Vol. 65, No. 4 winter 2020 308
2. La corderie de Rochefort: engraving, primitive but fairly faithful for the details, by T éodore de Blois in 1733. Private collection, courtesy of l’Association des Amis du Musée national de la Marine (AAMM).
voilure, published by Romme in 1781, all the ropes on board a 74-gun vessel represented a mass of nearly ten tons. On a 120-gun vessel, the cumulative length of all the ropes—standing and running rigging together— reached the astonishing fi gure of 200 kilometers (125 miles). T is shows the importance, both qualitatively and quantitatively, of hemp in sailing ships.
To guarantee the quality and availability of ropes, the French Royal Navy quickly acquired rope factories located in the dockyards under its direct control. “T ese are works on which we must keep an eye on because of the ordinary deception of the rope- makers, who very oſt en wet the hemp and nets that are given to them, in order to sell the infusion,” wrote a superintendent of the Navy in 1671. ( ANM B310 f° 42) T is was not an exclusive rule, however, as there was use of private suppliers, albeit in a limited way, probably resulting from special circumstances. It was in fact mainly before the great development of the dockyards under Colbert’s leadership that we noted this extended use of private rope factories. T is was the case in Toulon in 1670, where ropes were ordered (“at agreed price”) both in Toulon and in La Seyne. T e reason for this is that the dockyard still only had an open-air rope factory. Also, “when it is necessary to make the cables one has to stretch out up to over eighty fathoms in length of rope on the site of the construction workshop, which is extremely inconvenient for both the ropemakers and the dockyard workers.”
(ANM B3 9 f° 457 v°) T e dockyard rope factory then employed 213 men, of whom 31 were boys to turn the wheels. To avoid unnecessary costs, the superintendent stopped resorting to private suppliers as soon as the shipbuilding activity was in proportion to the dockyard’s own production capacity. Le Havre provides another similar example. At the beginning of its establishment in the port, the Navy called on the services of the East India Company, which had a rope factory there, built in 1667.
T e birth of Louis XIV’s dockyards
Under the reign of Louis XIV, the development of the dockyards was carried out in two successive main waves, with the exception of Rochefort, which is a special case. At the other ports, the Navy of Louis XIV inherited modest facilities there, built under Louis XIII. T ese dockyards were the subject of a campaign to improve them in the years 1665-70 aſt er being inspected by the Chevalier de Clerville, commissioner general of fortifi cations.
In Brest, the banks of the downstream course of the River Penfeld were largely taken over by the Navy. A “rope factory and stoving oven for the needs of its vessels” was identifi ed in the banks of the cove of Troulan from 1636. (Levot 1864, 246) T e rope factory saw its length increased to 240 toises (1,680
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