Shipbuilding
Favoured by warmer waters and a number of inter-visible islands, boats (and, later, ships) with water-tight hulls (unlike the "flow through" structure of a raft) could be developed.
These were fitted tightly together edge-to-edge with dowels inserted into holes in between, and then lashed to each other with ropes (made from rattan or fiber) wrapped around protruding lugs on the planks.
They were commonly caulked with pastes made from various plants as well as tapa bark and fibres which would expand when wet, further tightening joints and making the hull watertight.
[18][19] The ancient Champa of Vietnam also uniquely developed basket-hulled boats whose hulls were composed of woven and resin-caulked bamboo, either entirely or in conjunction with plank strakes.
[7] The oldest known tidal dock in the world was built around 2500 BC during the Harappan civilisation at Lothal near the present day Mangrol harbour on the Gujarat coast in India.
[25] The ships of Ancient Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty were typically about 25 meters (80 ft) in length and had a single mast, sometimes consisting of two poles lashed together at the top making an "A" shape.
[29][30][obsolete source][26] The naval history of China stems back to the Spring and Autumn period (722 BC–481 BC) of the ancient Chinese Zhou dynasty.
The Chinese built large rectangular barges known as "castle ships", which were essentially floating fortresses complete with multiple decks with guarded ramparts.
[40]: 613 [41][42] Southern Chinese junks showed characteristics of Austronesian ships that they are made using timbers of tropical origin, with keeled, V-shaped hull.
[31]: 20–21 The northern Chinese junks were primarily built of pine or fir wood, had flat bottoms with no keel, water-tight bulkheads with no frames, transom (squared) stern and stem, and have their planks fastened with iron nails or clamps.
[43]: 274 In September 2011, archeological investigations done at the site of Portus in Rome revealed inscriptions in a shipyard constructed during the reign of Trajan (98–117) that indicated the existence of a shipbuilders guild.
Haywood[55] has argued that earlier Frankish and Anglo-Saxon nautical practice was much more accomplished than had been thought and has described the distribution of clinker vs. carvel construction in Western Europe (see map [1]).
An insight into shipbuilding in the North Sea/Baltic areas of the early medieval period was found at Sutton Hoo, England, where a ship was buried with a chieftain.
Sometime around the 12th century, northern European ships began to be built with a straight sternpost, enabling the mounting of a rudder, which was much more durable than a steering oar held over the side.
The first extant treatise on shipbuilding was written c. 1436 by Michael of Rhodes,[58] a man who began his career as an oarsman on a Venetian galley in 1401 and worked his way up into officer positions.
Between 1405 and 1433, the government conducted seven diplomatic Ming treasure voyages to over thirty countries in Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and Eastern Africa.
The ships built for Zheng He's voyages needed to be waterproof, solid, safe, and have ample room to carry large amounts of trading goods.
Therefore, due to the highly commercialized society that was being encouraged by the expeditions, trades, and government policies, the shipbuilders needed to acquire the skills to build ships that fulfil these requirements.
Shipbuilding was not the sole industry utilising Chinese lumber at that time; the new capital was being built in Beijing from approximately 1407 onwards,[60] which required huge amounts of high-quality wood.
[69][page needed] Initially copying wooden construction traditions with a frame over which the hull was fastened, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Britain of 1843 was the first radical new design, being built entirely of wrought iron.
Despite her success, and the great savings in cost and space provided by the iron hull, compared to a copper-sheathed counterpart, there remained problems with fouling due to the adherence of weeds and barnacles.
As a result, composite construction remained the dominant approach where fast ships were required, with wooden timbers laid over an iron frame (Cutty Sark is a famous example).
Built-in association with John Scott Russell, it used longitudinal stringers for strength, inner and outer hulls, and bulkheads to form multiple watertight compartments.
Where state subsidies have been removed and domestic industrial policies do not provide support in high labor cost countries, shipbuilding has gone into decline.
In the early 1970s British yards still had the capacity to build all types and sizes of merchant ships but today they have been reduced to a small number specialising in defence contracts, luxury yachts and repair work.
[74] As of 2023[update], China’s shipbuilding output, newly received orders and orders-on-hand accounted for 50%, 67%, and 55% of the global market share, respectively, with double-digital growth of all three indexes compared to the previous year.
The top companies that build large naval vessels, such as aircraft carriers and cruisers, include Huntington Ingalls, Bollinger and General Dynamics.
As the US Navy is shifting to a new fleet architecture that is more widely distributed, unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) development is rapidly propelled to higher priority.
Both of them took part in multiple fleet level exercises and demonstrations, traveled 28,982 nautical miles (53,675 km) in autonomous mode, and tested numerous payloads.
Previously, loftsmen at the mould lofts of shipyards were responsible for taking the dimensions, and details from drawings and plans and translating this information into templates, battens, ordinates, cutting sketches, profiles, margins and other data.
