Block Mill The Block Mills have entered service at Portsmouth dockyard. This is a decisive step for the introduction of steam engines into shipyards. Two centuries after the introduction of wind-powered sawmills into Zaandam works, we are attending the advent of a new era of mechanisation in shipbuilding. ¤ Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest is the inventor of the wind-powered sawmill, which swiftly developed during the first half of the 17th century in the United Province

Brest Founded in 1631 as a military dockyard by Archbishop and Prime Minister Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu (†1642), the port of Brest has just been endowed with a dry dock after four years of work. The permanent installation of Royal dockyards on the Atlantic coast was thwarted by lack of stability and of loyalty of Governors and Admirals from the wars of religion until the end of the Fronde. Those troubled times notably jeopardised the destiny of La Rochelle. They a

England has enacted a new Navigation act which reinforces the constraints of the previous one (1651). In short it imposes to its trade, home and colonial, import as export, to be carried by British ships handled by British crews for the three quarters of their hands. This is a blatant reaction to the hegemony of the merchant fleet of the United Provinces, three times the tonnage under the English flag which is second in the world. This is also an expression of the policy of