5 - Productivity, profitability, and costs of private and corporate Dutch ship owning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Summary

INTRODUCTION

By about 1450 the oceangoing ship had been developed. Out of a mixture of northern European and Mediterranean/Arabian practice in design and rig, called “a marriage” by J. H. Parry, the three-master came into being and was first used for ocean shipping by the Portuguese and Spaniards. In principle this ship did not change until the nineteenth century, when iron and steam made completely different seagoing structures possible. Until then, the use of timber limited the size of ships. But within these restrictions a variety of types of vessels were designed after 1450. These types all were built with two or three masts and topmasts and equipped with square, lateen, and staysails. Improvement in sailing ability was made but did not have a great impact. For the operating costs of ships, changes in cargo-carrying capacity and in the number of crew on board were more important.

In this field, the Dutch made a major contribution at the end of the sixteenth century. The so-called fluyt, or flyboat, was then developed. This well-known story is connected with the city of Hoorn and Pieter Janszoon Liorno, regent and merchant as well as shipbuilder. The new feature of the oceangoing fluyt was its full concentration on cargocarrying capacity. Until this time, ships had always been designed to carry armament; gun platforms, portholes, and reinforced construction were standard. Lacking such features, the fluyt could be lightly built; it became much longer compared with its width than other types (1:4–6), and it was soon known for the simplicity of its rig.