The honor of having endowed the shipbuilding art with scientific principles belongs wholly to the French. All the nations, even the Dutch and the English borrowed these principles from them about the middle of the XVIIIth century. It was however only at the end of this century that the French method for calculating and designing ships forced its way everywhere. The Netherlands, in addition to their war fleet proper, had a very large merchant marine. (~Koenen~, p. 90.) This latter it is said, included, at the beginning of the XVIIth century, 20,000 vessels which had all been built in Holland and, flying the Dutch colors, furrowed the seas in all directions. At the end of this century, when we must have already lost many of our over-seas possessions, the total tonnage of the English merchant marine amounted to 500,000 tons; that of our country was 900,000 tons, and all other nations together had 2,000,000 tons. (~Groen van Pinsteren~, _Handboek_, § 303.--~Koenen~, p. 160.) Our merchantmen obtained quickly a great perfection. Full proof of this can be found in the observations made by Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) about the Dutch ships, in which, as he remarks, a large amount of freight could be stowed while, at the same time, they required a smaller crew than that found necessary for the English ships. (~Koenen~, p. 86.) Our merchant vessels, among which especially “flutes” were met with, were copied by the English and French. Flutes were used preferentially as freight carriers. The following, for example, is found in _Le Musée de Marine du Louvre_: “The navy has always had transports for supplying squadrons; they were called at first flutes or transports and later were known as ‹corvettes de charge›”. In order to give an idea of the number of vessels in use at the end of the XVIIth century, I have given below a few figures taken from Mr ~Koenen’s~ work, p. 160, which he, in his turn, has borrowed from “~Van Hoogendorp~.--_Bijdragen tot de huishouding van den Staat_”. (Vol. I, p. 183.)