More than two-hundred years ago, straight across the Sea-Warehouse of the VOC on the Waaldijk, on the part called Oosterhoofd, the construction of the DELFT began. It was August of the year 1782.

Delfshaven in the year 1783
Things were built and beer was brewed. At nightfall cups were emptied and refilled. By day there were the sounds of sawing, planing and hammering. On the yards was the smell of smoke, tar and timber.

The year before, the Admiralty on the Maas had given the order to build a 'ship of the line' at the private shipyard of
'De Hoog - De Wit' in Delfshaven. The building plans were made by Master-builder Van Zwijndregt Pauluszoon. At the same time the building was started of her sister-ship BRAKEL at 'Landswerf' in Rotterdam, one of the Admiralty's own dockyards.

sailing properties
During the evolution of wooden shipbuilding in Europe an important problem lingered for a long time. This problem was keeping control of the 'draft': the shape of the hull beneath the waterline. This control was needed because, in order to exactly manoeuve ships in a line of battle, the mutual sailing properties had to be equal.
Standardization was urgently needed.

In Rotterdam, Pieter van Zwijndregt Pauluszoon (1711-1790) had found his own solution to this problem by means of a geometric controllable and repeatable method to determine the shape of the ship's frame-timbers. The method was adaptable for ships of any size or shape.

In fact he embroidered on the old Dutch 'shell first' method, where the beam is placed at first, to determine the ship's width, then the shell is applied, to put in all the other ship's timber next.

What Van Zwijndregt added was this:
At first he developed a geometric controllable and repeatable method to determine the shape of the frame-timbers. This design-method was flexible in the sense that he could adapt the shape of the frames, depending of the type of ship that was to be built.
Also he expanded the number of frames from one to eleven.
He joined those eleven frames with the keel with exactly the same space between them. He divided the length of the keel in twelve equal parts.
Between the stem and the first frame he put an extra (help)frame and he did the same between the eleventh frame and the stern.
'mal'
All information needed for this way of construction had to be put in a surveyable system. Therefore Van Zwijndregt developed a frame (sheer plan) of thirteen frame-timbers. This, together with the side-view of stem and stern he called the 'Mal' (Mould). These working-drawings are the 'fingerprint' of a ship and give all information needed to come to the right shape.