-century Portuguese Shipbuilding Treatises

During the 16 th- and 17 th-centuries European seafaring underwent an incredible transformation driven mainly by the exploration of newly discovered lands, the contact with previously unknown cultures, and the increase in maritime commerce. The social changes that resulted from this cultural revolution affected the long chain of events entailed by the construction of oceangoing ships and determined a number of technical innovations in the construction of ships. From an original oral tradition, where apprentices learned from masters the intricacies of shipbuilding techniques; this process evolved into a more formal field as masters began to follow guidelines, materials used, and construction sequences in a more systematic way, forming a corpus of information that was soon compiled in manuscripts known as shipbuilding treatises. The first shipbuilding treatises, understandably, were written by mathematicians, priests and other learned men, reflecting a reality where shipbuilders probably were largely illiterate. Rich in technical descriptions, shipbuilding treatises play a key role in Nautica