Transport Vehicles

The 16th and 17th centuries marked the golden age of European navigation. By the end of the 17th century, the Dutch still possessed two to three times as many ships as the English, and one-quarter of the English ships were built by the Dutch. The Spanish, French, and Scandinavians also bought ships from them. Dutch ships were characterized by inexpensive construction and a unique, practical design. Commercial ships, the fluyt, were pioneers in European ship design. They sought to reduce the crew size and costs, equipping their ships with minimal weaponry. On the Indian Ocean, larger, more heavily armed ships, nasads, were used.
Navigation continuously improved. From the 15th century onwards, they were able to calculate latitude. By the early 16th century, they could calculate speed using the unit of time measured by an hourglass, which was measured by unrolling a rope marked with knots and throwing it into the water. Despite the invention of the chronometer and the sextant, navigators still did not rely on maps in the 18th century but instead used experience and personal knowledge.
Outside of the Netherlands and Italy, there were very few navigable canals. The 17th century saw the rise of a canal-building wave in Western Europe aimed at connecting rivers. France, in particular, led these efforts. Inland navigation, however, was quite cumbersome, as it depended on the consent of landowners, making it often cheaper to use parallel overland routes.
The era brought three important innovations in carting. The use of a reversing axle for carts was discovered; the carts were suspended by leather straps, providing greater flexibility and less vibration; and wheels were fitted with iron rims. These iron rims severely damaged the old roads, but the planning and construction of new roads would have been very costly. Outside cities, there were very few paved roads, and most routes relied on their own paths and the remnants of Roman roads. Domestic transport lagged far behind maritime navigation in quality. In France, Sully created the Grand Voyeur de France for road maintenance, and Colbert also energetically worked on road development, including paving major roads. After Colbert's death, the state of the roads deteriorated, and this issue only came to the forefront again at the end of the 18th century, through English and Scottish engineers.

J.H.Perry The Ocean Trade, The Means of Transport, Cambridge History 1967 (ford. Kondor Zsuzsa)