calculations and that the former is abandoned after 

the adoption of the latter. While historians acknowledge that no direct 

application of science to technology occurred during the 18th century, 

they claim that science was used to describe industry theoretically.76 But 

classical mechanics moved physics beyond description, eschewed experiment, 

and increasingly relied wholly on mathematics.77 Classical 

mechanics theory had less and less to do with the everyday world of 

ordinary experience-the world that the shipbuilder, or any engineer 

for that matter, can never leave. At least one participant in the current 

debate about the relation of science to engineering, Michael Fores, 

claims that engineers do something other than "apply" science to the 

production of goods for daily use; they never abandon trial and error 

73James B. Conant, Science and Common Sense (New Haven, Conn. [1954] 1964), p. 61. 

74See David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial 

Development in Western Europefrom 1750 to the Present (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 61-63; and 

Peter Mathias, The First Industrial Nation: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1914 (New 

York, 1969), pp. 137-38. 

75E.g., J. W. Doerffer, "Impact of the Application of Iron and Steel as a Structural 

Material upon the Development of Science and Technology in Shipbuilding in the XIX 

Century," in House, ed., Five Hundred Years (n. 56 above), pp. 322-23; also C. S. Gillmor, 

Coulomb and the Evolution of Physics and Engineering in Eighteenth-Century France (Princeton, 

N.J., 1971), p. 9. 

76E.g., C. C. Gillispie, "The Natural History of Industry," in Science, Technology and 

Economic Growth in the Eighteenth Century, ed. A. E. Musson (London, 1972), pp. 6, 8, 

127-29. 

77C. C. Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity, an Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas (Princeton, 

N.J., 1960), p. 54; and Thomas L. Hankins,Jean d'Alembert: Science and the Enlightenment 

(Oxford, 1970), pp. 6, 8. 

17


even though they may apply principles and use mathematics.78 Because 

Duhamel, in seeking best practice, seems to have captured a similar 

notion, it is worth elaborating on his ideas. 

Introducing his students to the profession of naval architecture, 

Duhamel, like countless engineers after him, pointed to the constraints 

of the material and economic world. Necessary requirements must be 

kept in mind-to find the shape of a ship's bottom, the height of the 

primary gun deck above water, and the ship's speed, steering, sail 

carrying, drift, and handling-all impose constraints. The "transcendent 

geometers" treated some of these conditions. Some sought the 

best curve to divide a fluid, but, though quite elegant, their methods 

produced shapes that cannot be applied to ships because they fit only a 

single condition. Others treated drift, but, since they supposed, in 

order to facilitate the solution, shapes that ships do not have, the 

exercise brought few benefits. Simple geometry, Duhamel wrote, is 

insufficient to resolve these problems with exactitude, and a "transcendent 

geometer" will do nothing useful if he is not a sailor. Constructors, 

he concluded, have to abandon this route for the most part and confine 

themselves to observation and experiment.79 

Is this abandoning science? The short answer is, no. But as Duhamel 

proceeds, he describes a mode of conduct that is less than applying 

science and more in keeping with what engineers do. Observation and 

experiment must supplement the way of the geometer, but this path 

has as many difficulties. If a major defect is observed in a new ship, for 

example, it is difficult to know whether it comes from stowage. And, if 

not from stowage, it is difficult to learn the source of the defect. If ships 

were not so costly, one could multiply tests and try out shapes, but 

Duhamel adds that these approaches are impossible. One must be 

content with the ships at hand. Engineers work in a world of economic 

constraints. 

Constructors have been both timid in their attempts and forced to be 

content to observe ships already built. Until recently, a constructor 

principally aimed to find a method to copy accurately the best ships in 

existence. Some established all dimensions on keel length; others em- 

ployed the midship beam. But, adds Duhamel, it is absurd to imagine 

that constructors actually observed any relation between one part of a 

ship and another. They could just as easily take the sternpost, wing 

transom, or depth of the hold. Thus appeared the secrets and mys- 

78Michael Fores, "The History of Technology: An Alternative View," Technology and 

Culture 20 (October 1979): 853-60. Fores claims that engineering is not a system of 

thought but "a process which makes useful artifacts and is most distinctive through the 

type of output which it produces" (p. 856). 

