Nicolaes Witsens Scheeps-Bouw-Konst Open Gestelt

Price: €40,00 €30,00

E-book (PDF), 410 pages, with technical drawings. Special introduction price until March 1st.

In 1671, Amsterdam mayor Nicolaes Witsen (1641-1717) published the first book about the source of Dutch prosperity in the Golden Age: shipping: “Aloude en Hedendaegsche Scheepsbouw en Bestier”. It is a voluminous work that describes everything related to ships and sailing in almost 600 pages. Of these, 132 deal with all the ins and outs of shipbuilding technology at home and abroad in the 17th century. In 11 chapters, Witsen describes Dutch shipbuilding in a specific and very detailed manner, using an example ship, a 134-foot pinas, with which he thoroughly covers all topics related to shipbuilding. The work was already praised in its time for its scientific content.

However, the book has one major shortcoming: it is virtually unreadable. Not only because of the spelling and archaic language, or because of all the forgotten terms for ship parts or the radically changed technology of shipbuilding since the introduction of iron shipbuilding, but mainly because it is written in such a chaotic manner. Witsen’s book has many qualities, but clarity is not necessarily one of them.

As far as the shipbuilding section is concerned, Ab Hoving provides us with a satisfactory solution. Based on the 122-phase construction sequence outlined by Witsen, all relevant text fragments have been neatly placed in their proper order, richly illustrated with both Witsen’s and modern sketches, many of the latter made by Gerald de Weerdt. The introduction is by Andre Wegener Sleeswyk, and in the appendix at the back, Diederick Wildeman writes a wealth of interesting information about the publication of the book and the reactions to it in Witsen’s time.

Completed with a set of drawings that allow the model ship to be viewed and built in detail, the book has become what Witsen intended in his time: the “Scheeps-Bouw-Konst Open Gestelt”.

Note: This is the Dutch version of “Nicolaes Witsen’s Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age”. A&M University Press, Texas USA.

After ordering the e-book, you will receive an email with a link to the download page. Here you will find the book itself and the construction drawings for the Pinas (both in PDF format).