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Philippine Bangka Outrigger and Boom Variations

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The bangka -- also known as banca and paraw -- is a double-outrigger boat ubiquitous in the Philippines. According to one online dictionary of Tagalog (an Austronesian language, one of the more commonly spoken languages of the Philippines), the word bangka simply means "boat," and this appears to be accurate and logical, given the great diversity in bangka configurations.

Indeed, there seem to be only two or three common features of bangkas: their main hulls are always narrow; they are always double-ended; and they almost always have two outriggers. Their differences, however, are manifold, including variations in materials, construction methods, most aspects of hull shape, houses, internal arrangements, overall size, propulsion, decoration, and usage. They're sometimes called the "Jeeps of the sea" because they are supposed to be able to do everything, but they do everything not necessarily because they are versatile, per se, but because there's a different style of bangka for nearly every possible application. 

We've written about bangkas several times already, but an offer of photos from reader Michael Williams of Flatwolf Photography has given us a good reason to look at them yet again. What strikes us most about the current batch of images is the variation in the configuration of outrigger booms. As always, click any image to enlarge.


Philippine bangka boat - photo by Michael Williams
We'll begin with this image of a medium-size power bangka as a kind of baseline for comparison. The outrigger float -- a single bamboo pole of large diameter -- angles fairly steeply up toward the bow. To achieve this, forward boom slopes down quite gently, while the aft boom takes an abrupt turn downward. One finds these two boom configurations in different combinations on different bangkas.
Philippine bangka boat - photo by Michael Williams
Three booms with progressively steep ends to accommodate the sloping floats. The booms are stout and rectangular in section. Round poles lashed atop them do not seem to add much, if any, strength.


Philippine bangka boat - photo by Michael Williams
The boom in this small paddling bangka is fastened with lashings to a cleat that spans between two frames about halfway between the gunwales and the bottom of the interior. The frames themselves extend above the gunwales, providing stops that prevent the boom-and-float assembly from shifting forward or aft.
Philippine bangka boat - photo by Michael Williams
The booms to the right and left of the image are straight across the middle, while the boom in the middle is bent down somewhat amidship, for a bit of a gull-wing configuration. The booms appear to be built up of three sections, the joints visible where the horizontal section transitions to a downward curve toward the float. The joints are probably simple scarf joints, lashed with cordage and covered with some kind of sealant or adhesive. 
Philippine bangka boat - photo by Michael Williams
These light, obviously very flexible booms in this nicely finished, small power bangka appear to be in one piece, although they might be scarfed together as in the previous photo but finished more carefully. The booms are placed outboard of the extended frame tops. In comparison, the booms on the boat in the third photo were placed inboard the extended frame tops.
Philippine bangka boat - photo by Michael Williams
The five booms on this large passenger bangka are complex structures. Amidships, each appears to be an open-topped, box-section girder from which a tapered, rectangular-section beam protrudes outboard with a slight downward slope. Lashed on top of these are several bamboo poles, lashed together and extending further outboard. One pole in this bundle extends even further outboard and curves downward to contact the float, which is itself a few bamboo poles of small diameter, providing probably only modest buoyancy. In the main, the booms appear to be quite rigid, although the lightness of the final outboard section may impart some flexibility.
Philippine bangka boat - photo by Michael Williams
A single-outrigger bangka. This appears to be by design, and not a partially disassembled boat. The float is a carved piece of timber, not a bamboo pole as in most other examples. The amount of flexibility in the construction appears to be minimal.
Philippine bangka boat - photo by Michael Williams
The outriggers on this small paddling bangka tilt downward toward the bow. We can't think of a good reason for this unusual design feature.


Philippine Bangkas - More Design and Construction Details

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In our previous post, we looked at details of outrigger design and construction in the Filipino outrigger boats known as bangkas. Here we'll look at other design and construction details in additional images from Michael Williams of Flatwolf Photography, to whom we express our thanks. (Click any image to enlarge.)


Philippine bangka boat - Flatwolf Photographer
Bangkas were originally built as dugout canoes, then as extended dugouts (i.e., with strakes added atop the dugout base to increase freeboard). As shown in this bangka undergoing repairs, plywood construction is now more common. The bottom remains a heavy plank -- perhaps a bare artifact of the original dugout concept. A roughly-hewn stem is scarfed onto the bottom, but perhaps it will be fined up before the missing side planking is replaced. Straight frames support the sides. Not visible here, but shown in the previous post (3rd image from top): there are no frames across the bottom; the side frames merely butt against the top of the bottom plank.
Philippine bangka boat - Flatwolf Photographer
Some larger bangkas have a sharply flaring top strake. This would widen the top of the hull for more interior room, deflect spray, and increase buoyancy if the bow plunges in rough seas.
The outrigger booms show both similarities and differences from that on another large commercial passenger bangka shown in the previous post (6th from top). The forward boom consists of an open-top box beam making up about half of the boom's total length. Inside the box are five bamboo poles, two above three, all of which extend beyond the box. The bottom three poles extend farther than the top two and connect directly to the outrigger float. The next boom back lacks the box beam, and has the poles supported across their middle lengths by what might be a flat plank or possibly additional shorter poles.
It's unclear if the nicely shaped outrigger float is a solid carved timber or -- what we think more likely -- a hollow plywood or composite construction.
Philippine bangka boat - Flatwolf Photographer
The flaring top strakes on this this bangka dive boat extend into a long, overhanging bow that supports a flat platform.
Philippine bangka boat - Flatwolf Photographer
A bangka of similar size to the one above lacks the flaring top strake, and its long, extended bow is narrow and not intended for use as a platform.
Philippine bangka boat - Flatwolf Photographer
This small bangka has an elegantly vertical sternpost.
Philippine bangka boat - Flatwolf Photographer
In contrast, these small power bangkas have steeply sloped sternposts.
The running gear is of notably light weight and entirely exposed, requiring great care when operating in shallow water and when hauling the boat onto the beach. The rudder post is secured outboard to starboard and is turned by a short tiller connected to a push-pull rod, allowing the helmsman to sit forward of the engine box.


