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> The ship's designer was Hein Jakobsson, the same master shipbuilder who completed Vasa. He realized that Vasa had the wrong proportions even before she was launched, which could lead to instability. And indeed, she tipped, foundered and sank on her maiden voyage. > The Apple was therefore built wider than the Vasa, but despite this, the ship was not successful... Being a "master shipbuilder" in those days was apparently a tough gig. |
One story that has stuck with me is of a destroyer class in WW2 that performed particularly horribly because of an error on calculating the metacentric height. The proper procedure for calculating it was to have two different dudes each spend a week calculating it independently and hoping that their numbers matched. Apparently, in the rush of what had to be done, the RCNC cut some corners and only had one draftsman do it in this case, and he made an error and now the ships rolled horrifically. But even Bouguer and Euler- the people inventing metacentric height calculations- are working a century after the Vasa, so a master shipbuilder in that era just has his working experience and no real math to help him.