The fluit was developed in Holland in the last decades of the 16th century, when the growing international trading contacts of the Dutch merchants caused the need for bigger cargo ships with more loading capacity. It was a total success story: within a few years the fluit was the most important freighter in Europe. The creation of the vessel caused surprise and mockery amongst shipbuilders and sailors. It was extremely narrow for its time (length-beam ratio was 4 to 1) and had an upper deck that was significantly narrower than the bulbous hull itself. Story has it that this was the Dutch way to dodge the Sound tolls the Danes demanded from every passing ship. These tolls were mainly calculated with the width of the upper deck as a starting point.
Attachment 275165
Sailing fluit by Jan Claeszn Rietschoof
There are no original plans of any fluits of those days. Dutch shipbuilders did not need plans to build their ships. The process of construction was devided into several stages, each of which had its own rules-of-thumb. These rules were traditionally established and went back a long time. Strange enough the building of the hull started with the outer planking, which was followed by the insertion of the frame parts, giving strength to the construction.
This will not be the first fluit I ever built. By using both the original shipbuilding rules and specification contracts (written agreements between commissioners and shipwrights) I was able to reconstruct some reasonably trustworthy fluits, together with my recently deceased friend Cor Emke. This time I will use a drawing Nicolaes Witsen (1641-1717) presents in his book on Dutch shipbuilding: Old and Modern Shipbuilding and Management (Amsterdam, 1671). Witsen, an Amsterdam lord mayor, was the first to write a book on shipbuilding in Holland.
Attachment 275166
Illustration from Witsen’s book Aeloude en hedendaegse Scheepsbouw en Bestier, 1671, showing fluits (the three vessels on the right).
Attachment 275167
Witsen’s drawing served as the basis of this reconstruction. Plate LX from his book Aeloude en Hedendaegse Scheepsbouw en Bestier (1671).
Plate LX is not a technical drawing that can be compared to the complicated draughts modern shipbuilders use to define the shape of a ship. In fact Witsen only presents it to compare the ungainly shape of the fluit (drawn lines) to other vessels of his days (dotted lines). The difference between the two frame shapes can be seen in the two small drawings here. The fluit’s loading capacity must have been considerably more than the avarage ship.
Attachment 275168 Attachment 275169
`normal ship` fluit
The plan only shows three frames. (Actually it shows four, but one, the main frame is depicted in the section on the left of the drawing). Together they are enough material to shape this ship’s hull.
It may look questionable to base the shape of a ship on something that looks like a loosely hand-made sketch. Still, having worked with Witsen’s book for over 30 years I have come to the conclusion over and over again that basically he was extremely trustworthy in whatever he wrote or drew. The pinas I showed in a previous thread on this forum (http://ift.tt/1Qv8tSC) was mainly reconstructed from written data from his book. This fluit-drawing appears to be surprisingly adequate. The sparse data derived from it are sufficient to get a fair image of the shape of the depicted ship. There was even a real surprise. In contradiction to what I always thought, the midship frame was not the widest part of the ship. It appeared that that point was located at the captain’s cabin in the back of the ship. The vertical dotted line to the left in the section clearly shows how the width of the ship exceeds the beam in the midship.
Attachment 275170
In our days modern techniques come to our rescue. My good Belgium friend Rene Hendrickx, working in good co-operation with me for several years, helped me establishing the lines of the hull by using a wonderful and free downloadable 3D shipbuilding program, called DELFTship (delftship.net). Modern techniques can both be a curse and a blessing. In this case the program constructed perfect lines, but they were far too fair for the rude lines of this workhorse. In bow and stern we had to do a bit of pushing and pulling to produce the lines we know as being charcteristic for a fluit.
There was however one mistake in Witsen’s draught: The foremost frame is always located on the butt between stem and keel. Indeed both frames are drawn there. But for the fluit a longer keel and another stem and a more upright stem was chosen. The location of the forward frame of the fluit needed to be adjusted to the new location of the butt between stem and keel, 10 feet forward. This adaptation produced the true lines of the fluit’s bow.
