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

6 James Pritchard
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.