ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines how people thought about transferring technologies of shipbuilding in the context of early modern cities. He deals with his discussion with the story of Noah to emphasize that, for many early modern writers, the act of shipbuilding had Biblical overtones, and therefore, they put a special emphasis on the moral and religious qualities of shipbuilders. The author focuses on the Amsterdam burgomaster Nicolaes Witsen, a leading figure of the Dutch metropolis in the late seventeenth-century, and the author of the first shipbuilding encyclopedia in the Netherlands. He shows that early modern municipal politicians, such as Witsen, also developed complex ideas about technology transfer. One could certainly determine, through detailed measurements, their dimensions and design. Witsen himself made use of such inspections of foreign ships in his Aeloude en hedendaegschse scheeps-bouw when discussing the shape of the Royal Charles, which was captured at Medway during the Second Anglo-Dutch war.