79Duhamel du Monceau (n. 71 above), pp. 52-54.


teries of the shipbuilding craft. Each master finds his own secrets, 

claims them to be the best, guards them, and passes them to his sons. 

Duhamel viewed such methods, inopportunely called the rules and 

principles of construction, as mechanical and base. They were habitual, 

gave too much confidence, and were a major obstacle to the advancement 

of ship construction. Duhamel's textbook deliberately rejects an 

affirmative tone. "I have always thought," he wrote, 

that young people must be spurred on to use their mind and 

incited to acquire sagacity or at least increase what they naturally 

have: now nothing is so useful for that than the salutary doubt that 

Descartes advises, discussions that end in indecision and force 

young people to examine thoroughly the object on which they are 

working. In a word, I deemed it would be advantageous to put 

them in a fix from which they can only extricate themselves by 

reflections that give birth to ideas, ruminations that cause false 

ideas to be distinguished from true ones, [and] schemes that allow 

a decision on the choice to be made; ... a fixed fashion makes 

routine people.80 

Duhamel intended to teach his students something different from 

theoretical inquiry or observation or experiment and certainly not the 

so-called rules and principles of the shipwrights of old. Duhamel 

termed his teaching "the theory of [the constructor's] art," which 

combined trial and error with a search for mechanical principles and 

employment of mathematical calculations but rejected theory with no 

firmer foundation than hypothesis.81 To the degree that constructors 

followed his precepts, they would do honor to their profession and 

become exempt from the reproaches 

made to others. 

The structure of Duhamel's text supported his approach to learning. 

Each section deals with the several parts of constructing a ship. But 

nowhere does the author provide an ideal solution to the problems 

posed in each part. Instead, he presents several solutions. Today's 

engineers may claim that such a procedure 

does not differ from 

modern approaches to engineering. However, such a view ignores the 

trend toward the mathematization of science that occurred with 

accelerating rapidity during the 18th century. "Transcendent geometers" 

continually reduced mechanics to pure equations. 

The content of science moved ever farther away from the descriptive, 

ambiguous world of the shipbuilder, filled with limitations and 

constraints, toward a more extensive use of abstract concepts that 

80Ibid., p. viii. 

8'Ibid., pp. 322-25. 

19


mathematics defined in an ever more precise, unambiguous, and universal 

language of its own.82 Duhamel du Monceau could not move in 

that direction. His attitude toward shipbuilding is best captured by the 

term "engineering." Like him, we should refer to naval engineering or 

the profession of naval architecture, not to the science of naval 

architecture. For, like engineers, Duhamel knew that there is no perfect 

ship-only a better one. To quote Fores, "[The engineer's] choices 

are never wholly rational nor are they backed by all the demonstrative 

powers of science."83 Duhamel du Monceau might have written the 

same, but he wrote as follows: "The art consists ... in knowing how to 

lose a little on the one hand, to gain on the other, or how not to gain as 

much as possible in one respect, in order not to lose completely other 

advantages: thus, we must preserve a certain balance; but for that we 

must know at least approximately what shape a vessel would have to 

have to give it this or that advantage apart from all the others."84 The 

successful absorption of mechanics by mathematics rolled over men 

like Duhamel. Well before the end of the century his ideas had become 

thoroughly discredited. Yet Duhamel made the key contribution to the 

professionalization of naval shipwrights. 

By the mid-18th century, French naval constructors had already 

ceased to fit traditional categories as craftsmen or workers. The boundaries 

of their category of social status were both distinct and fluid and 

becoming more so. But it was Duhamel who fulfilled the core criteria 

for their occupational role, by providing both formal technical training 

in which an intellectual component predominated and mastery of a 

generalized cultural training that included skill (trial and error) as well 

as understanding. All that remained was to add the institutional means 

to enforce socially responsible use of such skills.85 

The stature of naval constructors also continued to grow despite 

their limited education and want of manners. Although acknowledging 

that constructors were very well acquainted with their art and 

skilled in execution, the intendant of Brest, Gilles Hocquart, thought 

that none was capable of aiding in the compilation of a planned marine 

82See Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture (Oxford [1953] 1980), pp. 240-42. 