“Popo” Outrigger Canoes of the Central Caroline Islands

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Flying proas of the Caroline Islands, from Admiral Paris
Flying proas of the Caroline Islands, from Adm. Paris. (click any image to enlarge)
In 1983 and 1984, Steve Thomas, who would later host the television series This Old House, lived intermittently on the tiny atoll of Satawal in the central Caroline Islands, an experience he documented in the book The Last Navigator: A Young Man, An Ancient Mariner, The Secrets of the Sea. While there, he lived with and studied under Mau Piailug, a master of the traditional Micronesian art and science of navigation, who had previously gained notoriety as the navigator on the early voyages of Hokule’a (which, as a Polynesian double canoe, was quite a different craft from the single-outrigger canoes of Micronesia to which he was accustomed).

proa from Satawal (From The Last Navigator, by Steve Thomas)
A proa from Satawal (From the cover of The Last Navigator, by Steve Thomas)
The Last Navigator is a good book, an engaging, sensitively-written memoir of a young man attempting to learn about and fit into a very different society – in this case, one whose traditional, preindustrial culture was under extreme pressure from the forces of modernization and Westernization. While it contained what I suspect might be some valuable ethnographic observations and a good general description of traditional Micronesian methods of navigation (for a detailed explanation, see We, The Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific, by David Lewis), it is scanty on information about the boats of Satawal and their construction.

Micronesia was home to a great number of outrigger canoe types – so great that James Hornell, in TheCanoes of Polynesia, Fiji, and Micronesia, devoted many pages documenting separately those of the Carolines, the Marshalls, the Gilberts, the Marianas, and certain other of the region’s smaller groups and individual islands. Even within the central Carolines, there was too much variation between islands for it to be practical to document every differentiating detail, necessitating some generalization of a “western and central Caroline” type. Since I came to the subject of the central Carolines canoe by way of The Last Navigator, this post focuses, to the extent possible, on boats most like those that appear on Satawal, and relies on Hornell’s generalizations for a more encompassing view.

Flying proa or popo of the Caroline Islands, after Paris
Flying proa or popo of the Caroline Islands. (From Hornell, after Paris) 
The ocean-voyaging canoes of Satawal are “flying proas” of a type which, according to Hornell, were called popos. Like almost all single-outrigger craft of the Pacific, they always sail with the outrigger to windward, using the outrigger float for stability in light or no air and as a counterbalance – supplemented by crew weight – against the force of higher winds. As such, popos are shunting craft, with identical ends that alternately serve as the bow and stern as the boat changes direction relative to the wind.

canoes of western and central Carolines and Marshall Islands (Kubary)
Notable differences in canoe design existed between the main island groups of Micronesia, as shown in this comparison of proas from the western and central Carolines (left) and the Marshall Islands (right). (Kubary)
Among the most distinctive characteristic of the popo are:
  • a narrow, deep hull with identical ends but lateral asymmetry, in which the windward side is much less curved than the leeward. In fact, on some boats, the windward side of the hull is nearly a flat plane.
  • hull construction of stitched planks on a dugout base
  • a platform extending from the hull on the lee side, opposite the outrigger
  • an oceanic lateen rig, consisting of a single triangular sprit sail hung from a mast stepped exactly amidships that pivots fore-and-aft with each shunt, allowing the sail’s direction and its center of effort to shift ends (not, however, without some complex evolutions on the part of the crew)
When Thomas lived on Satawal, Piailug was in the process of building a popo 33’ feet long and 8’ high from the keel to the “eyes” at the ends. This was the largest canoe built there in living memory, most others being around 26’ or 27’ long. According to Hornell, the canoes present in the central Carolines early in the twentieth century were smaller than those of the nineteenth, so lengths in the mid-thirty-foot range and, judging from Paris's drawings, even longer, may have been common in the past.

Hull Form and Construction

End, plan and construction views of the Caroline proa
End, plan and section views of the Caroline proa (Hornell, after Paris)
On Yap, in the western Carolines, and a few other islands were large trees were available,
...all but the upper part of the sides and the two curved heads are hewn from a single log. In atolls where no large timber is available the dugout portion shrinks to a wedge-shaped piece channeled longitudinally on the upper side so as to give two everted edges upon which the garboard strakes are sewn.... Usually the shapes and sizes of the strake planks are irregular, suitable wood being too precious in atolls to permit either of long running lengths or of adzing opposite edges parallel. So the hull in these islands is a mass of patchwork, all, however, fitted together with remarkable accuracy. (Hornell)

West/Central Carolines proa plan and construction views
Paris's plan and construction views on which Hornell's illustrations are based. (We could find only this poor quality image. Please contact us if you can provide a better.)
According to Thomas, the hull timber was breadfruit or “a mahoganylike tree called rugger...” from which the keel was hewn and the planks were split. Thomas describes how a chainsaw was used to fell the tree for the keel of Piailug’s new boat. The chainsaw was a fairly unfamiliar tool on Satawal at the time, and few of the men knew how to use it. After the “blade-like legs” of the breadfruit were cut through and the tree was felled, limbed, and cut to its desired length, the log for the keel was 6’ in diameter and 30’ long. With the chainsaw, a couple of operators performed the process in one morning “what usually took six men more than a day” to perform with axes.

Thomas does not describe how planks were split or otherwise gotten out, but it is clear that adzes were used to shape all the timbers. The hull has two end pieces cut from solid timber, each of which attaches at an end of the keel and extends upward as a cutwater and stem “and ends throughout the western and central Carolines in a peculiar and most characteristic fork” (Hornell).

No plans or standard measuring devices are used in shaping the hull, the builders working instead by eye and by a series of proportions or ratios between various of the boat’s features. (For example: height of the mast equals length of the hull; length of the outrigger is one half the length of the hull. Thomas.) Regarding the pronounced asymmetry of the hull, Hornell explains that is counteracts the asymmetrical resistance imposed by the single outrigger, allowing the boat to travel straight with minimal steering input when the float is in the water.

Planks are added to the keel to build up the hull’s freeboard with, as Hornell says, “little or no need to fit strengthening frames and this is not the custom in the Carolines.... Adequate stiffness is obtained when necessary by the insertion of solid bulkheads or partitions beneath the transverse supports of the lee platform.” Stiffness is increased further with heavy thwarts and gunwales.

