How did the old timers design hulls

I'm going to start researching more about how the old time marine architects designed hulls?

Detailed question, I assume they used wood to make small scale hulls. Then water tested them???

Watching close how to the different shapes worked, then blew up the small scale Models.

Could be 100% wrong, haha

Who understands and has studied the old ways of hull design?

 

Trial and error.
( AKA Sea Trials )

 

You need to specify some type of time line. 1000BC to 1700's, 1,800's, papyrus times, or early 1900's
Certainly for scaling, Froude was a ground breaker. He tested 3 similar shaped hulls with the exception of length (not sure what he did with the weight, ie made all the models out of the same solid material or?) and determined that if you are scaling a similar hull then you keep the Froude number the same. 1860's

 

The Search for Speed Under Sail by Chapelle is an eternal classic. My favourite is The American Fishing Schooners - another brilliant work, but a relatively narrow focus. Trigger Warning: if you read this one, Arethusa will steal your heart, even if you thought you didn't have one.

 

They had their blind brother carve the hulls for them....(truth is stranger than fiction).

 

And years of experience. My previous post not withstanding, I would hazard to guess that even today 60% of all boats are "designed" (planned?..conceived?...) and built with no testing by people with no formal naval architecture training but years of practical experience in the type of vessels construction and operation. And before the mid-1700's, it would be well over 99%. Naval Architecture really is the last "guild" system. Starting in the mid-1700's (the Age of Enlightenment) there is a move to record and track what works and what doesn't, but we are well into the late 19th Century (the Industrial Age) before there is any systematic scientific approach to vessel design...and often that was/is led astray by Ptolemaic inference fallacies... i.e. remember the "whale flipper" keel models from two decades ago?

 

You are wrong, maybe not 100%, but very little scale testing ever happened prior to 1900...I recommend this book for a big overview.

https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Wooden-Ship-Basil-Greenhill/dp/1932846190

 

What interests me even more is what could have become
accepted, proven design beliefs and practices.
An evolutionary path or route happening independently all around the world.

I suppose, realistically, all the iterations and permutations were explored eventually.
But even the order in which they were "discovered" would have been influential.

And what drives design now?
Costs, needs, materials available, beliefs and traditions, peer reviewed research,
accidents, mis and disinformation....?

 

That makes me curious,who might the brothers be and did their designs work?
I think our OP might do a little research into whole moulding and also into the Viking techniques.both of which worked well enough for vessels of the same general type.A lot of the relevant information wouldn't have spread outside the guild as it was information vital to the business that had evolved the shapes and techniques that worked for their particular location and needs.I believe Henrik af Chapman was an early convert to drawing lines and spreading information about boat shapes on paper (or parchment) rather than by means of models or half models.

 

The term "hulls" would include coracles, Egyptian reed boats, and Pacific Island catamarans / praus, ancient junks, pre- Carthaginian and Phoenician ships, and probably many other hull forms from ancient history barely known about. Wooden ships are relatively rare in archaeology, due to sinking out of sight, storms, rot, borers, and the wood being re-purposed. Many artistic iterations of 'the ark' exist. A very wide spectrum to study, I imagine beginning with several tree logs with the lumpy bits cut off, and lashed together, then paddled, and finding that a pointy front is easier to paddle. And now we use information from aviation, and rocket science, and super computers.

 

I've spent days wandering the Swedish Naval museum where, of course, Chapman's accomplishments and testing techniques are featured. An amazing fellow apparently.

 

Thanks for the replys

Any good books written on the design of modern high performance cat hulls?

 

About - Herreshoff Marine Museum https://herreshoff.org/about/

 

My previous builds were an LF Herreshof ketch, and then one by Colin Archer. So far back I wasn't even bald with a pot belly yet.

 

Hull shape or hull material and how big a cat? They are all sorta-kinda interlocking depending on how "high performance" you are talking about.