HISTORICAL REVIEW

Many decades ago (some 45000 years ago), when people (tribes) wanted to carry out fishing in coastal
areas and travel to across the rivers, they built rafts(structure with a flat top that floats) and
experienced the thrill of moving across the water, and first boat- dugout canoes (hollowed out tree
trunks) were developed by stone age populations, propelled by tide or wind or devices like oars, etc.


RAFTS DUGOUT CANOES

They experienced the first disasters, when their boat sank or broke, capsized or rotted and lives were
lost.
The boat builder who was adjudged more successful than others received the acclaim of their fellows
and was soon regarded as craftsmen. The intelligent craftsmen observed perhaps, that capsizing was
less frequent when using two trunks joined together or when an outrigger was fixed, or that it could be
maneuvered better with a rudder in a suitable position. The tools were trial and error and the stimulus
was pride. He was the first naval architect.


OUTRIGGERS BOATS

The craftsmens expertise developed as it was passed down the generations:
Greeks built their triremes
Romans built their galleys
Vikings(first type of ship that was developed) produced their beautiful crafts to carry soldiers through
heavy seas and on to the beaches.
Several hundred years ago, the craftsmen were designing and building great square rigged ships for
trade and war and relying still on knowledge passed down through the generations and guarded by
extreme secrecy.
Still, they learned by trial and error because they had as yet no other tools and the disasters at sea
persisted.
People used sail, paddle wheels for propulsion. For navigation magnetic needle compass was used,
Until the corner stone laid by Archimedes some 2000 years ago, the need for scientific approach was not
realized, and the design and building of ships was only a craft till science affected ship design
appreciably.
With Archimedes, Isaac Newton, Rankine, Froude and other great mathematicians laid foundations for
Naval Architecture by means of science. Naval Architectures concern in ships safety, performance, and
geometry, avoiding/minimizing environmental impact, and other many factors including geographical
limits, economic limits and other limits, Aesthetics, ergonomics, etc., resulted in combination of art and
science, and it was felt during the success of a craft surrounded by pride and secrecy, in the middle of
18
th
century.

Over 70 % of the earth's surface is covered by ocean and naval architects taking advantage of this fact,
started developing many types of vessels for different purposes. They are commercial purposes and for
civil purposes.
The development of naval architecture is commercial ships like oil tankers, general cargo, and bulk
carriers, private, recreational, military and government entities, and over 90% of world trade is by
means of water ways .Today we see a large increase in cruise ships, gambling casino boats, and
enormous oil tankers. Computers are becoming commonplace, but the art of hand drawing ship's lines is
still performed today. The main focus of today's naval architect is safety for people and the
environment.
Many changes have occurred since the beginning of ship building, such as the evolution from wooden
ships to steel ships, rivets to welded structures to composites, steam to diesel to nuclear power, and
standard full hull commercial vessels to addition of bulbous bows in order to increase performance.
Computers are becoming the primary tool for naval architects and there are some excellent programs
available or in development for designing ships. Many techniques are being developed for designing
quality marine structures and to make construction faster and easier. A typical tanker takes 18-24
months to go from design to production and these costs the owner money in down time when the
vessel could be making money. The Virtual Shipyards is currently underway to try and challenge this
time frame. Different areas of ship design, are working from separate offices throughout the world in
the phases of design and construction. This is the world of competition one easiest way to win is to save
time and complete the job faster like using the recent communication developments like connected via
internet sending the design around to each site which will even enable to store voice comments on an
area of the design, production and management.