Show Notes
In 1677 Charles II embarked on one of the most ambitious shipbuilding programmes England had ever attempted: thirty great new warships, built to challenge the naval power of France and the Dutch Republic. Two years later, a young shipwright and draughtsman named Edmund Dummer began travelling between the dockyards, measuring their hulls and recording their shapes. His aim was extraordinary — to capture on paper knowledge that had traditionally lived in the hands, eyes and memories of shipwrights. But political crisis intervened, Dummer’s work was left unfinished, and much of it was subsequently lost. In this episode of the Mariner’s Mirror Podcast, Sam Willis talks to historian and shipbuilding expert Richard Endsor, who has spent more than twenty-five years piecing that lost fleet back together. Using Dummer’s surviving measurements alongside ship models, Van de Velde drawings, official records and wreck archaeology, Richard has reconstructed the architecture of Charles II’s vanished warships in his magnificent new book The Lost Ships of Charles II's Navy. Their conversation explores how seventeenth-century ships were actually designed, how far Charles II involved himself in naval affairs, and whether putting the shipwright’s craft onto paper helped transform not just shipbuilding, but the ability of the state to understand and control its navy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from The Mariner's Mirror Podcast
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This is episode 5 of our Heritage Harbours short series, celebrating the Heritage Harbour initiative which seeks to protect and revive historic ports, docks, canals and waterfronts that still retain a genuine working maritime character.
This is episode 4 of our Heritage Harbours short series, celebrating the Heritage Harbour initiative which seeks to protect and revive historic ports, docks, canals and waterfronts that still retain a genuine working maritime character.
This is episode 3 of our Heritage Harbours short series, celebrating the Heritage Harbour initiative which seeks to protect and revive historic ports, docks, canals and waterfronts that still retain a genuine working maritime character.