Attachment 275171
3D preview of the planking of the fluit, also showing the extreme shape of the stern section. (Made by Rene Hendrickx in DELFTship)
The Dutch were not known for their elegant planking. Planks of different sizes, sometimes considerately wider at one end, were part of the daily practice of shipbuilding, as can be seen in many archaeological finds. No wonder that a ship like this took the incredible construction time of only about 4 months, performed by no more than 20 or 22 men.
The DELFTship program not only produced the (corrected) lines of the hull. It also allowed us to reconstruct the run of the outer planking in advance.
Attachment 275172
Furthermore we were able to establish the location of the decks and the internal arrangement.
Attachment 275173
Inside the fluit:1. Hold. 2. Orlop deck. 3 upper deck. 4. Fore castle. 5. Cable tier. 6. Captain’s cabin. 7. Steering stand. 8. Officer’s cabin. 9. Storage for bread and cheese. 10. More storage (for instance for gunpowder)
The fluit was build to have a large hold (1), capable of containing a lot of (mostly bulk) cargo. Different from other ships of that era the lower deck in the fluit (2) was not a compartment accessible for the crew. It was a low-decked storage, in which goods were stored that were supposed to stay dry en therefore could not be kent in the hold.
Between the roof of the captain’s cabin (6) and the floor of the officer’s cabin (8) there is a narrow space in which the tiller entered the ship. It precisely coincides with the aquard narrowing of the ship’s sides, in a way that left the walls of both the captain’s and the officer’s cabins almost entirely rectangular in spite of the difference in width. The tiller ended in the steering stand (7), right in front of the captain’s cabin.
We slightly changed the arrangement of the deck here: different from Witsen’s drawing we extended the floor of the captain’s cabin to create a flat floor for the steering stand. If made a little longer ordnance was placed here.
These two draughts will be sufficient to build my fluit.
Attachment 275174
Linesplan of the fluit, based on Witsen’s drawing.
Sorry for this long and theoretical introduction, but it is necessary to show how I choose and interpret my sources.
Next time I will show some pictures of the start of the building process, although I doubt if that will bring the members of this forum any news in paper building techniques.
Hope to see you next time.
Attachment 275165
Sailing fluit by Jan Claeszn Rietschoof
There are no original plans of any fluits of those days. Dutch shipbuilders did not need plans to build their ships. The process of construction was devided into several stages, each of which had its own rules-of-thumb. These rules were traditionally established and went back a long time. Strange enough the building of the hull started with the outer planking, which was followed by the insertion of the frame parts, giving strength to the construction.
This will not be the first fluit I ever built. By using both the original shipbuilding rules and specification contracts (written agreements between commissioners and shipwrights) I was able to reconstruct some reasonably trustworthy fluits, together with my recently deceased friend Cor Emke. This time I will use a drawing Nicolaes Witsen (1641-1717) presents in his book on Dutch shipbuilding: Old and Modern Shipbuilding and Management (Amsterdam, 1671). Witsen, an Amsterdam lord mayor, was the first to write a book on shipbuilding in Holland.
Attachment 275166
Illustration from Witsen’s book Aeloude en hedendaegse Scheepsbouw en Bestier, 1671, showing fluits (the three vessels on the right).
Attachment 275167
Witsen’s drawing served as the basis of this reconstruction. Plate LX from his book Aeloude en Hedendaegse Scheepsbouw en Bestier (1671).
Plate LX is not a technical drawing that can be compared to the complicated draughts modern shipbuilders use to define the shape of a ship. In fact Witsen only presents it to compare the ungainly shape of the fluit (drawn lines) to other vessels of his days (dotted lines). The difference between the two frame shapes can be seen in the two small drawings here. The fluit’s loading capacity must have been considerably more than the avarage ship.
