Water transport has always led to interaction of people who met each other at distant places. Not only did they make substantial profits, but they also learned to improve their lives by copying, and benefited from inspiration. Even boats and ships themselves as constructional objects trend to pass on ideas, both in their funktionality and in the underlying skills. Transfer and exchange in nautical technology as phenomena paced about watercrafts on sea and on inland waterways; the river systems of Continental Europe in paricular promoted at least influences between early shipbuilding traditions, and sometimes teh amalgamation of characteristics, even if these were developed by far distant societies and civilisations, both maritime and continental.