On Ship-building. 163 



Art. XX.— analysis OF SCIENTIFIC BOOKS AND ME- 

 MOIRS. 



I. The Article Ship-Building. Published in Vol. xviii. Part I. of the 

 Edinburgh Encyclopcedia, Edited by Dr Brews tek. 



-*- HE publication of this able and comprehensive article is likely to awaken 

 a great degree of attention to the much-neglected art of ship-buiidingj em- 

 bracing as it does so wide and so general a view of a subject so intimately con- 

 nected with the welfare of our beloved country. The author of the paper 

 most properly observes, that in no period of the world has the subject of 

 naval architecture had higher claims on public attention than the present, 

 and to our own country in particular, it is an art of such transcendant im- 

 portance, that no means should be left untried to give it every perfection of 

 which it is susceptible. Nor is it only in a commercial point of view that 

 ship-building is valuable to man, since by the enterprise that fortunately 

 characterizes the modern navigator, the ocean is become one of the high 

 roads of civilization, — perhaps the highest ; and, therefore, in the success- 

 ful cultivation of the various arts connected with navigation and com- 

 merce, every lover of human improvement must feel an interest propor- 

 tionate to the influence which they are now universally allowed to exercise 

 on the improving destiny of man. 



Naval architecture, continues the author of the paper, may be contem- 

 plated under three capital points of view. First, as regards the means it 

 affords for the purposes of war ; secondly, as it relates to commercial enter- 

 prise and speculation ; and, thirdly, as it is connected with human im- 

 provement, the enlargement of geographical knowledge, and the extension 

 of the blessings of civilization. The cultivation of the first is unfortu- 

 nately rendered necessary by the peculiar condition of the world, and per- 

 haps the second and third are in some degree assisted by it ; but it is the 

 successful advancement of the latter that renders the study of naval ar- 

 chitecture most pleasing, and elevates it to a rank with those arts which 

 minister so essentially to the happiness and well being of man. 



The author of the article under consideration has contemplated his sub- 

 ject in the most general points of view. Omitting the early history of the 

 art, the materials for which are abundantly supplied by Charnock and 

 others, he advances at once to its leading and essential elements, and connects 

 in a comprehensive form the labours of Bouguer and Euler, with those of 

 Atwood, Chapman, and Seppings. Ship-building, tliough an imperfect 

 art, has many great and celebrated names connected with its history. As- 

 suming, for the first time, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, a 

 scientific form, in consequence of the labours of Paul Hoste, in his 2'heorie 

 de la Construction des Vaisseaux, we find it afterwards enriched by the la- 

 bours of many mathematicians ; and the masterly improvements of Sep- 

 pings in our own tiines, has added to it a perfection it never before posses- 

 sed. The creation of the College of Naval Architecture in Portsmouth 

 Dock- Yard has also communicated to it a great impulse. It cannot now 