Thomas stated that Piailug, in building his new boat, lashed the planks together temporarily, but Thomas did not explain why. Perhaps it was not enough to ensure that each individual plank fitted properly against its neighbors but that, instead, the entire hull had to be test-assembled to ensure good fits. The wood of the cross-beams (i.e., thwarts) that Piailug wished to install was too tough to be worked with an adze, so the pieces were buried in moist sand for a period to soften them.

Planks are stitched to the keel and to each other with discontinuous stitches of coconut-fiber rope (i.e., coir), made, in Thomas’s account, by the island’s old men, hand-rolling the coconut fibers against their thighs. Planks were caulked with a compound of dehydrated breadfruit sap applied to strips of coconut husk. According to Thomas, this caulking gradually dries out and loses its efficacy, requiring the boats to be disassembled and rebuilt “every two years or so.”

During one of these rebuilding episodes on Satawal on a boat named Suntory (after a brand of Japanese whiskey), the builder in charge decided to lighten the boat to make it faster. After disassembly, all the planks were therefore adzed down to make them thinner. Thomas did not describe whether this process improved the boat’s performance or affected its strength or water-tightness.

Thomas agrees with Hornell in saying that the outer surface of the hull was finished very smooth, although the process of sanding or otherwise smoothing the planks it is not described by either. (Throughout much of the Pacific, shark skin was used as sandpaper for this purpose.) Hulls were traditionally painted in patterns of red, black, and white.

Outrigger and Lee Platform

According to Hornell, the two main outrigger booms, which are fairly straight, “pierce both washstrakes of the hull in large canoes and (extend) a few inches outboard on the lee side.” (In Hornell's version of Admiral Paris’s drawing, however, it is unclear if the booms are entirely surrounded by the washstrake or if, possibly, they are notched full-depth into its top surface). In the popo’s most characteristic form, the outrigger booms also serve as the main support for a large triangular platform which carries crew and cargo. Poles extend diagonally from the windward gunwale at points near both ends of the hull to the main booms near their outboard ends, and the resulting isosceles triangle is covered by planks or light poles.

A second rectangular platform extending from the hull’s leeward size further increases the boat’s cargo capacity. This platform is supported by another pair of heavy timbers that cross the hull. These timbers are angled sharply upward toward their outboard end, allowing the platform to remain dry with the boat at a significant angle of heel. Sometimes the surface of the platform is built directly on these sloping supports; on other cases, another, lighter framework is built over this main structure and decked over, creating a surface that is horizontal when the boat is on an even keel.

Enclosures of basketwork, which may be round, oval, or rectangular, often appear on one or both platforms. These are used primarily to protect cargo, but it appears they occasionally serve as shelters for passengers or off-duty crew.
Connection between the outrigger booms and the float
Connection between the outrigger booms and the float. In the image on the left, the inner two crutches have been omitted for clarity. (Hornell)
The outrigger float, canoe-shaped in plan, hexagonal in section, and about half the length of the hull, is hewn from a solid baulk. It is connected to each boom by a pair of short crutches, the forks of which straddle the booms from below. The lower ends of these crutches are pointed and driven several inches into the upper facets of the float. Between each pair of crutch forks is a yoke which rests across the top surfaces of both booms and extends several inches beyond them. Holes are bored horizontally through the angled top surfaces of the float, and ropes are routed through these holes, over the ends of the yoke, and in a complex path around the crutches to hold the float securely to the booms, with the crutches in compression between them. Additional, lighter-weight braces are lashed to the undersides of the booms, further connecting them to each other and to the crutches, and from one pair of crutches to the other. The entire outrigger structure is thus highly complex and highly engineered for strength and flexibility.

Sail Rig and Steering

Caroline proas
Caroline proas (Paris)
The defining characteristic of all true proas is the oceanic lateen or oceanic sprit sail hung from a pivoting mast stepped amidships. (I find the term “crab-claw” used often inappropriately, preferring to apply it only to sails whose leech is deeply concave and therefore somewhat reminiscent of the shape of a claw. This is not the case in the canoes of the central Carolines.) In combination with a double-ended hull, this permits the boat to be shunted, and sailed with either end forward. Sails were traditionally hand-woven from fibers stripped from the leaves of the pandanus or screw pine, but commercially manufactured cloth has apparently been in common use for some time.

Hornell takes pains to define the nomenclature of the sail’s spars, calling the one at the luff (the upper/forward edge) a yard, and the one at the foot a boom. He describes the rigging as follows:
A shroud runs from near the masthead to the yoke [i.e., the short, stout timber connecting the outrigger booms at their outer ends], to which it is secured after passing through a hole bored through its center. There is also a fore-and-aft running stay made fast respectively to the endmost thwart at each end of the hull.
(T)he sail is hoisted by a peak halyard attached far out on the yard and rove through a sheave hole in the masthead; the heel of the yard rests against a sail step set on a short thwart right in the bows, to which the tack is made fast.

There is no shroud or other line serving as such to leeward in this description, and in Thomas’s account of a voyage from Satawal to a nearby atoll, the rig was nearly lost once when the sail was backwinded, due to this lack of support on that side of the boat. No leeward shroud is shown in the diagram or cover photo of Thomas’s book, but in Paris’s diagram and one of his drawings (fifth and first images in this post), a shroud is visible leading from the masthead to the lee platform. Perhaps the practice varied on different islands even within the central Carolines.

Main features of a Satawal proa
Main features of a Satawal proa (from Thomas)
In the past, popos were generally steered by means of a quarter rudder with a tiller that extended laterally from its aft edge near the top. The rudder was not hung from the hull, but instead held by the helmsman’s foot against a wooden pin that projected from the hull. A rope from the top of the blade to the hull, visible in Paris's diagram (image #3), prevented loss of the rudder and perhaps provided some stability to it but apparently did little to hold it in its proper working position for, according to Hornell, “The steersman’s duty is the heaviest aboard and on a journey he has to be relieved frequently.” It rough seas when the rudder could not be controlled, it was lifted from the water, and several men with regular paddles would steer. In Thomas’s account, however, steering was always by means of a single steering paddle, and no rudder appears in his description or in the book’s diagram.

