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

The Professionalization of French Naval Shipbuilders
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