The book’s Introduction contains an explicit homage to “Adney & Chapelle” and a description of that book’s origins. It then goes on to describe the rationale for the present study, which basically boils down to two facts: in spite of the vast region’s long and pervasive use of these types of watercraft, the subject has never been systematically studied; and most studies of particular boats or types in the region are not available in English – or, indeed, in any Western European language. The Introduction then defines the geographic area of the study and the types of boats under consideration.

Chapter 1 describes the geography of northern Eurasia, including overviews of its climate zones, and river systems, cultures and their histories, and a brief contextualization of the region’s archaeology and the relationship between boat studies in northern Eurasia and North America.

Chapter 2, titled “Boat Classification, Construction, and Regional Distribution”, is essentially a summary and synthesis of Chapters 3-9, each of which focuses on a different geographic sub-region of northern Eurasia. The authors present a typology of the region’s various bark canoes and skin boats, based on major construction methods and morphology, and divided along lines of geography and culture groups. The authors conclude that bark canoe types tend to be fairly consistent within major river basins, even if more than one culture is resident, and that this intra-basin consistency is greater than that found among single cultures whose territories run across two or more river basins. The authors also draw attention to the large varieties of open and decked skin boats, both of which were found to be widely distributed across the region among a great many of its cultures.

One might question the placement of this chapter before, rather than after, the presentation of data in chapters 3-9. For scholars who are knowledgable about Eurasian cultures, this will make good sense, as a summary and synthesis may be primarily what is needed, and the reader can use it as a guide to targeted reading of the following chapters. For many readers, though, it may prove confusing or frustrating, as much of the geography and many of the cultures discussed will be unfamiliar to most Westerners. For readers (myself included) who don’t know the Vepsians, the Evenks, the Yugra, the Kereks, and many other cultures mentioned, the chapter is somewhat bewildering, in spite of brief overviews in the Introduction. Such readers might be advised to read this chapter later.

The real meat of the book appears in chapters 3-9, concerning Northern Europe (Ch. 3; Germany, southern Baltics, Fennoscandia); Northeastern Europe (Ch. 4; eastern Baltics, western Urals); Western Siberia (Ch. 5); Central Siberia (Ch. 6); Eastern Siberia (Ch. 7); Pacific Siberia (Ch. 8; Chukotka, Kamchatka, and the Kuril Islands); and the Far East (Ch. 9; Manchuria, Sakhalin Island, China, and northern Japan).

As the authors note, it is ironic that northern Europe – the area probably most familiar to most readers, and the one for which there is the best historic literature – has the poorest archaeological record for bark canoes and skin boats. The reader is introduced to the authors’ method, in which data are presented in detail and analyzed at length. There are lengthy descriptions of the ethnohistorical data and the archaeological evidence. For example, prehistoric Scandinavian rock art depictions of boats have been addressed by several authors, and no agreement has yet been reached within the archaeology community as to whether these petroglyphs represent logboats, skin boats, bark canoes, or even watercraft at all. Luukkanen and Fitzhugh review the arguments in detail and at length and bring new data and interpretations to the debate, but are cautious of reaching firm conclusions. This may be disappointing for those looking for straightforward answers, but it is intellectually honest to an extent not always seen in maritime archaeology – much less in books written for non-specialist, “enthusiast” audiences.

Most chapters follow a regular organization: the geographic sub-region is introduced and the deep history of its cultures described. This is highly useful to those readers who are unfamiliar with the numerous cultures. The general archaeology for the region’s cultural history is presented, followed by separate sections on each of individual cultures to be discussed. Within each section, the archaeological evidence for boat usage – much of which is often indirect – is presented first, followed by historical and ethnohistorical data. As archaeological evidence is generally scanty, it is not until the latter stages that we typically get images of boats, details of construction, and descriptions of usage. The ethnohistorical data varies a great deal in quality, from mere mentions by early explorers or merchants of the existence of certain boat types among the various nations, to the careful (but unfortunately rare) descriptions of boat structure and construction by trained observers. Likewise, the accompanying figures vary from the highly romanticized and technically inaccurate renderings one sees in travelogues and maps from the 16^th and 17^th centures, to careful, precise boat surveys that show the boats’ lines and construction details, and photographs of full-size boats in use in the early 20^th century and models in museum collections.

The final chapter, called an Epilogue, by Arctic boat scholar Evguenia (Jenya) Anichtchenko, addresses the relationship between the Eurasian and North American boat traditions. This presents the data and theories for diffusion between the two regions, and notes the surprisingly thin evidence for much direct influence across the narrow Bering Strait.

Overall, The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of Northern Eurasia provides a comprehensive, fine-grained look at its subject as ethnology, concentrating on the evidence from archaeology and ethnohistory. Those expecting a Eurasian equivalent to The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America may be disappointed. The older book’s strengths are in its descriptions of construction methods and structural details, and especially, in the quality of the boat plans. These were possible because Adney and Chapelle were writing about boat traditions which, although on their last legs, were still extant. Construction by individuals brought up in the indigenous traditions could still be observed and documented, and the boats themselves could still be surveyed in detail. The result was a book that has often served as a construction manual – complete with designs – for countless individuals to build their own replicas.

This was not possible for the boats of Eurasia. Most of the boats discussed disappeared generations or centuries ago – before there was a chance for much ethnographic recording. This means that construction methods are generally described in far less detail – if at all – and boat plans are few. Unfortunately for the enthusiast, those that are present are generally reproduced too small to be of practical use, and this criticism can be applied to the art program of the book in general. With few exceptions, figures are reproduced to the width of one column on the two-column pages, making legibility poor for drawings and photographs alike. Drawings produced especially for the book, mostly for the purpose of typological description or clarification, are sketchy and not of professional quality, making it difficult to understand differences in boat types. Maps, on the other hand, are excellent and are reproduced at full page width, for good legibility. All illustrations are in black and white only, which is not a liablity, since only a very few recent photos of boat models in museum collections would have been created in color.

