Eighteenth-Century Colonial American Merchant Ship Construction
Kellie Michelle VanHorn
Thesis: December 2004
Chair: Crisman
Past research on eighteenth-century ships has primarily taken one of two
avenues, either focusing on naval warship construction or examining the merchant
shipping industry as a whole in terms of trends and economics. While these areas
are important to pursue, comparatively little is known about actual construction
techniques used on the ordinary merchant vessels of the period. Most modern
sources emphasize hull design and lines drawings; contemporary sources take a
similar direction, explaining the theory of ship design but often leaving out
how to put the ship together. In recent years, however, new information has come
to light through archaeological excavations regarding Anglo-American merchant
ship construction. In this study, several of these shipwrecks were examined in
light of economic factors and the literary evidence from the period in an
attempt to gain a better understanding of colonial American merchant ship
construction in the eighteenth century. While the data set was not large enough
to make conclusive statements, this type of comparative analysis should begin to
establish a framework for the interpretation of future shipwreck excavations.