Historical Shipbuilding Links & Literature

Nordic links:

• Old Ships, Axel Nelson, Sweden. Beautiful illustrations and partly in English.
• The Viking Longships, John R Hale, Scientific American 2/98 
• Reconstruction of sewing boatbuilding technique, Foteviken Museum
• Shipbuilding and Naval Architecture, Lars Bruzelius
• Viking ships and Norse wooden boats, Jørn Olav Løset
• Viking woollen square-sails and fabric cover factor, IJNA 31.2 2002. The discovery of the five scuttled Viking ships of Roskilde Fjord in Denmark and the subsequent excavation, preservation and analysis of the remains has initiated a programme of reconstructive archaeology led by the Viking Ship Museum of Roskilde in which four of the five hulls have now been reconstructed together with their rigs and square-sails. The reconstruction of the sails has been based on fragments of heavy woollen cloth found within the roof of Trondenes church in Norway dating to the mid-13th century. This paper uses the ‘cover-factor’ modelling methods of modern textile engineering to analyse the ‘Viking’ sail fabrics and assess their strength, resilience and performance in comparison with the linen sails from the wreck of the Vasa.

Worldwide links:

• History & Archaeology of the Ship, J. S. Illsley (offline)
• Navis II. (requires Java) EU financed image database of ship depictions on ancient monuments.
• Reconstruction of sewing boatbuilding technique, Misha Naimark et al Mirror.
• Traditional shipbuilding in Pepsi Lake, Estonia
• Ship Preservation, European Union
• Sewn Boat Homepage, Misha Naimark
• Mast & Sail in Europe and Asia, H. Warington Smyth (1906)
• Shipbuilding in Korcula, Croatia
• Arbeitskreis Historischer Schiffbau, Germany

Further source:

• The Bayeux tapestry from 1066. Part 17 shows many details of boatbuilding. The illustration shows one section.

Shipbuilding books:

Vikingarnas skepp (Det danske kulturinstitut 1993). Describing the ships of the Vikings. In Danish.

The Earliest Ships (Conway Maritime Press 1996)

George F Bass: A History of Seafaring based on Underwater Archaeology (Thames & Hudson)

Jean Boudriot: Le vaisseau de 74 canons (Collection archéologie navale française 1977). Beautiful and detailed illustrations of this 18th century standard warship. There is also an edition in English.

F. H. af Chapman: Architectura navalis mercatoria (Stockholm 1768). The legends to the drawings are in Swedish, English and French. Even the measurements are in Swedish feet, English feet and French feet (all of them slightly different). In 1957 a reprint was made from the 53 huge original plates.

Basil Greenhill: The Archaeology of Boats and Ships (London 1976, 1995)

Duncan Haws: Ships and the Sea

Björn Landström: The Ship (1961)

Björn Landström: Seglande skepp (1969)

J. Richard Steffy: Wooden Ship Building and the Interpretation of Shipwrecks (1994)

H.D.L. Viereck: Die römische Flotte (1975, Koehlers Verlag, Germany). Plenty of facts and excellent reconstruction drawings of Roman ships.