The work presented in this article is the result of collaboration between historians and computer scientists whose goal was the digital reconstitution of Le Boullongne , an 18 th -century merchant ship of La Compagnie des Indes orientales. 1 This ship has now disappeared and its reconstitution aims at understanding onboard living conditions. Three distinct research laboratories have participated in this project so far. The first, a department of naval history, worked on historical documents, especially the logbooks describing all traveling events of the ship. The second, a research laboratory in archaeology, archaeoscience, and history, proposed a 3D model of the ship based on the original naval architectural plans. The third, a computer science research laboratory, implemented a simulation of the ship sailing in virtual reality.