The amount of detail and the length of some discussions can be heavy going, but they provide excellent perspectives on what is known, what can be surmised, and what is debatable. By highlighting open questions, the authors have set out challenges, or even roadmaps, to other researchers who, I expect, will respond with future research papers and possibly some PhD theses.

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of Northern Eurasia is a major contribution to ethnological boat studies. Particularly for those familiar mainly with the boats of North America and western Europe, it is a broad and comprehensive introduction to the archaeology and history of small craft of a region rarely discussed in the English-language literature. It will take its place as an essential reference, next to The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, not as a sequel, but in its own right.

--

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of Northern Eurasia
by Harri Luukkanen and William W. Fitzhugh
Smithsonian Books, Washington DC
$64.00; 276 pages
ISBN 978-1-58834-475-5

The Politics of the Canoe, edited by Bruce Erickson and Sarah Wylie Krotz, is a book of a different sort than that from which I normally obtain content for this blog or choose to review. A collection of essays, mostly academic in nature, it does not address the nuts and bolts of boat design, construction, or usage. As its title indicates, its central theme is the political implications of canoes. The book has no subtitle, but one would have been useful to clarify that its focus is upon the canoe in Canada, although a couple of the essays deal with some of the northern United States. The editors’ Preface describes it as “a multifaceted examination of a vessel that, while structurally simple, is remarkably complex in its meanings” (p.x).

Meanings, of course, are not inherent in objects, but instead are created, imposed by people, and any meanings that canoes have are therefore subjective. To the extent that “everything is political”, then canoes certainly have the potential to be viewed from a political point of view, just as a hammer can be “merely” a hammer, or it can symbolize the proletariat. Many of the essays’ authors read Colonialist meanings in the traditional Canadian discourse regarding canoes and argue for a new canoe discourse with First Nations at its center. Many of them are themselves First Nations people of Canada, and many are in academia, so the pro-indigenous, anti-colonial outlook that informs several of the essays is not unexpected. That said, the theme of “the political canoe” is addressed through varied, even eccentric, approaches, making for mostly diverse and engaging reading.

The book’s Introduction, written by its editors, uses the presentation of canoes in museums as a framework for addressing the politics inherent in the Canadian perception of canoes. Canoes in museum collections, they say, are problematic: “Given that canoes aren’t just cultural objects but are fundamental to many communities’ relations—as family members, as embodied heritage and sovereignty, as living parts of the land—the implications of placing them on display differ depending on the traditions from which the canoes came. In other words, context matters” (p.3).

Drawing on the work of other scholars, Erickson and Krotz outline the historic process by which the indigenous Canadian canoe was adopted by European settlers, notably by the voyageurs for the fur trade, after which it morphed into a recreational craft for a mainly middle class, white audience. As this transition occurred in a Canada increasingly settled and “civilized” by Europeans, the canoe’s indigenous origin was submerged by a mythology valorizing the voyageurs, who were depicted as having used the fur-trade canoe to bring order and civilization to a wild, unsettled land. Indigenous presence and history were erased from the narrative, and the indigenous invention and use of the canoe were part of the process. The greatest significance of the erasure of the indigenous canoe does not lie in the settlers’ tacit claim to the technology; more importantly, because the canoe was central to the cultures of many of Canada’s First Nations and formed both practical and cognitive bases of the people’s connection to the land which they inhabited, erasing the indigeneity of the canoe also erased culture and past occupation of the landscape – which, in turn, erased claims of land sovereignty.

This interpretation informs many of the essays, most of which address the position of the canoe at the intersection of indigenous and settler culture. But other factors are also at play, and other perspectives addressed. As the editors note, "Colonialism certainly looms large over the history of the canoe, but canoes are also intertwined in histories of masculinity, wilderness, consumption, and industrialization, among others” (p.6). And further, “the canoes in this book are agents not just of romantic affiliation with wilderness but of protest, power, governance, social and environmental knowledge, history, cultural resurgence, and sovereignty. Their politics range from collective actions to intensely personal, individual ones” (p.13).

The book is organized in three parts, and each of its ten chapters is preceded by a map which provides the geographic setting of its subject. Some of the essays are accompanied by photographs. The entire production is in black and white.

Each of the three essays/chapters in Part 1, which is titled “Asserting Indigenous Sovereignty”, concern different First Nations’ initiatives of cultural revitalization through canoe voyaging. Chapter 1, “Tribal Canoe Journeys and Indigenous Cultural Resurgence: A Story from the Heiltsuk Nation”, by Frank Brown, Hillary Beattie, Vina Brown, and Ian Mauro, begins with a brief history of the Heilstuk people (often called the Bella Bella) under colonialism. It then focuses on the history of the cultural gathering and voyaging program called Tribal Canoe Journeys (TCJ), which has been going on regularly since 1993. The authors emphasize the value of the program in reconnecting people of many of the Pacific Northwest’s First Nations, especially young people, to tribal traditions and ways of thought, and establishing solidarity between First Nations. They show how the voyaging itself, along with the shoreside activities associated with it, heal personal traumas, enhance participants’ self worth, and provide a venue for learning traditional language, song, dance, and history. Also strengthened during the meetings are intergenerational relationships; understanding and appreciation of the natural environment and resources; and strategies associated with environmental protection and land sovereignty.