Canoe Houses

Caroline sailing canoes are built and kept in a canoe house. On Satawal, in Thomas’s account, each of the island’s eight clans owned a canoe and kept it in its own house. All the houses were on the same beach, near the main (only?) channel through the island’s surrounding reef, with the house belonging to the clan of the island’s chief directly opposite and closest to the channel. The canoe houses serve as social centers for the men, who typically gather there to talk and drink even when work is not under way on a canoe.

Experienced men of middle age do most of the work on the canoes, assisted and observed by younger ones -- or, in Thomas's account, those few younger ones who could be induced to take an interest any longer. Older men typically observe the work and offer suggestions but restrict their hands-on contribution to the making of rope.

Primary Sources:

Hornell, James, The Canoes of Polynesia, Fiji, and Micronesia, B.P. Bishop Museum, 1936, in Canoes of Oceania (with A.C. Haddon), B.P Bishop Museum, Honolulu, 1975

Kubary, J.S., Ethnographiphische Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Karolinen-Achipel, Leiden, 1889-95

Pâris, François-Edmond, Essai sur la construction navale des peuples extra-européens ou Collection des navires et pirogues construits par les habitants de l'Asie, de la Malaisie, du Grand Océan et de l'Amérique dessinés et mesurés pendant les voyages autour du monde de "l'Astrolabe", "la Favorite" et "l'Artémise")

Thomas, Steve, The Last Navigator: A Young Man, An Ancient Mariner, The Secrets of the Sea, International Marine, Camden, ME (no date). Originally published by Henry Holt, 1987

Additional sources, useful websites and pages:
http://www.samlow.com/screeningroom/navigators-filming.html
http://starrigging.blogspot.com/ and http://starrigging.blogspot.com/2017/06/canoe-sketch.html
http://waterworks-sysooke.blogspot.com/2011/10/chamorro-and-carolinian-sailing-canoes.html
http://archives.starbulletin.com/2008/04/25/features/story04.html
http://www.multihull.de/proa/history/p_history.htm
http://habele.blogspot.com/2017/03/historic-sail-showcases-micronesian.html
http://www.samlow.com/sail-nav/CEREMONY.htm
http://proafile.com/multihull-boats/article/the-proa-file-primer


A Shuar Dugout from the Ecuadorian Amazon

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On a recent visit to Ecuador, we did not have an opportunity to observe any boats in the field, but we did manage to visit several museums in Quito and Cuenca that had items of interest on exhibit. These included sculptures of dugout canoes and canoeists, and boat-related artifacts, from a number of precolumbian societies, as well as a couple of contemporary canoes, related implements, and a few models. We'll organize them in more than one blog post according the museums in which they appear.

First up: a contemporary dugout canoe of the Shuar people of Ecuadorian Amazonia, i.e., el Oriente, in the Museo Amazonico in Quito:

Shuar dugout canoe, side view
The canoe was perhaps 16 feet long but, with its (presumed) bow partially hidden behind other display items, it was not possible to get a good full-length photo. Maximum beam is probably 14" to 16". The bottom has a flat run (no rocker). The charming museum guide is included for scale. (Click any image to enlarge.)
Shuar dugout canoe, view from stern
A view of the stern shows: rather straight sides and a flat bottom meeting at a hard chine; a sharp, angular transition where the bottom begins to rise toward the end; and a large overhanging stern platform where the paddler might sit.In the foreground is a scale model of a fish trap. Although an explanation was absent, I believe it is installed on a river bed with the left (higher) end facing downstream. Fish enter over the (submerged) lower end and find themselves aground on the upward-sloping poles, being prevented by the current from backing out before the fishermen can gather them. (This is speculation. Reader input is solicited.)
Shuar dugout canoe, interior stern view
Top view from the stern. From bottom of image: the stern platform; the flat, angular transition between the platform and the interior bottom, which is flat; nicely thinned sides, somewhat bulged outward amidships.
Shuar dugout canoe, interior bow view
The bow is pointed in plan view, rounded in section view and curving smoothly into the flat bottom. The interior appears to have been treated against rot and insect infestation by charring. Adze marks are visible.
Shuar dugout canoe, bow profile
Exterior side view of the bow shows a somewhat sharp, angular transition between the bottom and cutwater -- a surprising element, given the bow's appearance when viewed from above. Tool marks are visible on the exterior surface, showing capable adze or ax work but no attempt at smoothing through abrasive methods.
paddles for Shuar dugout canoe
The accompanying paddles are carved entire. They feature extremely large, heavy blades, short shafts, and triangular grips. The triangle of the grip of the paddle on the left departs from the shaft more abruptly than the one on the right and has a more distinct concave curve on its top edge. On both, the shaft extends somewhat into the blade and tapers gradually to the flat surface.



Shuar fishing gear
Fishing gear associated with the canoe:
a. The weighted net is little more than a foot in height; it is presumably stretched across a shallow, narrow stream or a constrained section of a wider one; an alternate explanation is that it might be stretched between two canoes and trawled.
b. Two fish traps: the lower one is roughly 3 feet long. With their very small openings, it's unclear how they work. (Perhaps bait is placed in the narrow end and a fish, after entering the trap to obtain the bait, is unable to back out?) Reader input is solicited.
c. The metal shaft might be part of a lance or harpoon. No explanatory material appeared.




A Fishing Canoe from the Ecuador Coast

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Continuing our series on boats and related artifacts that we observed recently at museums in Ecuador, we'll look now at a examples from a very fine exhibit of the country's diverse cultures at the Museo Pumapungo in the lovely city of Cuenca. (For the first post in this series, see this article about an Amazonian logboat.)

The first item, the canoe that follows, was built by cholo pescadores -- literally "mixed-race fishermen" -- on the Pacific coast. Like many Ecuadorians, cholo are of mixed Indian and Spanish descent. The more common term for that genetic mixture in Ecuador and elsewhere in Latin America is mestaje (i.e., mestizo, literally meaning "miscegenation," but used in a nonperjorative sense to mean simply "mixed race"), but the cholo pescadores are considered a distinct culture. What follows is my sadly unfluent translation of the exhibit card, the only information provided about the boat and related items:
Cholo Pescador  
They are so called because of mixed Indian/Spanish ancestry and their primary economic activity. They live at the seashore in small towns or compounds.  
Fishing in canoes and bongos*, using cast nets, trammel nets and other devices, is done at night or at dawn, as a group, and they return at noon. They tend to be organized in cooperatives and are abandoning traditional techniques and boats.  
The mangrove is an important part of the coastal ecosystem; However, in the places where the fisherman lived traditionally, shrimp farms and loggingare now causing major alterations in the life of the inhabitants and in the natural balance.  
The cholo pescador's language is Spanish, with unique modalities and tones. It has a rich poetic and narrative oral tradition. (The culture's) main festivals are those of the Virgin of Monserrate, María Auxiliadora, San Jacinto and St. Peter the Fisherman.

