Documents and illustrations show that the premier ship in Portugal's India tradeduring the 16th century was the nau, a beamy, three-masted ship, known in northernEurope as a ??????Carrack.?????? For decades these vessels carried passengers and cargo betweenPortugal and Asia. Despite the number of vessels involved, relatively littlearchaeological evidence of these ships exists. While 16th century shipbuilding documentspredate the development of ships plans, they include theoretical treatises and scantlinglists. From these documents it is possible to reconstruct the construction of a nau timberby timber, employing the mathematical relations and formulas used by the Portugueseshipwrights in conjunction with the timber specifications from a scantling list, creating a3D computer model of the ship with Rhinoceros 3 modeling software. The result is anannotated and illustrated construction sequence that shows the placement of every timberin the vessel.
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