Traité de la Construction des Vaisseaux, avec des Eclaircissemens & Démonstrations touchant l’Ouvrage intitulee: Architectura Navalis mercatoria, &c. ...- Chapman, Frederic Henry af. Traduit de Suedois ... Vial du Clairbois.- First edition in French of the 1768 original Swedish first edition

Brest: Chez R. Mallassis, Impremeur ordinaire du Roi & de la Marine. A Paris, Chez Durand, nevey, Libraire, rue Galande. Jombert, heune, Libraire, rue Dauphine, 1781. Illustrated with 20 folding plates.-One of the most important books of the eighteenth century on ship designs. af Chapman introduced new mathematical methods of determining the center of gravity for proposed designs. He also had worked out a system of isometric views of design proposals to assist in the accurate transfer of measurements. Other chapters are devoted to calculating the ship’s way through the water, i.e. resistance to contours, and appointments and methods of construction. An earlier French edition had been issued in 1779 which only had 11 of the plates. The French edition criticizes Chapman’s treatise to which Chapman replied in a later edition. It should be noted that Clairbois (the translator) took many of the illustrations for his own book Encyclopedie Methodique published in 1783. Frederik Henrik af Chapman, universally acknowledged as the father of naval architecture, was born in 1721 in Göteborg (Gothenburg) on the Swedish west coast, and died in 1808 in Karlskrona on the east coast, the son of a British Naval officer who had joined the Royal Swedish Navy in 1716, and an English mother, Susanna Colson, the daughter of a London shipwright. His studies of mathematics and physics began in Sweden and were completed in England; he also spent long periods in France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and England studying naval architecture before eventually settling in Sweden where he devoted himself to naval architecture and ship building. In 1765 he took leave of absence from his work as chief naval architect for the Swedish Archipelago Fleet based at Sveaborg (off Helsinki) to devote himself for two years to Architectura navalis mercatoria. He devoted himself not only to the construction of ships but the re-bulding and re-organization of the whole system of ships building. In the short period of three years he accomplished the completion of twenty ships, ten ships of the line, and ten frigates. His system for building ships far surpassed all that existed and the majority of European naval powers adopted his system with all speed. [Polak 1605. Scott 377. Harris, F. H. af Chapman, p. 226].

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Covers with minimal wear, some browning to preliminary and terminal leaves, else fine