*The meaning of "bongo" as a type of watercraft is unknown. Reader input is requested.

Ecuadorian cholo pescador plank canoe
Th cholo canoe on display is small, probably 12 feet long or less. It is plank-built, with a flat bottom that rises at both ends, hard chines, and nearly vertical sides. Given its small size, we conclude the boat is used by a single fisherman in protected waters, possibly amidst the local mangrove swamps that cover much of the coast. The presumed stern is to the right. (Click any image to enlarge.)
Ecuadorian cholo pescador plank canoe
There are no frames or floor timbers. A single sitting thwart (beneath the religious statue) is the only interior structure. A ringbolt (not visible here, but shown below) near the end at the left of the photo presumably designates the bow. The associated fishing net seems to have a drawstring at the bottom. We believe this is a cast net with a purse-type closure.
Ecuadorian cholo pescador plank canoe - stern transom
Both ends have small, shaped transoms well above the waterline at the ends of the upward-rising flat bottom. The garboard plank is rabbeted into the sides of the transom. There appear to be at least four strakes of varying height per side. The planks are quite thick and the boat is probably too heavy to be carried by one man. We could not make out the method of fastening, but suspect the planks are edge-nailed to one another. Several sheet metal patches have been fastened with nails on the exterior to repair damage, and painted over. 
Ecuadorian cholo pescador plank canoe - bow detail
Ring bolt fastened through the bottom at the presumed bow to secure the painter.
Ecuadorian cholo pescador plank canoe - stern plan view
Plan view of the stern shows that the bottom is made of three strakes, the center one being the widest. The rising ends of the bottom are separate pieces from the central bottom plank, and they are hollowed, dugout-style. This is an interesting, rarely-seen stage of boat development, representing a small step between the extended dugout and the purely plank-built craft.
Also apparent is the substantial shaping of the side planks. (The bow is similar.) Given their thickness, we presume the planks are hewn to the desired curves near the ends rather than bent to shape. The builders may find it easier to build the canoe with a transom than with stemposts and sharp ends, but the substantial hollow of the planking curve just inboard of the transom appears to have no functional explanation, and is probably aesthetic, or perhaps a design holdover from earlier dugout construction. It is somewhat reminiscent of the extended platforms at the ends of many dugout canoes from Ecuador and elsewhere.
Ecuadorian cholo pescador boat model
This model is also part of the cholo pescador section of the same exhibit. It depicts a larger, more seaworthy, double-ended type with sharp ends, probably used by the same people in more open waters along the coast. It shows two sets of internal, sawn frames, two heavy thwarts, and seats at both ends. It is unclear whether it represents a large extended dugout or a boat that is entirely plank-built. The boat would accommodate a larger crew than the small canoe shown above and be capable of taking significantly larger catches. 
Ecuadorian cholo pescador fishing implements
Fishermen's tools. Top: net needles. Bottom: harpoon heads

Canoes and Canoeists of Ancient Ecuador

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The Inca are certainly the best-known pre-European culture of Ecuador, but they were hardly the only one. In fact, they were latecomers on the scene, invading from Peru less than one hundred years before Francisco Pizzaro arrived from Spain to destroy their civilization. Prior to the Inca's arrival, the land that is present-day Ecuador had been occupied by a succession of regional cultures, several of which used small watercraft.

Dugout canoes played an important enough role in some Ecuadorian cultures to have warranted frequent representation in ceramic miniatures. Although we don't know the purpose of these sculptures, it's probable that they had ritual significance, as is the case with almost all art from almost all ancient societies. In spite of their pleasing aesthetics, it is unlikely that they were made for purely decorative purposes.


With the exception of the anchor, the following photos were taken through glass exhibit cases. The first three boats (six photos), the paddlers without canoes, and the anchor are at the Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo in Guayaquil. The last canoe miniature (three photos) is at the Archaeological Museum of the University of Cuenca. Click any image to enlarge.

Chorrera dugout canoe with two paddlers
Chorrera dugout canoe with two paddlers. ("Existing in the late formative period the Chorrera culture lived in the Andes and Coastal Regions of Ecuador between 1000 and 300 BC." [Wikipedia]). The canoe has overhangs at both ends upon which the paddlers squat.
Chorrera dugout canoe with two paddlers
With its full-width bow and stern platforms, the canoe is nearly rectangular in plan view. The deep interior may simply represent a real canoe's hold, or the sculture might have been used as a vessel for food or other ritual offerings. Both paddles are held to the same side of the canoe. 
Chorrera canoe paddler miniature
The squatting bowman holds a paddle with a long blade that taperes into the shaft and a square bottom end. There is no end grip on the shaft. The paddler wears decorative ear plugs and a helmet of some kind.
Tolita canoeist and canoe miniature
Tolita canoeist and canoe. More crudely fashioned or "schematic" than the previous one, this canoe nonetheless shows small bow or stern platforms. Although the canoeist lacks a paddle, he is otherwise well-equipped. The Tolita lived on the northern coast of Ecuador from 500BCE to 500CE. 
Tolita canoe miniature
An elaborate Tolita canoe with several notable features, including:
  • a bow platform
  • structures that appear as side decks fastened to the outside of the hull from about midships to the stern
  • an arched shelter amidships
  • a coaming or seat backs aft of the shelter