Also, Rene Taton, L'Oeuvre scientifique de Gaspard Monge (Paris, 1951), pp. 146-47, 

239-40. For the reaction to this development see C. C. Gillispie, "The Encyclopedie and 

the Jacobin Philosophy of Science: A Study in Ideas and Consequences," in Critical 

Problems in the History of Science, ed. Marshall Clagett (Madison, Wisc. [1959] 1962), pp. 

255-89. 

83Fores (n. 78 above), p. 858. 

'8Duhamel du Monceau (n. 71 above), p. 313. 

85Parsons, "Professions" (n. 49 above), p. 536; see also M. P. Crosland, "The Develop- 

ment of a Professional Career in Science in France," in The Emergence of Science in Western 

Europe, ed. Maurice Crosland (London, 1975), p. 139.


dictionary; he did not believe they could give exact and satisfactory 

definitions to the public. "They can nevertheless give good advice and 

reveal the secrets of their method which up to the present has varied 

immeasurably."86 The increased stature of constructors worried the 

intendant of Rochefort. Viewing them as master carpenters by another 

name, he claimed that their elevated status separated them too readily 

from other master carpenters employed on ships' hulls, and he objected 

to the exclusion of the latter from constructor rank. Lenormant 

de Mezy was also confused, for he recommended appointing deputy 

constructors from among master carpenters without seeing that such 

practice would block advancement for the pupils of Duhamel's school. 

On the other hand, he may have seen the contradiction, for he warmly 

supported applications from the son of the writing and arithmetic 

master and from the sous-ingenieur at Rochefort for admission to the 

Paris school.87 

During the 1750s Duhamel gained the confidence of Louis-Antoine 

Rouille, Maurepas's successor as secretary of state for the navy, who 

encouraged efforts to find new construction techniques. Following 

reports of a lack of naturally curved timbers at Brest, Rouille ordered 

constructors to build frames from several timbers carefully scarfed and 

pinned with treenails.88 He approved construction of the frigate La 

Thetis to test the experiment.89 He also ordered all constructors to be 

entrusted with repairs. Wherever possible each was to work on ships of 

his own design and construction in order to increase self-knowledge 

and a sense of responsibility during construction.9 Constructors sailed 

on board their own ships during campaigns to study the effects of wind 

and sea on new methods of building and to examine the security of 

masts in ships with perpendicular stern posts and other innovations. 

By the eve of the Seven Years' War, candidates for the grade of 

eleve-constructeur had to meet severe qualifications. One from Toulon 

provided certificates that he had worked under a constructor for a 

year, demonstrated his mechanical aptitude, and studied Duhamel's 

textbook daily. Additional certificates submitted on his behalf by the 

arsenal's chief painter and by the professor of mathematics testified 

6Brest, Archives de la Marine (hereafter Brest), Serie 1 E, 504, ff. 251-52, Hocquart to 

Rouille, October 24, 1749. 

87Bibliotheque nationale (n. 64 above), pp. 286-87. Also Rochefort, Archives de la 

Marine, Serie 1E, 382, nos. 167,299, Lenormant de Mezy to Rouille, March 29 andJune 

14, 1754. 

s8Brest, 1E, 505, f. 96, Hocquart to Rouille, March 15, 1751. 

89Brest, IE, 505, ff. 174-78, Hocquart to Rouille,June 7, 1751; ibid., p. 203, approval 

granted June 28, 1751. 

9"V. F. Brun, Guerres maritimes de la France: Port de Toulon, ses armements, son administration 

depuis son origine jusqu'a nos jours, 2 vols. (Paris, 1861), 1:363-64. 

