Treatises and Technical Texts

on Shipbuilding

08.00 Portugal
Insert Authors
Filipe Here
Castro
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Last by:June
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2020
 History

A diversity of Iberian cultures developed under the influence of different visitors

and invaders, which have established colonies and factories on this territory:
Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Goths and Arabs.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

The coasts of Portugal and Spain harbored several crusader fleets, and the so-
called Reconquista encompassed several naval blockades.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

The Arab influence on Portuguese shipbuilding has been overlooked. Arab

warships helped the Islamic conquest, fought Viking invaders, and sacked
coastal villages with regularity since the Christian warlords started the push
against the Muslim rule of the Iberian Peninsula.

Piri Reis, 1513.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

At least from the 13th century onwards,

Iberian Christian rulers hired Italian
shipwrights and sailors to built and man
their fleets.

c. 1300 Ambrogio Lorenzetti

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding
 History

Octavio Lixa Filgueiras suggested

that some of the craft that could be
found on the Douro River region
was build with northern influence,
perhaps from the Germanic Suevi
people, which invaded the Iberian
Peninsula between AD 407 and 409,
together with other Germanic tribes,
the Vandals and Alans.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

In Galicia, today’s dornas are lapstrakes, built under a clear northern influence,
and so are the bottom based barcos rabelos from the Douro River, in the north
of Portugal, built with flush laid planks on the bottom and lapstrake sides.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

Moving south, the saveiros from Aveiro seem to be evolved plank canoes and
look like a Middle Eastern model from Ur (although it probably represents a reed
and pitch boat).

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

We know that the shores of Portugal were visited by Phoenician merchants

during the first millennium BCE, perhaps sailing on shell-first built vessels, with
large mortise and tenon joints, similar to the ones found on the 1300 BC
Uluburun ship.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

They were followed by Greek sailors,

possibly traveling on sewn boats.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

And by Carthaginian and Roman ships, with shell based hulls built with mortise
and tenon joints.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

During the Middle Ages the Portuguese shores were visited by northern craft.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

But the ships of the Discoveries are completely different from all these types.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

Pre-designed, frame-based ship design: rising and narrowing of the bottom.

Yassıada c. AD 625 Bozburun c. AD 874 Serçe Limanı c. AD 1025

Culip 6 c. AD 1300 Contarina 1 c. AD 1300 Logonovo c. AD 1400

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

And do we know about the Portuguese ships of the 1300s, 1400s, 1500s, and
1600s?

Mid-15th century graffiti from Mosteiro da Batalha, Portugal.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

The 3-masted ships that allowed the European expansion overseas evolved in
an environment with a diversity of solutions that is not well-known to us, but it
was certainly based on the two types of merchantmen that met in the
Mediterranean in the 13th and 14th century.

Selo do Concelho de Lisboa, 1253.

Lisboa, Torre do Tombo, C.R.,
Santos-o-Novo, maço V, doc. 815. Chafariz do Andaluz, 1336

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

Caravels were originally lateen rigged ships

with one or two masts that seem to have
been developed in the Mediterranean during
the 12th century and were mainly employed in
fishing activities in Portugal, in the thirteenth
century.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

Absent from original documents throughout the fourteenth century, they appear
in the beginning of the fifteenth century as the preferred ships of discovery, for
their swiftness and maneuverability.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

Towards the end of this century there are references of three-masted, ship
rigged caravels, and in the 16th century we witness the development of the
caravela de armada, with four masts: all masts with lateen sails except the
foremast, which bore square sails.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

In the 17th century caravels were still in use, either represented in 1616 Manoel
Fernandez treatise or sailing around Cape Horn.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

Galleons appeared in the beginning of the 16th century and were warships with
two or three decks, fore and stern castles fully integrated, bearing three or four
masts and a bowsprit, the fore and main masts rigged with square sails, and the
mizzen and bonaventure masts rigged with lateen sails.

Nau Galleon
Roteiro do Mar Roxo, 1538.
Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding
 History

The length to beam ratios may have been slightly higher than the naus’ ones,
perhaps around 3.5. Contemporary scantling lists show a much sturdier vessel
with thicker masts and spars.

Roteiro do Mar Roxo, 1538.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

Flat stern panels seem to be a characteristic of these ships, understandably

since they confer more deck space for the operation of artillery.