Chapter 2, “This Is What Makes Us Strong: Canoe Revitalization, Reciprocal Heritage, and the Chinook Indian Nation”, by Rachel L. Cushman, Jon D. Daehnke, and Tony A. Johnson, covers much the same ground about Tribal Canoe Journeys and its predecessor, Paddle to Seattle, but focuses on the experience of the Chinook Nation. It uses lengthy first-person passages by co-author Cushman, who has participated in several of the voyages, to personalize the experience, and it makes the important point that “rather than being backward-looking and nostalgic, this form of reciprocal heritage is instead tribally relevant, based in current and ongoing relationships and responsibilities, and thus active, forward-looking, and resilient” (pp.51-52). Discussing “protocols” – traditional rules of behaviour that are taught at and which govern shoreside sessions on the voyages – the authors state, “…the performance of protocol is not just an aspect of culture, it is fundamentally an act of decolonization” (p.57). They make a distinction that I personally found enlightening and important:

“There can be a tendency to present these types of claims to heritage as something artificial, as invented political creations primarily constructed to convince others of the rightfulness of the claims. For the Chinook Indian Nation, however, the performance of protocols is not an act created or designed to convince others of the rightfulness of their heritage claims or their Indigeneity. Instead, it is simply behaviour done to ensure that the requirements of the reciprocal relationships between actors, both human and non-human, are fulfilled” (p.65).

They contrast this with voyageur re-enactments, which they describe as a display of nostalgia, a “yearning for the period of colonialism itself” (p.66).

“Whaèhdǫ ǫ̀ Etǫ K’e”, the title of Chapter 3, means “Trails of our Ancestors” and is the name of another voyaging-and-revitalization program, this one by the “Tłı̨chǫ Nation”. I find the use of such special typographic characters by authors John B. Zoe and Jessica Dunkin unhelpful, and partially blame the book’s editors for its presence. I had to refer to Wikipedia to learn that “Tłı̨chǫ” … people, sometimes spelled Tlicho and also known as the Dogrib, are a Dene First Nations people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group living in the Northwest Territories, Canada.” The purpose of Trails of our Ancestors is to reconnect Tlicho youth with the landscape around them, and to the stories, traditions and culture embedded within it. This, the authors explain, is “both a physical and symbolic act of resistance to colonial efforts to remove Tłı̨chǫ from the land” (p.85). I was struck by the statement that “Women and men worked together to build canoes” (p.77) in traditional Tlicho culture and wished for more detail, as direct female participation in boatbuilding is rare in traditional cultures.

Thus, the first three chapters all deal with different manifestations of the same phenomenon and, while each has a unique and valuable perspective, it is also somewhat repetitive. The reader will find greater variety of subject matter in the remaining parts of the book.

The theme of Part 2, Building Canoes, Knowledge, and Relationships, seems an amorphous one that doesn’t really provide a coherent theme for its three chapters – for which we might be thankful, given the excessive thematic consistency of Part 1. Chapter 4, “Model Canoes, Territorial Histories, and Linguistic Resurgence: Decolonizing the Tappan Adney Archives”, by Chris Ling Chapman, discusses the ethnographic work conducted in New Brunswick, Canada, by the author of the excellent and influential The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. Adney, the authors explain, was conducting what is known as “salvage anthropology” – the desperate collection of data in the face of imminent cultural disappearance, as was widely believed (among settlers) at that time to apply to the First Nations of Canada. In addition to the renowned model canoes he built from first-hand observation of full-size canoes, it is Adney’s unpublished notebooks that represent what were considered to be “salvage archives”. As it turned out, most of Canada’s First Nations survived, and Adney’s archives, far from being a record of dead cultures, are now providing valuable resources for the revitalization of those cultures. Among the most important of their content is Adney’s recording of native languages, which is aiding current efforts to revive those languages after decades of white efforts to exterminate them along with other aspects of indigenous culture.

In spite of Chuck Commanda’s prodigious skill as a builder of bark canoes and his substantial contribution to the revival of the craft, Chapter 5, “Ginawaydaganuc: The Birchbark Canoe in Algonquin Community Resurgence and Reconciliation”, by Commanda, Larry McDermott, and Sarah Nelson, is the weakest essay in the collection. Unfortunately, the chapter reads like a manifesto, a lengthy series of didactic assertions of the power and importance of bark canoe building as a tool for revitalizing and preserving cultural heritage. Any of its numerous assertions might well be valid, but none of them are adequately supported by evidence or logical argument. One example taken truly at random will illustrate this: “Teaching a young Indigenous person how to become a canoe builder can give them a path in life and a reason to have both hope for the future and pride in their people” (p.113). As a goal, this is admirable, but there is no indication here that it is true: the authors provide no data, examples, or even anecdotes, to support it, and this is the case with dozens of similar assertions throughout the chapter. Two lengthy appendices, consisting of the texts of two sections of the 2010 UN Convention on Biological Diversity, are peripheral to the chapter’s main argument and could have been satisfactorily replaced with URLs for online locations of the texts.

Chapter 6, “Pathways to the Forest: Meditations on the Colonial Landscape”, by Jonathan Goldner, is a first-person account of learning how and where to harvest birchbark for canoe construction. Goldner uses his description of that education, and of the harvesting process itself, to evocatively discuss the history and impact of colonialism on the Algonquin landscape of Quebec and Ontario. Harvesting bark serves as a microcosm for that impact and a metaphor of native rights to the land. It’s a thoughtful, personal, almost poetic piece by “a relative newcomer, a settler, a non-Indigenous, academically inclined male urbanite” (p.136) attempting to understand the indigenous point of view.