21


that the candidate drew "quite perfectly the forms of the academy" and 

knew arithmetic and the theoretical and practical geometry of Camus.9' 

Clearly Duhamel's school had been transformed from one that taught 

elementary lessons during the early 1740s to one teaching naval engineering 

less than two decades later. Apprentices were becoming 

students; another criterion of professionalization was appearing.92 

The vicissitudes of the school and official recognition of professional 

naval constructors during the 1760s are anticlimactic. Economic constraints 

and military pressures forced the school to close in 1759. A sort 

of bankruptcy together with two major defeats at sea reduced construction 

almost to nil for more than two years. In 1765, however, a royal 

ordinance, dated March 27, established a corps of naval engineers, 

henceforth to be known as ingenieurs-constructeurs de la marine, and 

established a new school, called by the Duc de Choiseul L'cole des eleves 

ingenieurs-constructeurs, with Duhamel du Monceau as its director. The 

ordinance also established a hierarchy at each of the three major 

arsenals and made constructors responsible to intendants and councils 

of construction.93 Each dockyard was to be headed by an ingenieurconstructeur-en-chef, 

two or three ingenieurs-constructeurs ordinaires, four 

to six sous-ingenieurs-constructeurs, and a few eleves. Eleves seeking 

admission to the corps had to spend two years employed in the ports, 

after which the best were sent to Paris to a school whose director and 

masters were to be royal appointees. Sous-ingenieurs were to be 

appointed only after formal examination, while ingenieurs were named 

only after submitting to a competitive examination or concours.94 Increased 

social elevation accompanied the new professional titles after 

several senior constructors received letters of nobility.95 

Choiseul's dismissal as naval minister in 1770 interrupted the renaissance 

experienced by the service, and the succeeding regime compromised 

the achievements since the the peace.96 However, several 

"9Toulon (n. 65 above), B3, 529, ff. 386-89, Michel to Machault, August 12, 1756 with 

three certificates attached. The reference is to Charles Camus, Elements d'arithmetique 

(Paris, 1749), and Elements de geometrie theorique et pratique (Paris, 1750), two parts of a 

"Cours de mathematiques" that Camus developed for engineering students at the Ecole 

du genie at Mezieres. 

"2See J. W. Reader, Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth- 

Century England (London, 1966), chap. 9, pp. 127-45. 

93Neuville, Etat sommaire (n. 39 above), pp. 399-400. 

9G. Lacour-Gayet, La Marine militaire de la France sous le regne de Louis XV (Paris, 1902), 

p. 399. 

`9Anthiaume (n. 19 above), p. 312. 

6G. Lacour-Gayet, La Marine militaire de la France sous le regne de Louis XVI (Paris, 1905), 

pp. 27-28.


significant alterations to naval organization only slightly affected constructors. 

On January 1, 1774, an ordinance establishing a general 

category of naval pupils to be known as eleves de port suppressed all 

other categories including those in naval construction. The new 

arrangement failed to take hold, however, and a second ordinance of 

November 8 authorized a return to the arrangements of 1765. A major 

reforming ordinance of September 27, 1776, replaced civil administrators 

by naval officers at the head of the arsenals and the major bureaus 

but did not touch the constitution of the corps of naval constructors.97 

A major change occurred, however, in the conseil de marine. Authorized 

to replace councils established by the ordinances of November 8, 1774, 

and March 25, 1765, when the former appellation, conseil de construction, 

had been dropped, its function and competence were defined only 

in 1776. Naval constructors no longer sat as members, for the new 

council's duties and responsibilities were far-reaching.98 But the loss of 

membership was not serious, for the important socializing function, 

providing a regular naval forum for both aristocratic officers and 

humble master-craftsmen, had been completed. Finally, on May 6, 

1787, the school established competitive positions for a new category of 

pupil, eleves-constructeurs marchands.99 The expansion of professionalization 

to include commercial shipbuilding had arrived. 