The seat backs, and possibly the shelter, indicate the boat was used for transportation of people, although carrying cargo in addition cannot be ruled out. These features also appear to indicate a boat for a user of high status, perhaps a merchant who could afford to sit back and relax while others worked the boat.
The "side decks" are a curiosity Did men stand on them to paddle or pole the boat, leaving more room in the hull for passengers and/or cargo? If men stood on both of them simultaneously, the boat would have adequate balance. But if one paddler were to step or fall off, the boat might become highly unstable. Perhaps, instead of decks, they represent sponsons to increase the boat's stability and buoyancy, or simply planks that would provide momentary resistance if the boat were to heel suddenly.
Tolita canoe miniature
This angle shows a clearer view of the seat backs or coaming.
Tolita canoe paddlers miniatures
Two Tolita canoe paddlers. I speculate that in this and the following image, the missing canoes were made of wood, which disintegrated prior to the recovery of the ceramics. Unlike the Chorrera paddles, these have lanceolate blades. The paddlers squat, holding their paddles in a more realistic fashion than the Chorrera paddler, with their top hand nearer the end of the shaft (which, like the Chorrera example, lacks an end-grip). The paddlers appear to be wearing skirts and helmets.
Tolita canoe paddlers miniatures
Three more Tolita paddlers. The middle and rear figures sit with their bodies facing front and their legs extended. The front figure is in a more dynamic pose: his torso is twisted to his "on" paddling side and his onside leg is crossed over his offside leg. All three figures wear helmets but, unlike the previous example, their legs are bare. 
Miniatures of Tolita canoes and paddlers
Another angle showing the two groups of paddlers (and, behind them, the covered boat [left], two pieces of spondylus shell [right], which were used as currency and for decorative work, and the rude canoeist). 
Tolita canoe and canoeists miniature
Tolita canoeists in a dugout canoe. The canoe, which is broken crosswise amidships, has bow and stern platforms and a nearly rectangular plan view. The paddlers' disc-shaped headgear with side flaps is similar to that worn by the aft-most paddler in the group of three above. Their legs are bare, and the bow paddler's legs are crossed.
Tolita canoe and canoeists miniature
The same item as above. Though simply rendered, the figures have the realistic energy of paddlers concentrating at their work, straining to push forward. 
Tolita canoe and canoeists miniature
Aft view of the same item, showing the canoe's broad stern platform, slab-shaped sides, and rounded bottom.
Stone anchor from the Manteño civilization
Stone anchor from the Manteño civilization, which dominated Ecuador's central coast from 850CE to 1600CE. The Manteño used large sailing rafts of balsa logs to conduct intensive trade along the coast of Ecuador and as far north as Central America. This anchor, however, appears much too small to have been used on an oceanic raft and was probably used with a smaller watercraft. (American currency is for scale. Rope is not original). 

Basket Boats on the Gulf of Tonkin

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We've written before about woven or basket boats in Vietnam (see, for example, this post highlighting a canoe-form craft, and this one about coracles), but the one in the image below, from James Hornell's Water Transport: Origins and Early Evolution, so struck us by its graceful form that we thought it was worth sharing.
Basket boat, Vietnam, from Hornell
Woven boat of the Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam. From Hornell, Water Transport. (click to enlarge)
The boat is common on the Gulf of Tonkin. We'll quote Hornell's comments in almost their entirety:
This is a light, graceful craft made of inch-wide strips of split bamboo, closely woven into stiff matting, a material of great strength, resiliency and resistance to strain. 
In plan it is of an elongated ovate form, the wider end being the stern. Both extremities are spoon-shaped like the fore end of a Norwegian praam [sic] and are rounded in horizontal outline. A gentle sheer toward each end carries stem and stern above the level of the midships gunwale, the stem rising the higher. The bent-up sides of the bamboo body are embraced around their margin by several broad bands of split bamboo on each side and bound together into a stout cylinder with rattan strips to form a stout, continuous gunwale. Four or five strong bamboos stretch from gunwale to gunwale to prevent spreading; they are secured partly by lashing and partly by pegging into the gunwales. Along each side above the gunwales and over the ends of the cross beam, a slender bamboo pole is lashed to form a top rail. 
On the floor two long bamboos, spaced some distance apart, serve as inner stringers. One of the thwart beams, usually the second from the stern, is supported below by two short stanchions fixed at the lower ends into a stout bamboo bar, fitted athwart the bottom. Before launching, the interstices in the matting forming the skin of the hull are daubed with a caulking mixture of cow dung and coconut oil [citation omitted], periodically renewed. Strips of split bamboo matting are fitted over the floor to serve as dunnage and so keep cargo and passengers dry against moderate leaking. 
Although very light and easily carried by one man, they are able to carry several passengers together with a quantity of baggage. 
The dimensions of one measured by Nishimura [citation omitted] were as follows: length, 12 feet 7 inches; width, 5 feet; depth, 26 inches: usually they run smaller -- about 6 feet by 4 feet, by about 10 inches deep. 
Nishimura states that this type of craft is very common in Tongking, where almost all families living near rivers and streams keep one or two.
A couple observations on the above:

1. It seems unlikely that the caulking mixture was applied only to the "interstices in the matting." It is almost certainly spread over the entire outer surface of the hull. Road tar and roofing tar have largely replaced cow dung and coconut oil for waterproofing.

2. The purpose of the top rail is not explained. They may serve as the top elements of girders that stiffen the boat longitudinally, with the thwarts or cross-beams serving to create a vertical gap between them and the gunwales. But read on.

The image below, from Ken Foster's Boats & Rice blog, shows what appears to be the same kind of boat in current use on Halong (or Ha Long) Bay, near Hai Phong on the Gulf of Tonkin. This boat has a more elaborate and substantial framework around the perimeter than the light top rails in Hornell's image, but the curve of the bow (?) rising above the transverse end-piece of the perimeter framework seems to identify the boat as the same basic type. Along with strengthening the structure further, the fore-and-aft elements of the rectangular perimeter frame serve to anchor the tholepins. This might have been another unexplained purpose of the top rails in Hornell's image.
Woven boat, Halong Bay, from Boats & Rice blog
Woven boat, Halong Bay, from Boats & Rice

Traditional Fishing Schooner Launched in Northern Vietnam

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After Ken Preston saw my previous post about Vietnamese basket boats, which included one of his photos from his website Boats and Rice, he contacted me about another interesting and beautiful Vietnamese boat he was privileged to sail on recently.
Sailing fishing boat, Quang Yen, Vietnam. Photo Ken Preston.
Newly launched traditional fishing boat, Quang Yen, Vietnam. Photo: Ken Preston. Rights reserved/used by permission. (Click to enlarge.)
This type of sailing fishing boat from northern Vietnam went out of use some decades ago with the proliferation of engines. Ken hesitates to call this boat a "replica," because it was built authentic to tradition in every respect by an 11th-generation boatbuilder who worked on them many years ago (and who continues to do business building more contemporary wooden fishing boats). It simply IS one of the type, albeit separated by many years from the rest. 