Attachment 275168 Attachment 275169
`normal ship` fluit
The plan only shows three frames. (Actually it shows four, but one, the main frame is depicted in the section on the left of the drawing). Together they are enough material to shape this ship’s hull.
It may look questionable to base the shape of a ship on something that looks like a loosely hand-made sketch. Still, having worked with Witsen’s book for over 30 years I have come to the conclusion over and over again that basically he was extremely trustworthy in whatever he wrote or drew. The pinas I showed in a previous thread on this forum (http://ift.tt/1Qv8tSC) was mainly reconstructed from written data from his book. This fluit-drawing appears to be surprisingly adequate. The sparse data derived from it are sufficient to get a fair image of the shape of the depicted ship. There was even a real surprise. In contradiction to what I always thought, the midship frame was not the widest part of the ship. It appeared that that point was located at the captain’s cabin in the back of the ship. The vertical dotted line to the left in the section clearly shows how the width of the ship exceeds the beam in the midship.
Attachment 275170
In our days modern techniques come to our rescue. My good Belgium friend Rene Hendrickx, working in good co-operation with me for several years, helped me establishing the lines of the hull by using a wonderful and free downloadable 3D shipbuilding program, called DELFTship (delftship.net). Modern techniques can both be a curse and a blessing. In this case the program constructed perfect lines, but they were far too fair for the rude lines of this workhorse. In bow and stern we had to do a bit of pushing and pulling to produce the lines we know as being charcteristic for a fluit.
There was however one mistake in Witsen’s draught: The foremost frame is always located on the butt between stem and keel. Indeed both frames are drawn there. But for the fluit a longer keel and another stem and a more upright stem was chosen. The location of the forward frame of the fluit needed to be adjusted to the new location of the butt between stem and keel, 10 feet forward. This adaptation produced the true lines of the fluit’s bow.
Attachment 275171
3D preview of the planking of the fluit, also showing the extreme shape of the stern section. (Made by Rene Hendrickx in DELFTship)
The Dutch were not known for their elegant planking. Planks of different sizes, sometimes considerately wider at one end, were part of the daily practice of shipbuilding, as can be seen in many archaeological finds. No wonder that a ship like this took the incredible construction time of only about 4 months, performed by no more than 20 or 22 men.
The DELFTship program not only produced the (corrected) lines of the hull. It also allowed us to reconstruct the run of the outer planking in advance.
Attachment 275172
Furthermore we were able to establish the location of the decks and the internal arrangement.
Attachment 275173
Inside the fluit:1. Hold. 2. Orlop deck. 3 upper deck. 4. Fore castle. 5. Cable tier. 6. Captain’s cabin. 7. Steering stand. 8. Officer’s cabin. 9. Storage for bread and cheese. 10. More storage (for instance for gunpowder)
The fluit was build to have a large hold (1), capable of containing a lot of (mostly bulk) cargo. Different from other ships of that era the lower deck in the fluit (2) was not a compartment accessible for the crew. It was a low-decked storage, in which goods were stored that were supposed to stay dry en therefore could not be kent in the hold.
Between the roof of the captain’s cabin (6) and the floor of the officer’s cabin (8) there is a narrow space in which the tiller entered the ship. It precisely coincides with the aquard narrowing of the ship’s sides, in a way that left the walls of both the captain’s and the officer’s cabins almost entirely rectangular in spite of the difference in width. The tiller ended in the steering stand (7), right in front of the captain’s cabin.
We slightly changed the arrangement of the deck here: different from Witsen’s drawing we extended the floor of the captain’s cabin to create a flat floor for the steering stand. If made a little longer ordnance was placed here.
These two draughts will be sufficient to build my fluit.
Attachment 275174
Linesplan of the fluit, based on Witsen’s drawing.
Sorry for this long and theoretical introduction, but it is necessary to show how I choose and interpret my sources.
Next time I will show some pictures of the start of the building process, although I doubt if that will bring the members of this forum any news in paper building techniques.
Hope to see you next time.
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