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

8 James Pritchard
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.