Roteiro de D. João de Castro, 1538.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 History

A number of smaller vessels, such as patachos, zabras, galizabras and other

craft sailed regularly with the fleets, as supporting craft, and may have been
conceived and built in the same way as the larger ships.

Leiden View of Lisbon, c. 1550

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Technical Texts

There are no known technical texts on

shipbuilding from Portugal until the 1570s.

Portuguese three-masted ship in a ceramic basin, probably of Arab

origin. Circa 1425.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Case Studies

Fernando Oliveira (c. 1507 – c. 1581)

A priest, born in the early 16th century, Fernando Oliveira wrote the first
Portuguese grammar and three important texts on seafaring, among other
works:
A Arte da Guerra no Mar, c. 1555;
Ars nautica, c. 1570; and
Livro da fábrica das naus, c. 1580.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Case Studies

Anonymous, Livro náutico, c. 1575-1625

The Livro náutico is a collection of manuscripts bound in two volumes, with 86
and 144 folios respectively, and dating between 1575 and 1625. It is presently
located in the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon.
It contains much important data pertaining to the organization of the part of the
Spanish Armada of 1588 that was fitted in Lisbon, and several lists containing
armament and victuals for India naus. It is unpublished.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Case Studies

João Baptista Lavanha (c. 1550-1624)

Livro primeiro de arquitectura naval, c. 1600
The Livro primeiro de arquitectura naval is an unfinished manuscript on
shipbuilding, dated to c. 1600 and authored by João Baptista Lavanha, chief
engineer and chief cosmographer of the kingdom of Portugal at that time.
Lavanha was born in Lisbon around 1550, son of a court officer, and he enjoyed
a successful career in spite of his Jewish origins. Around 1610 he moved to
Spain where he died, rich and accomplished, in 1624.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Case Studies

Naus of Gonçalo Roiz and Sebastião Themudo, c. 1600

The naus of Gonçalo Roiz (c. 1600) and Sebastião Themudo (1598) are two
manuscripts copied by Lavanha and transcribed and published by João da
Gama Pimentel Barata in his comments to Lavanha's Livro Primeiro.
These two short descriptions of India naus contain the measures and features
considered by their authors fundamental in the definition of these ships and
present precious information on the length of keel and posts, number of pre-
designed frames, and other basic characteristics, such as the shape of the
transom.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Case Studies

Figueiredo Falcão, Livro de toda a fazenda, 1607

The Livro de toda a fazenda is a large book written by king's officer Luiz de
Figueiredo Falcão containing all the rents and profits of the Portuguese crown in
1607. It contains an interesting schematic with the division of space within an
India nau.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Case Studies

Manoel Fernandez, Livro de Traças de Carpintaria, 1616

The Livro de Traças de Carpintaria is a large codex that describes a variety of
vessels, from caravels to India naus, and is divided into two main sections.
The first has lists of dimensions of the primary structural components of a ship
such as stem, stern post, midship and tail frames.
The second contains an impressive collection of drawings, mainly intended as
descriptions of the structural components of the ships, and less concerned with
the conceptual aspect of the shipbuilding process.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Case Studies

Naval Papers of Dom António de Ataíde, c. 1620

These three codices are a compilation of notes and texts that belonged to D.
António de Ataíde (1567-1647), fourth count of Castanheira, first count of Castro
Daire, Captain of the India Armada in 1611, and governor of Portugal in 1632
and 1633, during the Habsburg rule.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Case Studies

Arqueaçao de la Nao nossa Senhora de Oliveira, 1634

Text describing the naus Nossa Senhora de Oliveira and Santa Catarina, signed
by Manoel Fernandez and bartolome Alvez.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding

 Case Studies

Marcos Cerveira de Aguilar, Advertências de Navegantes, 1640

Advertências de Navegantes, authored by Marcos Cerveira de Aguilar, is a
codex dated to 1640 and presently located in the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon.
On folio two its author mentions "the 1st of December of this year of 1640,"
which is the date of the rebellion that made Portugal independent from the
Spanish crown.
It is a rather complete overview of the Portuguese navy, from the construction of
ships, rigging and fitting, launching, and manning to a collection of chapters with
general rules and knowledge useful to every navy officer.

Nautical Archaeology Digital Library – Treatises and Technical Texts on Shipbuilding