The video shows the boat getting under way and looking quite lovely sailing up- and down-wind. The video was shot by one of Mr. Chan's sons; Ken edited it and added the explanatory text.

The (apparently unnamed) boat was built in the boatyard of Mr. Le Duc Chan of Quang Yen, a short distance upstream of Halong Bay. It was commissioned by Dr. Nguyen Viet, an archaeologist with an interest in Vietnam's maritime heritage. Dr. Viet caused the construction of the boat to be scrupulously recorded in still images and video, with the assistance of a naval architect who also documented the boat and its construction for legal purposes.

The boat is of a type that would have been owned (and lived on?) by a family and used for commercial fishing. Dr. Viet's version is true to the original, lacking modern accommodations belowdecks. It is 34.6' LOD, 27.3' at the waterline, with a maximum beam of 11.7', a board-up draft of just 18", and a daggerboard-down draft of 5.4'. It is junk-schooner rigged, and according to Ken's lengthy, colorful blog post, it can be easily handled by a crew of two: one at the helm and mainsheet, another at the foresail. Ken describes its sailing behavior as extremely well-mannered, getting under way, answering the helm, coming about, dropping sail, and docking reliably and with a total lack of fuss.

Ken's article about the boat will appear in the May issue of WoodenBoat magazine. He also has a book about Vietnamese fishing boats, with some 500 photos plus text, coming out soon from Women's Publishing House of Ho Chi Minh City. An English-language edition will appear this summer, to be followed by a Vietnamese translation. Neither appears on the publisher's website at the time of this writing.


The Boats of Iraq's Madan

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Madan canoe
The Madan, or Marsh Arabs of Iraq, depended heavily upon their boats, including canoes like this one under construction. Note the heavy, closely-spaced, roughly-formed frames, inner planking at the tops of the frames, and heavy thwarts. (Click any image to enlarge.)
Wilfred Thesiger was an upper-class Englishman, born the son of a diplomat in Addis Ababa in 1910 and educated in England at the best schools. After conducting expeditions and serving in the diplomatic service himself in Africa, he served with distinction in the Second World War then became a wanderer in Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia, immersing himself in traditional, tribal cultures and writing about them – and perhaps gathering intelligence on the side.

In the early and mid 1950s, he spent many months living and traveling in the marshy lands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in southern Iraq. In his book about these travels, The Marsh Arabs, he explains that he found peace of mind living in undeveloped areas in general, and the less Europeanized and regimented, the better:
“(H)aving seen Iraqui Kurdistan I had no desire to go back. Travel was too restricted, rather like stalking in a Highland deer forest . . . . Admittedly the Marshes, for which I was now bound, covered a smaller area than Iraqi Kurdistan, but they were a world complete in itself, not a fragment of a larger world to the rest of which I was denied access.”
Thesiger was no anthropologist – The Marsh Arabs is a mixture of travelogue and memoir – but he was sensitive to culture and a keen and appreciative observer. Naturally, he saw, used, and reported on the Marsh Arabs' use of boats. Although every aspect of the lives of the Arabs who lived in the Iraqi marshes was regulated by their watery environment, we will concentrate on his observations directly related to their watercraft.

Madan house built of reeds
A Madan house, built of reeds and covered with mats, on a kibasha, or artificial island, also made of reeds and rushes. Buffalo were a mainstay for many of the Madan.
For context: The Marsh Arabs, or Madan, are Shia Moslems. (Northern Iraqis are Sunni.) Dotted with thousands of lakes and lagoons and cut through with innumerable permanent and seasonal waterways, large parts of the marshes dry out in summer and inundate after the rains begin further north. Many of the Madan’s homes and villages are built on tiny man-made islands, although a few areas of slightly higher elevation allow the construction of more permanent, conventional structures and small communities. Some of the Madan did not live in settled villages, but led completely nomadic lives.

A mudhif, or Madan meeting house
A mudhif, or Madan meeting house, where the public business and pleasure of the community was conducted. Thesiger was entertained in many of these, which also served as guest houses. They too were built entirely of reeds.
Although I write about the culture indiscriminately in the past and present tenses, much of the marsh life Thesiger described is now past, destroyed in part by Sadam Hussein’s campaign against the Madan, which saw the swamps largely drained and destroyed. Some restoration efforts, however, are succeeding in bringing back parts of the habitat and with it, the culture.

Boat Types

A balam with a load of reeds
A balam with a load of reeds.
With communities and individual homes sited on tiny, often temporary artificial islands, watercraft were used by everyone for every purpose, and small, plank-built one- and two-man canoes were ubiquitous. Larger boats were also common. Those used for the large-scale gathering of reeds and other commercial carriage were called balam, which were typically 30’ to 36’ long.

The graceful bow of a Madan tarada
A tarada, with its incomparably graceful bow.
Taradas, which were indistinguishable from balams except for one detail, could only be owned by sheiks. Thesiger describes one of the first he saw:
“She was a beautiful craft that could carry as many as twelve people. Thirty-six feet long but only three and half feet at her widest beam, she was carvel-built, flat-bottomed and covered outside with a smooth coating of bitumen over the wooden planks. The front swept forwards and upwards in a perfect curve to form a long, thin, tapering stem; the stern too rose in a graceful sweep. Two feet of the stern and of the bows were decked; there was a thwart a third of the way forward, and a strengthening beam across the boat two thirds of the way forward. Movable boards covered the floor. The top part of the ribs was planked along the inside and studded with five rows of flat, round nail-heads two inches across. These decorative nails were the distinguishing mark of a tarada . . . .”
Madan zaima, a reed bundle boat
In spite of its reed-bundle construction, the zaima was a true boat, with a hull that displaced water by virtue of its water-tight shell, not because of the buoyancy of its materials.
Because the marshes are treeless, wood is expensive and even a small plank-built boat was beyond the means of some. Giant qasab reeds (Phragmites communis), however, were ubiquitous, and they were used to build bundle boats called zaima. Typically 10’ long and 2.5’ in beam, they were coated on the outside with bitumen to waterproof them and extend their life. Even so, they would last only a year, because, unlike on plank-built boats, the bitumen coating on a zaima could not be renewed. Even during Thesiger’s visits, the zaima was falling out of use due to a preference for wooden canoes among even the poor.

