The distillation of seawater, from our perspective, is a trivial heat transfer application. Its historical development for seaboard use, however, was a slow, arduous process, over almost two centuries before these systems were commonly embraced by the seafaring community. This slow progress is shown to result from a combination of factors-an erroneous belief that some additives had to be added to seawater before it could be properly distilled; unfamiliarity with the toxic effects of the copper of which the distillation stills were constructed; intense rivalry between commercial competitors, which impeded the flow and sharing of technical information; and the time spent on securing and protecting intellectual property rights within and between countries. Moreover, the principal inventors and entrepreneurs often claimed old and known ideas as their own. The paper illuminates these developments with particular emphasis on England, the Netherlands, and-to some extent-France.