Royal Navy model tanks built decades of hull-form evidence

How did the Royal Navy determine the best bow and hull shapes?

It used model basins and wave tanks from the nineteenth century onward, building a long experimental record for naval constructors.

Bow, stern, and underwater shape form one hydrodynamic problem. The Royal Navy invested heavily in experimental tanks to test models and waves rather than relying solely on intuition. Early British work is dated to the 1860s, giving designers roughly eighty years of accumulated experience by the Second World War. This institutional testing base helped constructors refine hull forms across successive ship classes.