Eight months into its maiden voyage to the Indies, the Dutch East India Company’s Batavia sank on June 4, 1629 on Morning Reef in the Houtman Abrolhos off the western coast of Australia. Wendy van Duivenvoorde’s five-year study was aimed at reconstructing the hull of Batavia, the only excavated remains of an early seventeenth-century Indiaman to have been raised and conserved in a way that permits detailed examination, using data retrieved from the archaeological remains, interpreted in the light of company archives, ship journals, and Dutch texts on shipbuilding of this period. Over two hundred tables, charts, drawings, and photographs are included.

Cerinda W. Evans' book, 'Some Notes on Shipbuilding and Shipping in Colonial Virginia,' delves into the intricate details of the shipbuilding industry in colonial Virginia. Through meticulous research and a keen eye for historical accuracy, Evans provides readers with a detailed account of the tools, techniques, and challenges faced by shipbuilders during this time period. The book is written in a scholarly tone, with references to primary sources and historical documents, making it a valuable resource for both academics and history enthusiasts alike. Evans' writing style is both informative and engaging, providing readers with a rich understanding of the importance of shipbuilding in shaping the economic and social landscape of colonial Virginia. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in maritime history and the colonial era in America. Cerinda W. Evans' expertise in the field of colonial history shines through in this comprehensive study of shipbuilding in colonial Virginia, making it an essential read for anyone looking to deepen their knowledge of this fascinating period.

DIVFirst published in 1768, this remarkable collection of sophisticated line drawings documents merchant and naval ships from various countries. 70 illustrations chart vessel dimensions, crew size, storage capabilities, and rigging. /div

“A wonderful book detailing the construction of the Royal Navy’s sailing warships” from the maritime historian and author of Nelson’s Navy (Pirates and Privateers). The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich houses the largest collection of scale ship models in the world, many of which are official, contemporary artifacts made by the craftsmen of the navy or the shipbuilders themselves, and ranging from the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. As such they represent a three-dimensional archive of unique importance and authority. Treated as historical evidence, they offer more detail than even the best plans, and demonstrate exactly what the ships looked like in a way that even the finest marine painter could not achieve. This book takes a selection of the best models to both describe and demonstrate the development of warship construction in all its complexity from the beginning of the 18th century to the end of wooden shipbuilding. For this purpose, it reproduces a large number of model photos, all in full color, and including many close-up and detail views. These are captioned in depth, but many are also annotated to focus attention on interesting or unusual features, which can be shown far more clearly than described. Although pictorial in emphasis, the book weaves the pictures into an authoritative text, producing an unusual and attractive form of technical history. “This book includes plentiful visual representations of actual ships in model form and the accompanying graphics make for wonderful reading . . . I cannot express enough how enjoyable this book is to read.”—Spotter Up “A high-quality book which is recommended to all ship historians and modellers.”—Military Modelling

The Middle Ages were a time of great innovation in shipbuilding, yet medieval maritime technology is often overlooked. This book traces the developments in rigging and shipbuilding in northern Europe over the medieval period, such as the adoption of the lateen rig with two or more masts.

In 1671, Dutch diplomat and scientist Nicolaes Witsen published a book that served, among other things, as an encyclopedia for the “shell-first” method of ship construction. In the centuries since, Witsen’s rather convoluted text has also become a valuable source for insights into historical shipbuilding methods and philosophies during the “Golden Age” of Dutch maritime trade. However, as André Wegener Sleeswyk’s foreword notes, Witsen’s work is difficult to access not only for its seventeenth-century Dutch language but also for the vagaries of its author’s presentation. Fortunately for scholars and students of nautical archaeology and shipbuilding, this important but chaotic work has now been reorganized and elucidated by A. J. Hoving and translated into English by Alan Lemmers. In Nicolaes Witsen and Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age, Hoving, master model builder for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, sorts out the steps in Witsen’s method for building a seventeenth-century pinas by following them and building a model of the vessel. Experimenting with techniques and materials, conducting research in other publications of the time, and rewriting as needed to clarify and correct some vital omissions in the sequence, Hoving makes Witsen’s work easier to use and understand. Nicolaes Witsen and Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age is an indispensable guide to Witsen’s work and the world of his topic: the almost forgotten basics of a craftsmanship that has been credited with the flourishing of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century. To view a sample of Ab Hoving’s ship model drawings, please visit: http://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/AbHoving.htm

Volume II of The Cambridge History of War covers what in Europe is commonly called 'the Middle Ages'. It includes all of the well-known themes of European warfare, from the migrations of the Germanic peoples and the Vikings through the Reconquista, the Crusades and the age of chivalry, to the development of state-controlled gunpowder-wielding armies and the urban militias of the later middle ages; yet its scope is world-wide, ranging across Eurasia and the Americas to trace the interregional connections formed by the great Arab conquests and the expansion of Islam, the migrations of horse nomads such as the Avars and the Turks, the formation of the vast Mongol Empire, and the spread of new technologies – including gunpowder and the earliest firearms – by land and sea.