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

The Professionalization of French Naval Shipbuilders
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.
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