Part 3, “Telling Histories”, begins with Chapter 7, “Beyond Birchbark: How Lahontan’s images of Unfamiliar Canoes Confirm His Remarkable Western Expedition of 1688”, by Peter H. Wood. Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce de Lahontan, Baron de Lahontan, explored areas west and south of the Great Lakes in 1688-89. His book about his travels, which includes descriptions of the geography and the indigenous people he encountered, was published in 1703 and went into several translations and editions but, because of his anti-Jesuit opinions, Pope Clement XI banned it. Between that official censure and some inaccuracies in his geography that became clear after later explorations, his account has been largely discounted as fiction, and aspersions cast upon the trustworthiness of both the man and his travel account. Author Wood believes the book is a largely accurate description of the Midwest’s geography as Lahontan saw it, with a few errors such as are likely to appear in any such work of this time and era. He identifies the river Lahontan travelled along and called the River Longue as the middle and upper Missouri River. He bases this conclusion mainly on two canoe illustrations on a map in the book, the accuracy of which, he argues, must have been due to Lahontan’s actual travel through the region. This argument is weak. The illustrations are rough and schematic, and Woods’ identification of them with specific indigenous boat designs questionable. The one identified as a dugout canoe of the continent’s interior could just as well depict a bark canoe, for all its lack of detail. Regarding the other, Lahontan explained that it represents a canoe from the Pacific Northwest, which he never claimed to have come even close to, and the information for it was obtained from an indigenous slave from that region whom he spoke with while in the Dakotas. In fact, the illustration is not nearly so convincing a depiction of a Kwakiutl logboat as Wood claims it is, and Lahontan’s stated source provides no assurance whatsoever that he travelled the Missouri or visited the Dakotas. I have not read Lahontan’s book and I have no opinion on its veracity, but Wood’s evidence for its truthfulness is weak.

Another weakness concerning the essay is its “political” aspect. The pope’s banning of Lahontan’s book was a political act which influenced popular perception of its accuracy, but that has nothing to do with canoes. Wood employs iconographic evidence of canoes in order to establish Lahontan’s credibility and overcome the ramifications of that political act of censorship, but that seems a tenuous connection to the book’s theme.

Chapter 8, “Monumental Trip: Don Starkell’s Canoe Voyage from Winnipeg to the Mouth of the Amazon”, by Albert Braz, is perhaps the most accessible and engaging of the essays, mainly because it recounts (in condensed form) the narrative of Starkell’s 1987 book, Paddle to the Amazon. Braz feels that the book, its author, and his achievement (paddling a canoe 12,000 miles from Winnipeg to Belem, Brazil) have not attained the recognition and respect in Canada that are their due. This, he argues, is due to Starkell's lower-class (white, Canadian) origin, pugnacious attitude, and straightforward prose, which do not mesh well with the largely middle-class identification of modern Canadian recreational canoeing, nor with the more literary style of most popular expedition narratives. Starkell obtained scant attention, much less support, from the Canadian government while traveling through Latin America, and a secondary political aspect of the essay treats with Canada's negligible visibility and influence in Latin America.

In Chapter 9, “The Dam That Wasn’t: How the Canoe Became Political on the Petawawa River”, Cameron Baldassarra describes how multiple constituencies, including recreational canoeists, kayakers, and rafters, environmentalists, historical preservationists, hunters and fishers, a town, and First Nations people, formed an alliance to oppose a planned hydropower dam near Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario. The canoe became a central symbol and rallying point for that opposition due to its multiple meanings and uses: as a symbol of wilderness; as a vehicle to enter and utilize the landscape and its resources in a sustainable manner; as recreation; as a sustainable economic activity; as indigenous heritage. It is ironic that what stopped the dam was not grassroots politics, but the Canadian military, whose nearby base would have been partially flooded by the dam. But this, the author asserts, does not negate the wide appeal, symbolic power, and organizing potential of the canoe.

In the final essay, “Unpacking and Repacking the Canoe: Canoe as Research Vessel” (Chapter 10), anthropologist Danielle Gendron uses a canoe trip along the 386-km length of the Trent-Severn Waterway (TSW), a partly-artificial inland route between Lakes Huron and Ontario, as a personal approach to explore "my engagement with and study of Indigenous landscapes" (p.215). The author colorfully details a bit of the lives of her Metis (mixed European and First Nations) fourth-level great-grandfather, who worked for the Hudson Bay Company, and his Metis wife, and says they surely would have travelled through this landscape prior to creation of the TSW.

Gendron describes how European settlers altered this former Anishinaabe landscape, first for agriculture, then for commercial shipping, and finally for recreation, and in the process erased indigenous people from the landscape. As a nationally designated historical location, the TSW ignores the indigenous past and creates a “colonialscape”, a term Gendron borrows from Kwakwaka’wakw scholar Sarah Hunt. This returns to the theme addressed by others in the book, of how the canoe, the landscape, and the past have all been appropriated in a manner that positions whiteness as the official Canadian identity. “How can we disrupt these colonialscapes that are perpetuated through the practice of canoeing?” Gendron asks. “How can we understand canoe trips as negotiating colonized Indigenous territories rather than a natural wonderland?”

As partial answers, she recommends sources from which readers can learn about native occupation, embeddedness, and history in the landscape, and urges the importance of learning the native names for places one travels through. She does not make the unrealistic recommendation that everyone become an expert in native history, but instead suggests that the canoe can be used as a vehicle to “engage in understanding colonial processes and the colonialscape of Canada” (p.227) – a suggestion that aptly summarizes the central theme of this worthwhile and thought-provoking collection of essays.

