Institutional memory behind ship shape

A walking stick supplies the first analogy for ship shape: centuries of use teach people where the handle belongs and what a workable form looks like. Ships accumulate the same kind of cultural and institutional memory. Captains and sailing masters could recognize incorrect rigging by eye because generations of practice had taught them what worked. A captured Spanish ship might be rerigged for Royal Navy service, but its construction meant that British fittings could not simply be copied bolt for bolt. National operating practice, hull form, and tacit knowledge therefore shaped each vessel. Much of this expertise disappeared without being written down once it fell out of use.