Brief History of Iberian Ship Conception and Design (1570-1712)

This brief, volume one of two, explores the intellectual and technical foundations of Iberian shipbuilding during the Golden Age of Galleons (1570–1712), situating it within the broader context of the Scientific Revolution. It argues that ships, the most complex machines of the seventeenth century, were not merely instruments of commerce and warfare, but expressions of analytical thinking that preceded and potentially influenced Cartesian geometry. Volume 1 examines the conception and design of the ship. Seventeenth-century shipbuilders developed coordinate-based plotting, coefficients, and algorithms to visualize, communicate, and replicate complex shapes. Using mathematical and philosophical principles, their method allowed for the preconception and accurate depiction of hulls, masts, and spar shapes before they were built. Even if performance prediction awaited the metacentric theory and hydrodynamics, the book challenges the notion that early shipbuilding was purely empirical. Ship designers constituted a cultural elite capable of translating abstract geometric principles into tangible technologies that supported the European maritime Empires. The work integrates detailed analysis of treatises, royal ordinances (Ordenanzas), and shipwreck remains to reconstruct the technical and intellectual world of early modern naval architecture. By bridging nautical archaeology, intellectual history, history of science and technology, and naval architecture, this work reveals how Iberian shipbuilders contributed to the rationalization of technology and laid the groundwork for the evolution of modern naval engineering.