At about the same time, however, Duhamel's own concept of education, 

which aimed to introduce engineering students to a general 

mathematical culture, came under attack for its lack of mathematical 

precision. Notwithstanding Condorcet's eulogy of 1783, which stated 

that Duhamel du Monceau had contributed more than anyone to 

direct the sciences toward public utility, he criticized Duhamel's failure 

to place greater reliance on theoretical inquiry.'?? A few years later a 

young teacher of naval pupils, Honore-Sebastien Vial de Clairbois, 

denounced Duhamel's theoretical knowledge as too weak, his practical 

knowledge of details as too shallow, and his age as too great to permit 

him to study shipbuilding on a theoretical basis.10' Vial's idea that 

mathematics was the unique way to resolve all problems in the "useful" 

arts represented the wave of the future. It was under the aegis of men 

like Vial that the idea of engineering as applied science, quite distinct 

97Neuville, Etat sommaire (n. 39 above), pp. 399-400; and Lacour-Gayet, La Marine 

militaire (n. 96 above), pp. 31-37. 

98Neuville, Etat sommaire (n. 39 above), p. 128, n. 4. 

99Ibid., p. 400; Anthiaume (n. 19 above), p. 313. 

'0?See Hahn (n. 25 above), p. 125, for Condorcet's eulogy, and Gillispie (n. 66 above), 

p. 338, for Condorcet's qualification of Duhamel's contribution. 

'?'See Gille, "Les Ecoles des constructeurs" (n. 18 above), p. 170, for Vial de Clairbois's 

denunciation, with which the author agrees. 

23


from trial and error, emerged from the French Revolution and its 

great offspring, the Ecole polytechnique.102 

* * * 

A fortuitous combination of unusual factors and varied circumstances 

rather than any single cause ensured the superior quality of 

French warships during the 18th century. Though a case might be 

made for government-inspired scientific inquiry into naval problems 

and for technological transfer, these were probably the least important 

considerations. Such factors are certainly insufficient in themselves. 

The absence of any strong, hidebound, craft tradition of warship 

construction was probably more important, as, too, was more than half 

a century of rational collection, organization, and diffusion of preexisting 

craft skills. 

But, while significant, these factors, too, are inadequate either individually 

or in combination to account for the excellence achieved. The 

most important factors were administrative and social: first, the conscious 

desire, arising from the recognition by naval administrators of 

the need, to increase the social status of shipwrights and their ability to 

do so through ministerial order; second, the unknown but profound 

workings of administrative institutions to change social attitudes and 

values. For, out of the human and organizational chemistry of the 

councils of construction emerged the professionalization of the shipbuilders 

themselves. A final factor was Duhamel's introduction of 

constructors to a general mathematical culture, his rejection of theories 

that had no firmer foundation than hypothesis, and his insistence that 

constructors continue to contemplate the old rules for building ships to 

find the best practice-in other words, to combine mathematics and 

intuition. 

French warships owed their excellence to their builders, and it was 

during the 18th century that the latter became institutionalized and 

professionalized.'03 These elements, nontechnical and technical, led 

not so much to the successful application of the results of scientific 

inquiry to the challenge of good ship design as to the development of 

something newer and different, namely, the profession of naval engineering. 

Ironically, as the end of the Old Regime approached, the 

'02See Hahn (n. 25 above), pp. 282-85, for discussion of the changes in the educational 

norms for the engineering profession. 

'03Roger Hahn, "Scientific Careers in Eighteenth Century France," in The Emergence of 

Science in Western Europe (n. 85 above), pp. 127-28. Hahn emphasizes the role of these two 

social variables-institutionalization and professionalization-behind French scientific 

creativity and productivity during the 18th century.


notion of applying mathematical theory to the construction of things 

superseded Duhamel du Monceau's earlier ideas at the school of naval 

constructors. With the appearance of the Ecole polytechnique, the idea 

that engineers did something other than apply science became lost in 

France and wherever the French conception of science spread its 

influence. 

25

Pritchard, James; From Shipwright To Naval Constructor - Iowa State ...

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