This brief, volume one of two, explores the intellectual and technical foundations of Iberian shipbuilding during the Golden Age of Galleons (1570–1712), situating it within the broader context of the Scientific Revolution. It argues that ships, the most complex machines of the seventeenth century, were not merely instruments of commerce and warfare, but expressions of analytical thinking that preceded and potentially influenced Cartesian geometry.

Volume 1 examines the conception and design of the ship. Seventeenth-century shipbuilders developed coordinate-based plotting, coefficients, and algorithms to visualize, communicate, and replicate complex shapes. Using mathematical and philosophical principles, their method allowed for the preconception and accurate depiction of hulls, masts, and spar shapes before they were built. Even if performance prediction awaited the metacentric theory and hydrodynamics, the book challenges the notion that early shipbuilding was purely empirical. Ship designers constituted a cultural elite capable of translating abstract geometric principles into tangible technologies that supported the European maritime Empires.

The work integrates detailed analysis of treatises, royal ordinances (Ordenanzas), and shipwreck remains to reconstruct the technical and intellectual world of early modern naval architecture. By bridging nautical archaeology, intellectual history, history of science and technology, and naval architecture, this work reveals how Iberian shipbuilders contributed to the rationalization of technology and laid the groundwork for the evolution of modern naval engineering.

Ricardo Borrero L. earned his B.A. in History with Honors from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2009. His undergraduate thesis, which examined the 1697 siege of Cartagena de Indias by French Caribbean pirates, received a research grant from the Colonial History Division of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH).

In 2009, he began his M.A. in Anthropology at the Universidad de los Andes, completing it in 2011 with a pioneering study in experimental archaeology focused on underwater site formation processes in the Bay of Cartagena de Indias. This research was supported by Colciencias (Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation).

Following his master’s degree, Borrero was awarded a scholarship to attend the ARQUA–UNESCO International Course on Underwater Archaeology in Cartagena, Spain. From 2011 to 2015, he served as a researcher at the Underwater Archaeology Subdirectorate (SAS) of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico, contributing to major projects led by Pilar Luna (†), Roberto Junco, and Flor Trejo. These included the search for the galleon Nuestra Señora del Juncal and the 1631 New Spain Fleet lost in the Gulf of Mexico; the Manila Galleon Project in Baja California; and the high-altitude lake underwater archaeology initiative at Nevado de Toluca. Concurrently, he conducted research on colonial shipwrecks and fortifications in Cartagena de Indias alongside Carlos del Cairo and Catalina García.

In 2016, Borrero received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue doctoral studies at the Nautical Archaeology Program (NAP) at Texas A&M University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2021. During his doctoral work, he secured multiple internal grants and was awarded the 2018 Ed and Judy Jelks Travel Award by the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA), as well as a research grant from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) to study Early Modern Iberian shipbuilding at the Richard J. Steffy Ship Reconstruction Laboratory (ShipLab) under the supervision of Filipe Castro. He also collaborated with the Palynology Research Laboratory at Texas A&M under Prof. Vaughn Bryant (†), investigating the palynology of shipwrecks.

Between 2016 and 2019, he participated in the excavation of the early modern shipwreck of Highbourne Cay (Bahamas) and the Ribadeo galleon off the coast of Galicia, Spain. He has taught courses at the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH, Mexico), and the Universidad Externado de Colombia, where he briefly coordinated the postgraduate program in Underwater Cultural Heritage.

Borrero has served as a translator for the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and as a consultant for UNESCO. He is a member of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS–Colombia), a certified Divemaster, and a scientific diver of the American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS).

Currently, he works at the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH), where he oversees research on the naval architecture of the deep-water archaeological site of the San José galleon (1697–1708). He also co-directs a research group on traditional shipbuilding, funded by the French Institute for Andean Studies (IFEA) and the British Museum.

His scholarly contributions include publications in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and the Journal of Maritime Archaeology, among others.