This issue tends to be forgotten, as the eclipse of such activities and changes in the use of space, which transformed urban landscapes, erased the evidence of this past from the collective memory.ĤThe aim of this paper is to compare and analyze the wooden shipbuilding industry in three areas located in the nineteenth century Mediterranean: the port of the Island of Syros in the Cyclades, and the adjacent regions of Provence and Liguria. The welfare of a large part of the population depended on it. Wooden shipbuilding, along with shipping to which it was inextricably interlinked, represented the most important source of wealth for many ports and maritime communities in the age of sail.ģIn the Mediterranean, in many of today’s charming seaside tourist destinations or industrialized port-cities, shipping and wooden shipbuilding represented until the beginning of the twentieth century the major economic activities. It demanded a specialized and sometimes numerous labor force in a set of diversified sectors: lumberjacks, carpenters, ironsmiths, sail makers, rope makers, caulkers etc. 3 Wooden shipbuilding, either in state establishments or private yards, was in fact organized according to a strict hierarchical structure. Workers and Workplace in the Pre-industria (.)ĢWooden shipbuilding was for centuries the most “industrialized” activity of the secondary sector, in the service of the state (such as the Venetian Arsenal or the Royal Dockyards of Woolwich, Deptford, Chatham and Sheerness), of large merchant companies, (Dutch or English East India Companies) or of individual shipowners.

Davis, Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal. 2 Wooden shipbuilding had a great economic and cultural impact in many coastal and insular areas in Europe, North America and in the Mediterranean basin, which lasted in certain cases until the first half of the twentieth century. In other European countries, as well as in the North Atlantic and Japan, even in the 1880s, the production of metal hulls was from negligible to non-existent. However, the construction of iron and steel sailing ships was mainly a British phenomenon. 1 Aside from steamships, which required almost sixty years of continuous technical improvements in the engine before becoming competitive for tramping, iron and steel sailing ships could be also considered as a threat for wooden shipbuilding business.

Simon Ville, “The Transition to Iron and Steel Construction”, in Robert Gardiner (ed.), Sail’s La (.)ġIn the nineteenth century, wooden shipbuilding was still a very important industry, as wooden sailing ships were the predominant type of sea transport at least until 1887, when the introduction of triple expansion engine in steamships put and end to the domination of sailing ships as the main sea cargo carriers. Graham, “The Ascendancy of the Sailing Ship 1850-85”, The Economic History Review, New (.)

Wooden ship construction