Seventeenth-century Iberian shipwrecks and shipbuilding treatises reflect the broader picture of the European Scientific Revolution taking place since the end of the Renaissance. The period running from 1570 to 1712 plays a major role in the bifurcation of shipbuilding and ship design, marking the emergence of naval architecture as a protoscience. The performance of the vessels could not be predicted yet, but coefficients, algorithms and a coordinate system made the shapes explicit before the ships were built. Using written and iconographic sources, the project will result in a better understanding of 17th-century Iberian ship-design.