The Philosophy of Shipbuilding: Conceptual Approaches to the Study of Wooden Ships (review)

This book of collected essays began life as a festschrift for Richard Steffy, the doyen of modern underwater archaeology who taught at Texas A&M. As Frederick Hocker explains in the introduction, Steffy retired in the late 1980s, so the book has been some fifteen years in the making. Much here was worth the wait, although as is usual in festschriften, not all the essays reflect the ambitious title.

The "philosophy of shipbuilding" is Steffy's phrase, and was originally intended to point to the fundamental concepts or principles employed by ancient shipbuilders, as embodied in the wrecks of their vessels. In this book, the phrase might be more aptly applied to the conceptual tools used by underwater archaeologists to interpret their wrecks. Although there are plenty of details about individual finds, including two nice essays about ships and shipping by Cheryl Ward and Lionel Casson, the historiography of the conceptual tools used by underwater archaeologists may well be the most important part of the book.

Several of the essays contain valuable summaries of the development of the concepts used in underwater archaeology, complete with bibliography. Hocker's initial essay on shipbuilding philosophy, practice, and research provides a starting place and overview. Patrice Pomey's essay on principles and methods of the construction of ancient ships is a nice summary of discussions about shell construction versus skeleton construction. Ole-Crumlin Pedersen provides a similar summary of thinking about the development of Nordic, clinker-built boats.

These and other essays demonstrate how the history of shipbuilding written from the point of view of underwater archaeology has been organized around the opposition between two different kinds of construction. Shell-building refers to a technique in which a ship's hull planks are erected first and frames inserted later. Frame-building refers to a method in which the structural skeleton of a vessel is built first, then planked over. These essays go beyond the normal history to show how shell versus frame has become the conceptual backbone of the discipline.

Should shell versus frame remain the backbone? Several of the essays here refer to examples of mixed shell-and-frame construction. In a fascinating second essay, Hocker details a "bottom-based tradition" that evolved outside of any shell-versus-frame dichotomy. There is also a question to be answered concerning Steffy's sense of "philosophy." Just because we see the structure of a ship (often the only thing left) does this necessarily mean that structure was the fundamental question for the builder?

One might easily imagine that a shipbuilder working in a shell or frame tradition gave no thought to structure, since structure was dictated by tradition in the first place. In that case, questions of design would be much more important, as the shipwright sought to control the overall shape of his vessel and detailed dimensions of the hundreds of pieces of wood that needed to go into it. Several of the authors acknowledge the design issue, but downplay the possibilities in light of the difficulty of recovering design technique from structural remains.

These questions reflect the kind of conceptual challenge that should make underwater archaeology fascinating to anyone interested in the interpretation of material culture. The evidence is often sparse. Indeed, for individual vessels, evidence brought to light is often the only evidence there will ever be. To get something out of this evidence one has to apply analytical concepts, and the only way to get more out of the evidence is either to refine those concepts or to develop new ones. Because it draws attention to the "philosophical" underpinnings of underwater archaeology, one hopes that this work will provoke a further evolution in our conceptual understanding of shipbuilding.