Which ship designers would the panel question?

If you could question the designer of any ship, which would you choose?

Choices include Dreadnought’s designers, Viking shipwrights, Admiral Henderson, Vasa’s builders, and the designers of Russia’s circular warships, each exposing a different design or institutional puzzle.

The most consequential intervention would challenge Dreadnought’s wing turrets and point Fisher toward five triple mounts instead. A 15-gun, 24-knot ship with 12-inch guns would confront rival navies with a much heavier broadside and could alter the dreadnought race itself. Other panelists would ask Leif Erikson’s shipwrights how their unusually large longships crossed the Atlantic or question Reginald Henderson about the institutional bargaining that helped HMS Unicorn escape treatment as an aircraft carrier. Vasa’s builders offer a chance to discover whether they recognized the ship’s stability problem but were forced to continue. Russia’s circular popovka warships are chosen to understand how an extraordinary concept moved from theory into metal and how well it actually worked.