The Politics of the Canoe
Bruce Erickson and Sarah Wylie Krotz, editors
2021
University of Manitoba Press
ISBN 978-0-88735-909-9 (paperbound: also in e-book, hardcover)

"Construction d'une jonque, Haute Yang tse", from Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 2: Construction de la Jonque  by L. Audemard

Audemard's work (i.e., "Chinese Junks: Junk Construction") joins The Junk Blue Book: A Handbook of Junks of South Vietnam, which has been available here for years, on a new page of downloads. We will periodically add more titles to the new page, all made available by the same anonymous contributor.

I encourage anyone interested in the vernacular boats of Asia to take a look at Les Jonques Chinoises Vol. II. Even if you don't read French, the illustrations should make it well worth the visit.

Two images from Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 2: Construction de la Jonque  by L. Audemard

Decorative motifs on Chinese junks. From Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 3: Ornementation et Types by L. Audemard. Plate 60.

Now available for free download is Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 3: Ornementation et Types, by L. Audemard, published in 1960 by the Museum Voor Land en Volkenkunde and Miritiem Museum "Prins Hendrik", which have given us permission to post it here. Scans were made available to us by an enthusiast who wishes to remain anonymous. 

Like Vol. 2: Construction de la Jonque, which we posted last week, the work is in French but is worthwhile to anyone interested in traditional Chinese watercraft on account of its wonderful illustrations. And of course Google Translate is available to help non-Francophones understand the text. 

We plan to steadily add more resources to our page of free downloads of books about boats of China and Southeast Asia.

Launching ceremony for a small boat, with small ribbons inscribed with propitious text on the transom, and incense burning fore and aft. From Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 3: Ornementation et Types by L. Audemard. Plate 88.

Crooked stern junk on the Yangtse River. Plate 30 from Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 5, Haut Yang Tse Kiang, by L. Audemard, 1963

Vol. 4: Description des Jonques, 1962. This volume is a statistical survey of junks in China -- where they were, in what numbers, of what capacity, etc. The only graphics are maps.

Vol. 5: Haut Yang Tse Kiang, 1963. This volume describes not only the boats themselves on the upper Yangtse River, but also pays considerable attention to their usage, including propulsion (especially man-hauling), sleeping arrangements, provisioning, etc. Many surprising vessel types illustrated, including stitched/sewn craft, dugout canoes, rafts, and the intriguing crooked-stern junk shown above. So many wonderful illustrations that it was difficult to choose only two for this post.

The volumes were published by the Museum Voor Land en Volkenkunde and Miritiem Museum "Prins Hendrik", which have given us permission to post them here. Scans were made available to us by an enthusiast who wishes to remain anonymous. Like the other volumes in this series, the books are in French.

Enjoy!

Preparing a meal on a junk. Plate 5 from Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 5, Haut Yang Tse Kiang, by L. Audemard, 1963

A duck hatchery boat. From Audemard, L., Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 6, Plate 76. See main text for further desription.

Three more volumes of the series Les Jonques Chinoises, by L. Audemard are now available in two free downloads:

Vol. 6: Bas Yang Tse Kiang, 1965. Tremendous variety of boats and ships on the lower Yang Tse. One of my favorites is the duck hatchery vessel illustrated above. Here's Google Translate's version of part of the description:

These boats must be ranked among the most original designs in the chosen industry. They are found on most rivers and rivers, along the sheltered coasts, mainly in the province of Kouan-tung where duck breeding is practiced with prodigious intensity for the sale of eggs which China exports in considerable quantity in all parts of the world.

These are wide and spacious boats where the ducks occupy a privileged place under a vast shelter covered with mats extending over the greater part of the deck, while the owner and his family skirt aft, in a small hut. A slanted board at the front serves as a walkway for the ducks to descend into the water.

Vols. 7 and 8: Côtes Nord et Sud de la Chine, 1969. Two volumes published in a single tome. Volume 7 is junks of the north coast of China; Volume 8 is junks of the south coast. As might be expected, most of the vessels illustrated and described are ships, but there are a fair number of small craft too.

The volumes were published by the Museum Voor Land en Volkenkunde and Miritiem Museum "Prins Hendrik", which have given us permission to post them here. Scans were made available to us by an enthusiast who wishes to remain anonymous. Like the other volumes in this series, the books are in French.

Hiking out on a small, two-masted coastal vessel. It's interesting to see that not all "junks" are junk-rigged. From Audemard, L., Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 8, Plate 26.

A Chinese ship shaped like a dragon. From L. Audemard, Les Jonques Chinoises, vol. 1, plate 29.

And the first shall be last.

Now available for free download is the first volume of L. Audemard's 10-volume series, Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 1: Histoire de la Jonque (1957). Volumes 2-10 are also available on this page.

With the exception of the photographic portrait of Capt. Audemard, below, all the illustrations are from historical Chinese sources, like the one at the top of this post. Like the other volumes in the series, the book is in French.

The series was published by the Museum Voor Land en Volkenkunde and Miritiem Museum "Prins Hendrik", which have given us permission to post them. Scans were made available by a generous enthusiast who wishes to remain anonymous.

Capitaine de Frégate L. Audemard. From volume 1 of his series Les Jonques Chinoises.

Now available for free download is the Green Book of Coastal Vessels of Thailand, published in 1967 by a joint Thai-U.S. military research group as an identification guide and instruction manual for interdiction of boats engaged in weapons smuggling, sabotage, spying, and similar activities. It joins other books on our page of free downloads, including The Junk Blue Book: A Handbook of Junks of South Vietnam, which was written for much the same purpose.

The scan was made available by a generous enthusiast who wishes to remain anonymous.

