ABSTRACT
As Chapter 1 suggests, research to improve navigation via applied mathematics became a central focus among the first faculty of Gresham College and played a major role in the work of members of the Royal Society. Development of England’s commerce and trade depended on improved navigation and then shipbuilding. While the Greshamites focused on mathematics for navigation purposes, and numerous books appeared on navigation, as suggested in Chapter 4 with its focus on format, page design, and visuals, the absence of technical writing about shipbuilding and ship design is noticeable. In this chapter, I explore the absence of technical writing in early English shipbuilding and suggest the reason for its slow development during the English Renaissance and then the 17th century. As this chapter will also show, shipbuilding instructions emerged in a manner very different from agriculture and estate management instructions primarily because of differences in historical contexts.
