The tools of the shipwright, 1650-1925

Introduction: The art of shipbuilding is very old. Boats and canoes were hollowed-out from tree trunks in prehistoric times. Sea-going sailing ships, with sides formed of planks, were constructed by the Egyptians in about 2300 B.C., and three centuries after this men are known to have travelled by sea from the Mediterranean to Scotland. Some fifteen hundred years later the Shipwright's skill was celebrated in the literature of Greece and Rome; and in the first century A.D., skill in shipbuilding was developed in the Scandinavian countries, in England, and also in China, where in the eighth century A.D. the stern-post rudder was first invented.