Published in both English and Thai in a single volume, The Green Book was the result of a survey of thousands of coastal vessels. A typology of 14 categories was compiled, into which dozens of specific examples were placed. Each example is shown on two pages in photos and a profile silhouette, as shown below, plus a map of typical locations -- because boats not in their accustomed locations were considered suspicious. There is also information about shipboard activities, fishing methods, crewing, smuggling methods, and much more to help military personnel identify boats engaged in unauthorised activities.

Two pages of description and images of one boat type from Green Book of Coastal Vessels of Thailand.

"Le Port de Saigon", from Jonques et Sampans, p.28 (of PDF)

Now available for free download is Jonques et Sampans by Claude Farrère and Charles Fouqueray. The valuable, hand-painted limited edition (500 copies) book, published in 1945, was scanned and made available to us by a generous enthusiast who wishes to remain anonymous. 

The text of Jonques et Sampans is in French and is less technical than the other books on our free downloads page. It describes watercraft in China, Indochina, and Singapore and is illustrated with dozens of beautiful watercolors.

Small craft in Hue, from Jonques et Sampans, p.75 (of PDF)

Miao-Ch'uan boat, from Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze, Vol. 2, G.R.G. Worcester

Now available for free download is Volume 2 of G.R.G. Worcester's huge and detailed work, Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze: The Craft of the Lower and Middle Yangtze and Tributaries. It joins Volume 1 and other books on Asian watercraft on our page of free downloads. 

Among the hundreds of craft included are the lovely Miao-Ch'uan or Miao boat (above). The one shown, at 47' LOA, beam ~5', and depth 2', is a typical size for the type. Although slender and graceful, they are heavily built on eight bulkheads, for use in rapids. During downstream travel, control is maintained with the long bow sweep; to move upstream, the craft is tracked with a line fixed to the short mast. They were used to carry cargoes of beans, cotton, yarn, and gypsum, and by hog farmers to carry pigs, meat, manure and feed.

The tiny double sampan below, a little more than 5' long and 5' broad, was used by fishermen on calm waters, using a long-handled net to scoop up fish between the twin hulls. It was light enough to pick up and carry home at the end of the day.

Ichang "Water Shoes", from Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze, Vol. 2, G.R.G. Worcester

Blocks and pulleys onVietnamese sailboats. From Sailboats of Indochina (Voiliers d'Indochine) by J. B. Piétri.

Thanks to a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous, I'm delighted to present two more works on the boats of Vietnam for free download: Sailboats of Indochina by J. B. Piétri, and Bateaux en Indochine by Jean Poujade. They join a page of other free downloads of books on Chinese and Southeast Asian watercraft.

A small Vietnamese fishing boat. From Bateaux en Indochine by Jean Poujade.

In October, I gave a presentation titled The Warrau Canoe and the Construction of Landscape at the first Early Watercraft Congress in Vila do Conde, Portugal. The presentation was derived from my PhD thesis (in process), which is based on fieldwork conducted in 2022 and 2023 in Imbotero, a small village of Indigenous Warrau people in northwest Guyana. The canoes in question are dugouts, and "construction of landscape" refers to the cognitive processes of making sense of the physical environment in which the people live and creating personal and social structures to suit. 

Click the image below to view the video on YouTube. A brief introduction to my presentation, by Dr. Niall Gregory, begins at 25:18.

https://www.youtube.com/@EarlyWatercraftCongress

https://www.youtube.com/live/dmaHAgopDQY?si=Ie5MjuUqTVbjGu23

https://www.youtube.com/live/YtCjb_LOd7Y?si=6_QA351a5MYDBm8r

https://www.youtube.com/live/LbJtqd2VtsA?si=i8Mf9oGavhL1L5kI

https://youtu.be/kTxgw-yAZek?si=LmxPMpq7e3J5oGau

https://www.youtube.com/live/HEdLmWdSVNc?si=LYHWESrEzJLvwJmZ

https://youtu.be/MyEdiF6q_BI?si=kxGraGUhuoWs2dax

https://www.youtube.com/live/2o2kBeNu8Cg?si=HpV0Bbbv9SolOxGf

A river lifeboat, from Junks and Sampans of the Upper Yangtze (1940), by G.R.G. Worcester (Plate 9).

Like Volumes 1 and 2, the "Upper Yangtze" volume is a comprehensive survey of the traditional watercraft in the area under study, covering boat types, construction details, and fascinating descriptions of each boat type's design, history, and use. Worcester was an Englishman employed as a river inspector for China's Maritime Customs Service.

The Hung Ch'uan boat shown at the top, was a life boat. Dozens of these "red boats" (known as such for their characteristic color) were stationed along treacherous stretches of river, where they came to the aid of vessels in distress and saved hundreds of lives annually. The one shown measured 30' LOA by 7' beam. The characters on the flag identify its operator as "The Society for Rescuing Drowning People, Lower Section, Lungmenhao, South Bank, Chungking".

Tracking tackle and rigging, from Junks and Sampans of the Upper Yangtze (1940), by G.R.G. Worcester (Plate 4).

Bow typology of Chinese junks, from A Classification of the Principal Chinese Sea-going Junks by Worcester (1948).

Continuing our series of free downloads of books about Asian watercraft, we are pleased to offer the useful A Classification of the Principal Chinese Sea-going Junks (South of the Yangtze), by G.R.G. Worcester, made available to us by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous. The book was published by China's Inspectorate General of Customs in 1948. 

Focusing entirely on sailing craft, Worcester identifies 93 junk types in the area of study. Few of them are less than 50' (about 15m) LOA  and some are well over 100' (30m). His guide to identification relies on three main characteristics. In order of importance they are: bow shape; stern shape, and (surprisingly), decoration and color scheme, which, he says, are highly characteristic of the region in which each type is found. Also suprising is that he lists the rig as a characteristic of secondary importance, less significant in identification than color and decoration. His typology for the main bow types is shown above.

