Modern methods of documenting old boats and ships

Abstract

The article is an effect of the Polish-Norwegian project “Polish and Norwegian maritime heritage. The exchange of experiences and good practices. The project of preservation and promotion of tangible and intangible cultural heritage associated with local boatbuilding”. The author discusses one of the methods used to document old boats, 3D laser scanning, pointing to its advantages and shortcomings. The article stresses that digital documentation encodes much more information than traditional drawings and is more precise. The method is also much more effective in the quantitative sense, as it is faster and supplies more data, and in the qualitative sense, as it does not affect the artifact, it is easy to use and it complies with current standards (raw data include more information and are not processed). Furthermore, it is highly relevant to renovating old boats and ships, and can be applied e.g. in producing replicas of boats for experimental purposes.