Excerpt from A Text Book of Naval Architecture: For the Use of Officers of the Royal Navy The vertical fluid pressures are the most important, as these give the buoyancy which supports the ship. Since any number of parallel forces may be supposed replaced by a single force - or resultant as it is termed - acting parallel to them and equal to their sum, it is only necessary to determine the magnitude of this resultant and the position of its line of action, in order to find the effect of all the vertical pressures upon the ship. Before. Proceeding to do this, one or two definitions will be given. The centre of gravity of a body may be defined as the point through which the weight of the body, when at rest, may be supposed to act, in a direction vertically downwards. When a ship is immersed in water, it occupies a certain Space which would otherwise be filled with water the quantity of fluid so dislodged is called the displacement, and may be measured by its volume in cubic feet or its weight in tons in the former case it is known as the volume, and in the latter the weight of displace ment. When displacement alone is spoken of, the weight of' displacement is usually meant. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.