Pritchard, James; From Shipwright To Naval Constructor - Iowa State ...
Pritchard, James; From Shipwright To Naval Constructor - Iowa State ...
Pritchard, James; From Shipwright To Naval Constructor - Iowa State ...
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8 <strong>James</strong> <strong>Pritchard</strong><br />
of foreign techniques and technicians into new environments was only<br />
as effective as the receptiveness of the new locations, which, as Carlo<br />
Cipolla points out, depends on human and social considerations that<br />
are most difficult to determine. Moreover, Cipolla excludes 17thcentury<br />
France when emphasizing the relation between tolerance and<br />
receptiveness.35 Although foreign techniques were introduced into<br />
French arsenals from Malta, the Barbary Coast, Barcelona, Holland,<br />
and England, and by foreign craftsmen, ships' carpenters, anchor<br />
forgers, ropemakers, and even a salvage operator and his gear, the<br />
mere presence of technological transfer provides little explanation of<br />
later French success.<br />
On the other hand, the navy benefited from the lack of strong<br />
traditions of large-ship building in France and the introduction of<br />
foreigners from both northern and southern Europe. Possessing only<br />
local customs and practices, French shipwrights had no strong tradition<br />
of building large transoceanic vessels.36 Perhaps the chief endowment<br />
of foreign craftsmen was an appreciation for innovation that led<br />
to fruitful eclecticism. By contrast, the presence of strong craft traditions<br />
in English shipyards, as well as pressing demands for increased<br />
production, are important reasons adduced for the absence of innovation<br />
in British naval construction.37 Yet, while newly inspired French<br />
naval shipwrights were ideally situated to receive an impulse from a<br />
vigorous government-directed science, no such thing occurred.<br />
During the 1680s, schools of construction were established in the<br />
three major naval arsenals with the avowed purpose of teaching<br />
officers the rules of shipbuilding. But instructors appeared to devote<br />
themselves to debates over the proportions of ships and to theoretical<br />
inquiries into the movement of solids at sea.38 In 1684, the Marquis de<br />
Langeron was appointed inspecteur des constructions navales both to instruct<br />
shipwrights in the correct way to draft plans and profiles and in<br />
the rules for determining ship proportions and to receive new ideas on<br />
construction.39 The <strong>Naval</strong> Ordinance of 1689 established inspecteurs of<br />
35Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000-<br />
1700 (New York, 1976), pp. 174-81<br />
3La Ronciiere (n. 30 above), 5:373-75.<br />
37Abell (n. 20 above), p. 102; and Daniel A. Baugh, British <strong>Naval</strong>Administration in the Age<br />
of Walpole (Princeton, N.J., 1965), pp. 252-53. Alexander McKee, "The Influence of<br />
British <strong>Naval</strong> Strategy on Ship Design: 1400-1850," in A History of Seafaring Based on<br />
Underwater Archaeology, ed. George F. Bass (New York, 1972), p. 226, claims that "except<br />
for the Tudor period England lagged rather than led in ship design, first behind the<br />
Dutch and then behind the French."<br />
38Memain (n. 28 above), pp. 702-704.<br />
39Didier Neuville, Etat sommaire des archives de la marine anterieurs a la Revolution (Paris,<br />
1898; Kraus Reprint, 1977), pp. 579-80.