A hull is the watertight body of a ship, boat, or flying boat. The hull may open at the top, or it may be fully or partially covered with a deck. Atop the deck may be a deckhouse and other superstructures, such as a funnel, derrick, or mast. The line where the hull meets the water surface is called the waterline.
Naval architecture, or naval engineering, is an engineering discipline incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software and safety engineering as applied to the engineering design process, shipbuilding, maintenance, and operation of marine vessels and structures. Naval architecture involves basic and applied research, design, development, design evaluation (classification) and calculations during all stages of the life of a marine vehicle. Preliminary design of the vessel, its detailed design, construction, trials, operation and maintenance, launching and dry-docking are the main activities involved. Ship design calculations are also required for ships being modified. Naval architecture also involves formulation of safety regulations and damage-control rules and the approval and certification of ship designs to meet statutory and non-statutory requirements.
Carvel built or carvel planking is a method of boat building in which hull planks are laid edge to edge and fastened to a robust frame, thereby forming a smooth surface. Traditionally the planks are neither attached to, nor slotted into, each other, having only a caulking sealant between the planks to keep water out. Modern carvel builders may attach the planks to each other with glues and fixings. It is a "frame first" method of hull construction, where the shape is determined by the framework onto which the planks are fixed. This is in contrast to "plank first" or "shell first" methods, where the outer skin of the hull is made and then reinforced by the insertion of timbers that are fitted to that shape. The most common modern "plank first" method is clinker construction; in the classical period "plank first" involved joining the edges of planks with mortise and tenon joints within the thickness of the timbers, superficially giving the smooth-hull appearance of carvel construction, but achieved by entirely different means.
Boat building is the design and construction of boats and their systems. This includes at a minimum a hull, with propulsion, mechanical, navigation, safety and other systems as a craft requires.
Clinker built is a method of boat building in which the edges of hull planks overlap each other. Where necessary in larger craft, shorter planks can be joined end to end, creating a longer strake or hull plank.
On a vessel's hull, a strake is a longitudinal course of planking or plating which runs from the boat's stempost to the sternpost or transom. The garboard strakes are the two immediately adjacent to the keel on each side.
An A-frame is a basic structure designed to bear a load in a lightweight economical manner. The simplest form of an A-frame is two similarly sized beams, arranged in an angle of 45 degrees or less, attached at the top, like an uppercase letter 'A'. These materials are often wooden or steel beams attached at the top by rope, welding, gluing, or riveting.
The strength of ships is a topic of key interest to naval architects and shipbuilders. Ships which are built too strong are heavy, slow, and cost extra money to build and operate since they weigh more, whilst ships which are built too weakly suffer from minor hull damage and in some extreme cases catastrophic failure and sinking.
In solid mechanics, structural engineering, and shipbuilding, hogging and sagging describe the shape that a beam or similar long object will deform into when loading is applied. Hogging describes a beam that curves upwards in the middle, and sagging describes a beam that curves downwards.
A submarine hull has two major components, the light hull and the pressure hull. The light hull of a submarine is the outer non-watertight hull which provides a hydrodynamically efficient shape. The pressure hull is the inner hull of a submarine that maintains structural integrity with the difference between outside and inside pressure at depth.
Ship stability is an area of naval architecture and ship design that deals with how a ship behaves at sea, both in still water and in waves, whether intact or damaged. Stability calculations focus on centers of gravity, centers of buoyancy, the metacenters of vessels, and on how these interact.
Pallet rack is a material handling storage aid system designed to store materials on pallets. Although there are many varieties of pallet racking, all types allow for the storage of palletized materials in horizontal rows with multiple levels. Forklift trucks are usually required to place the loaded pallets onto the racks for storage. Since the Second World War, pallet racks have become a ubiquitous element of most modern warehouses, manufacturing facilities, retail centers, and other storage and distribution facilities. All types of pallet racking increase storage density of the stored goods. Costs associated with the racking increases with increasing storage density.
Shell plating is the outer-most structure on the hull of a steel or aluminum ship or boat.
Sir Joseph William Isherwood, 1st Baronet was a British naval architect. He invented the Isherwood System of longitudinal construction of ships and the Arcform System.
The Edna E. Lockwood is a Chesapeake Bay bugeye, the last working oyster boat of her kind. She is located at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in Saint Michaels, Maryland. She was built in 1889 at Tilghman Island, Maryland by John B. Harrison and is of nine-log construction, similar to the smaller log canoe, and was launched on October 5, 1889 for Daniel Haddaway, at a cost of $2,200. She worked for at least seven sets of owners from 1899 until 1967, and was then sailed as a yacht until donated to the museum in 1973. The museum undertook an extensive restoration of the Lockwood from 1975 through 1979, which restored the bugeye to its 1910 appearance with the "patent stern" that had been added sometime prior to that year. She is the last bugeye retaining the sailing rig and working appearance of the type. Her length is 53.5 feet (16.3 m), with a 15.25 feet (4.65 m) beam and a draft of 2.58 feet (0.79 m) with the centerboard up, and a maximum sail area of approximately 1700 square feet.
The Humber keel was a type of single-masted, square-rigged sailing craft used for inshore and inland cargo transport around Hull and the Humber Estuary, in the United Kingdom, particularly through the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Ship measurements consist of a multitude of terms and definitions specifically related to ships and measuring or defining their characteristics.
In ships, frames are ribs that are transverse bolted or welded to the keel. Frames support the hull and give the ship its shape and strength.
Discovered by divers from the French Navy Diving School in 1967, the archaeological investigations of the Roman wreck at Madrague de Giens constituted the first large scale, "truly scientific underwater excavation[s] carried out in France". The wreck lies at around 18 to 20 metres depth off the coast of the small fishing port of La Madrague de Giens on the Giens Peninsula, east of Toulon, on the southern Mediterranean coast of France. Sunk around 75–60 BCE, the vessel has been found to be "a large merchantman of considerable tonnage—400 tons deadweight with a displacement of around 550 tons", making it one of the largest Roman wrecks excavated, with only the wreck at Albenga, Italy exceeding it at the time of its discovery. The vessel wrecked at Madrague de Giens measured around 40 metres in length; "showed a sharp bottom with "wine glass" section and a prominent keel creating a large leeboard"; displayed extended raking of the stem and stern; and had two masts. The hull was characterised by a reverse stempost in the shape of a ram with a big cutwater which "must have given... [the] craft high-performance sailing qualities". The ship sunk while transporting a large cargo of wine and black glazed pottery from Italy. It is not known why it sank.
The SB Kathleen was a spritsail Thames barge built by Glover at Gravesend, Kent, in England in 1901, and registered in Rochester. Her official number was 113,708. She was built to carry grain- for capacity rather than speed. she was 82.8 feet (25.2 m) long and had a beam of 19.7 feet (6.0 m). Light, she drew 30 inches (76 cm) of water, and laden 6 feet (1.8 m).