Each type is depicted on a two-page spread, with the left page bearing a profile drawing of the ship above the waterline, including its rig. The right-hand page is consistently formatted with details of design, locale, and usage, as shown in the example below.

Yencheng Trader-type junk, an example of the type descriptions in A Classification of the Principal Chinese Sea-going Junks by Worcester (1948).

Other books on Chinese and East Asian watercraft are available for free download on this page, including other works by Worcester.

Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast: Their Design, Construction, Rigging and Fisheries

by Ken Preston

2019

328 pages

Vietnam Women’s Publishing House, Ha Noi

ISBN 978-604-56-7858-9 

When Ken Preston served in the US Army in Vietnam, he saw little of the country’s vernacular boats. But decades after the US withdrawal and the end of the war, he travelled back to Vietnam for pleasure and was fascinated by the variety of boats he saw and their methods of construction. Starting in 2005, he returned year after year, spending weeks at a time traveling the country on a small motorcycle, taking thousands of photos of boats and boatyards, and talking to boatbuilders and fishermen. His book, Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast, is the result, and a fine one it is.

The book is organized unconventionally but with an undeniable logic. The very brief first chapter, “Wooden Boats and Nautical Culture in Vietnam, Past and Present”, is more like a second Introduction, barely mentioning thousands of years of boat history prior to the middle of the 20^th century. From that time forward, though, it describes how the local fleet was documented by French colonial observers and, later, by the US government, and how it changed rapidly to leave behind much of its traditional roots and adopt larger, more Western-like designs and diesel engine power.

The book really hits its stride in Chapter 2, “Vietnamese Wooden Boat Designs,” which describes the basic structure of traditional wooden fishing boats, some of which are still in use, and contrasts it to the structure of newer, larger “modern fishing vessels” (MFVs). The latter, although constructed plank-on-frame by methods not dissimilar to Western methods, are still different enough in design from Western vessels to be of interest. The chapter also discusses how traditional and modern methods are sometimes combined, and shows how even fairly large boats are built in temporary and ad-hoc shipyards with a minimum of tools and infrastructure. The building sequences for both types of vessels are described and illustrated in good detail.              

A boatbuilder fitting the port side planks of a traditional fishing boat. The fully-assembled side will later be lifted and attached to the already-framed bottom, visible in the background.

Chapter 3, “Seagoing Baskets,” looks at small fishing boats where part or all of the hull is formed of split bamboo basketwork. Some readers may be familiar with Vietnam’s iconic round basket boats that may be paddled, rowed or – surprisingly often – powered with small outboard or even inboard engines (see previous post on round basket boats). Less well known are small canoe-shaped basket boats with light bamboo gunwales (see previous post for more on these narrow basket boats) and larger, oval-hulled basket boats built with heavy rectangular frameworks of full-round bamboos around their top perimeter, many with cabins, also of basketwork (see previous post on round basket boats of Tonkin Bay). Then there are even larger, heavier open boats, almost indiscernible from plank-built boats due to the substantial strakes that sheath their topsides (see cover image at top).

These large, round basket boats have inboard engines. Boats like this are used both for beach fishing and as dinghies for larger fishing boats.

Chapter 4, “Boat Building techniques” takes the reader step-by-step through the main procedures of wooden hull construction, with excellent detail on tools and tool-use techniques. Chapter 5, “Modern Fishing Gear on the Vietnamese Coast”, describes the many methods of fishing practiced, including drift nets, seines, lift- or dip-nets (called “push aheads” due to their mounting on the bow of boats), longlines, squid gear, and more. Preston describes which boat types employ which types of gear and the basics of their use.

Comprising just shy of half the book’s page count, “A Trip Up the Coast: From Phu Quoc Island to Mong Cai” is the final chapter. It is a valuable “moment-in-time” record of boat building facilities and fishing boat use in dozens of major and minor fishing ports. Because Preston visited some of the ports numerous times over the course of years, he has sometimes documented the pace of change and shown how quickly Vietnam is developing in some areas.

Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast is a lovely, coffee-table size volume, produced entirely in color, and wisely formatted in landscape mode, which by far the better choice for presenting photos of boats and ships. Preston’s photos are lively and colorful, and most do an excellent job illustrating the matter at hand. For the few that don’t come up to that standard, anyone familiar with photographing industrial workplaces will acknowledge that ideal composition and lighting can be elusive, and Preston has done a fine job working in challenging conditions. One must admire his dedication to the project and the opportunities he made for himself to hang around boatyards and gam with builders and fishermen. He has produced a valuable body of ethnographic data that captures fishing and boatbuilding practices as they were during the early 21^st century and will never be again.

Given its value to vernacular boat students and enthusiasts, it is unfortunate that Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast is so difficult to obtain. It was published only in Vietnam and never properly distributed in the West. One hopes a Western publisher will pick it up someday or that it will be made available by other means.

A Hong Kong "beggar boat" -- a sampan that is home to a family (Worcester, 1970, p.5)

Indigenous Boats is pleased to make available for free download The Floating Population in China by G.R.G. Worcester, with sketches by Doris Worcester. The scan was made available to us by the generosity of Alexey Shapovalov, a talented Russian model builder who mainly works on sailing vessels from China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. 

The full title of the work is a very descriptive handful: The Floating Population in China: An illustrated record of the junkmen and their boats on sea and river, accompanied by Some Chungking Types on the Upper Yangtze River. Although full of technical detail, like his other books on Chinese watercraft (also available for free download), The Floating Population is more concerned with the boat people and their water-borne activities, and Doris Worcester's lovely sketches give it an altogether more "personal" feel. Although sof the sketches seem to perpetuate negative Western stereotypes of Chinese people, it is generally respectful and appreciative of the culture of the time.

