"Naval architecture was born in the mountains of Peru, in the mind of a French astronomer named Pierre Bouguer who never built a ship in his life." So writes Larrie Ferreiro at the beginning of this pioneering work on the science of naval architecture. Bouguer's monumental book Trait du navire (Trea[...]

In the early eighteenth century, European thinkers were torn between Descartes notion that the earth was spherical and Newtons contention that it was flattened at the poles. Eager to reap the great military and imperial advantages of knowing the earths exact shape, France and Spain sent an expediti[...]