Designing and Building the 1717 Princess Carolina, an American Colonial Merchant Ship

In 1982 Warren Riess and Sheli Smith directed the excavation of ship remains at 175 Water Street, Manhattan, New York. Subsequent research led to its identification as Princess Carolina, built in Charleston, South Carolina in 1717. An analysis of its hull led to a determination of how the shipwright designed the ship; it is somewhat different from the extant design manuscripts of the period and offers some insights into early eighteenth-century American technology.

 This paper is an illustrated presentation of the steps the shipwright took to design the shape of the hull, his probable reasons for this method, and how this design technique may have facilitated the British Empire’s expansion in the early eighteenth century.