A Liu-p'eng ch'uan (six-mat) or Paper Boat, so-called because one of its typical cargoes is paper (Worcester, 1970, p.17).

A Taiwanese fishing raft of bamboo construction (Han-po Liu, 1963, fig. 37).

Fishing Sampans in Taiwan by Han-po Liu (1963), a wonderful little book published by the Taiwan Fisheries Bureau, is now available on our page of free downloads of complete books about vernacular watercraft of China and southeast Asia. 

Published as a dual-language (Chinese and English) edition, Fishing Sampans in Taiwan includes not only sampans per se, but also small junk-style boats and rafts. It begins with a summary of the island's fishing fleet and description of types, including numbers of powered and unpowered boats and their catches, general construction features, design coefficients, geographic distributions, fishing methods, and losses by type, It then presents the boats themselves, organised by district, using photos and good-quality construction and lines plans.

Many thanks to contributor Alexey Shapovalov for the scans of this book.

Construction plan of a bamboo fishing raft (Han-po Liu, 1963, fig. 44).

The basic argument is that dugout canoes were instrumental not only in the movement of the first people into Guyana, but also to their ability to settle and thrive there, and that canoes remained central to migrations throughout prehistory and the historic period. 

I am providing the presentation as a PDF. You can read it in your browser's PDF extension or download it. If you download it and see only the slides after opening in Acrobat, click the "Review Comments" button in the upper right corner to see the full script.

Read or download Canoes as Agents of Migration in Guyana.

Fans for watercraft ethnography would do well to visit Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Artefacts on display from many peoples reflect not only a variety of watercraft types and applications, but also a diversity of the ways in which watercraft are culturally significant to their users.

We'll start out with artefacts from the Canadian Artic before moving on to items from Oceania.

Kayak from Clyde Inlet, Baffin Island, Canada, collected in 1946.

Bow-end view of Baffin Island kayak.

Cockpit coaming and internal structure of Baffin Island kayak.

A section of skin pieced into the deck of the Baffin Island kayak.

Kayak model and hunter from the Canadian Arctic, made from walrus ivory. The kayak is equipped with harpoons, spears and a sealskin float all fastened to the deck.

Walrus tusk collected in the Canadian Arctic in 1927, decorated with a scene of umiaks hunting whales, made for sale to Europeans.

Dugout canoe collected in 1914 from the Utakwa River in West Papua (Irian Jaya) New Guinea.

Carved detail on New Guinea dugout canoe.

Beautifully carved canoe prow in the shape of a crocodile's head, collected in 1927 on the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. Crocodiles are prominent not only in the river, but also in local myths and spiritual beliefs.

Decorated canoe paddles from the Sepik river.

Canoe "wave cutter" from Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. These decorative, symbolic devices are fitted to the bow of ocean-going canoes used in the kula ring of ritual trade between islands in New Guinea's Massim region. (See B. Malinowski's classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 1922.) Made in 2009.

Canoe carving in ebony and mother-of-pearl by Isaac Sulawai of Papua, New Guinea, made 2008-2009. According to the display card, the canoe's occupants are at sea but they are not paddling, leaving the canoe (and themselves) at risk of capsize -- a metaphor for PNG's lack of effective political leadership.

A late 19th or early 20th C "headhunting canoe" from New Georgia, Solomon Islands. The display card is ambiguous whether this is a reduced-size model or a full-size copy. In the latter case it would be a very small canoe, limited to a crew of perhaps two.

The prow of the Solomon Islands canoe, decorated with shells and mother-of-pearl.

Lashed-lug construction of the Solomon Islands canoe.

Toward the ends of the Solomon Islands canoe, the strakes are lashed directly to each other via the lugs that are left standing as the planks are carved.

Stern of the Solomon Islands canoe.

Bowls in the form of canoes, used to serve taro during feasts in the Solomon Islands, collected 1904. Carved dolphins and heads of frigate birds appear on both. Contrasting decoration of nautilus and conus shell.

Detail of the "figureheads" on the lower of the two taro bowls from the Solomon Islands.

War canoe figurehead representing a crocodile, from the Kenyah people of Borneo, late 19th C. The eyes are Chinese porcelain teacups. The teeth are boars' tusks and sheet metal.

Model of a Maori war canoe from New Zealand, 19th C. Real ones were up to 40m long -- too big to be collected by a museum -- so Maori craftsmen built models for ethnographers to collect.

Detail of gunwale carving on the Maori canoe model.

Bow carving on the Maori canoe model.

Figure at the base of the sternpost on the Maori canoe model.

Stern of the Maori canoe model.

Side-to-bottom lacking, carved thwart, and carved gunwale (amidships) on the Maori canoe model.

Maori Canoe bailer collected in Aotearoa, New Zealand, by Capt. Cook, 1768-1780. The eyes are of haliotis shell. A split has been repaired with flax thread.

Left: paddle from Solomon Islands, 1900, decorated both sides with a man in a canoe, frigate birds, and a man holding a pistol. Middle: Maori paddle-club with shell inlay, New Zealand, collected by Capt. Cook. Right: sternpost of a Maori war canoe (1905), similar to that on the model Maori canoe above.

Wooden dish in the form of a double-hull canoe, used by a Fijian priest to hold scented oil.. From Rewa, Levu River, Fiji, collected ~1875.

Although the exhibits are somewhat old-fashioned in their presentation, and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology appears to change most of them but rarely (if ever), it's enlightening nonetheless there are items here that are probably no longer in indigenous use. Museum entry is free.