Madan child with rudimentary reed raft
A young child's rudimentary reed raft.

Madan child with bundle boat
This older child's reed raft is a bundle boat, floating by virtue of the reeds themselves. But with its rising bow, it mimics the form of the plank canoes of his elders. 
Thesiger mentions two more boat types in passing. Children would build rafts of rushes and paddle around on them. And two-masted boats, apparently much larger than balam, were used to trade large volumes of goods downstream with Basra.

Soon after he had bought himself a balam for 10 pounds sterling to use in traveling about the marshes, Thesiger received from his sheik-patron the extraordinary gift of a top-notch tarada, 36’ long, which he used henceforth. He hired local youth as as crew and kept them with him for extended periods. To increase their loyalty, he did not pay them or treat them like employees. He was, in fact, more generous to them than would have been reasonable on a salary basis, but the arrangement allowed them to assert that they accompanied him as a matter of choice, respect, and friendship rather than a financial transaction.

Thesiger's tarada in choppy water.
Thesiger's tarada in choppy water.
As the only individual who was not a sheik to own a tarada– and an Englishman to boot – Thesiger was a notable individual in the marshes. The highly esteemed boatbuilder who made his tarada also made him paddles uniquely painted red. The boat and its crew were easily recognized for its distinctive paddles.

Boat Construction

Madan balam or large workboat
Balams and taradas feature a multiplicity of relatively light, closely-spaced frames and heavy thwarts, with floorboards and end decks. They lack the inner planking at the tops of the frames that was typical of the canoes in the Iraq marshes.
No suitable wood was available in southern Iraq and every bit – even for items as small as paddles – had to be brought in from elsewhere. In boat construction, the preferred material for ribs was mulberry from Kurdistan. No mention is made of the type of wood used for planking, all of which was imported “from abroad.” The one key material that was obtained locally was bitumen, which was gathered from small pools where it naturally “bubbled out of the ground.” After being allowed to cool it was broken up into chunks for transport.

Balam under repair
A balam being recoated with bitumen.
Boats had to be recoated annually, as the bitumen cracked off. Cracks could be temporarily sealed by heating the bitumen with a torch of reeds. But for proper annual maintenance, the entire coating would be removed with a chisel. Fresh, solid bitumen would be placed on a sheet of metal and melted over a fire, then spread onto the boat one quarter inch thick.  Bitumen spread 1/4 inch thick. Thesiger reports that the Madan believed that a coating applied in winter did not last long as a one applied in summer. This makes sense, as the boat’s planking would be warmer in summer, helping prevent the pitch from cooling too quickly to adhere properly.

Many of the Madan raised buffalo, and some of them acquired such a taste for pitch that they would eat it off the boats if allowed. This habit was apparently restricted to certain communities – perhaps buffalo are just as regional in their tastes as humans – and where it occurred, boats would be moored away from the shore rather than pulled up where buffalo could get at them.

interior details of Madan boat
With a tool kit limited to an adze, a hand saw and a bow drill, workmanship on most boats was rough.

Madan balam boat
Nonetheless, Madan boats, especially the larger balams and taradas, were fine and graceful. (The stem appears to be badly cranked to port, however.)

Most carpentry for boat construction and repairs was done with an adze. Thesiger offers this brief, sadly incomplete description:
“We watched an old man start on a canoe. He outlined the bottom with transverse slats of wood, an inch or so apart, and then nailed a single long plank down the centre. While we drank tea he fashioned the ribs, selecting suitable pieces of wood from a pile beside him. He used an adze, and his only other tools, a small saw and a bow drill, lay on the mat beside him with a heap of nails.”
Madan canoe under construction
Early stage of canoe building, with the floors and central planks in place. The boat is being built upside-down at this stage.

Of the zaima, however, he provides a more detailed description: 
“First he made half a dozen tight bundles of five or six qasab reeds rather longer than the length of the proposed boat, and fastened them securely together side by side to form the keel, leaving eighteen inches free at both ends, which he bent upwards. He next bent five long reeds into the shape of a U, passed the middle among the loose ends of the keel, and laced them back to the keel itself. He repeated the process at either end alternately, until he had built up the sides and ends of the hull. This framework he stiffened by tying into it a number of ribs made from two or three willow wands. Bundles of a few reeds, fastened one below the other along the inside of the boat, covered the top half of the ribs and formed the inner planking. Finally, he wedged three stout sticks across the boat as thwarts and secured their ends in place with lumps of bitumen. The zaima was now ready to be coated outside with bitumen.”
Propulsion and Travel

Madan poling and paddling a canoe
A canoe being poled from the stern and padded from the bow through vegetation.
Boats were propelled by both pole and paddle as the situation required. Small fishing canoes would be punted with a fish spear, butt-end down. The spears were made of reeds, 12 feet long with five-pronged, barbed heads. Paddles were “shovel-shaped pieces of board nailed to lengths of bamboo” (actually reeds, not true bamboo). Those poles which were not fish spears were also simply straight sections of reed. Even such crude paddles were expensive to replace, and their owners would typically take them from their boats when they were ashore to protect them. Likewise with poles to which their owners had become accustomed. This was not to prevent theft, exactly. Rather, it was accepted practice that anyone could take any paddle or pole that wasn’t in its owner’s immediate possession.

The method of poling balams and taradas was distinctive. In a boat with four men poling, two were in the bow and two in the stern. They poled in time, all of the same side of the boat, switching sides together as needed. In smaller boats with only two poling, the action was also coordinated on the same side. When carrying a full load of reeds, however, the crew of a balam would walk the boat along the gunwale rather than stand in place to pole. This would allow them to apply the full power of their legs to propulsion rather than relying entirely on their arms and upper bodies.

Madan paddling canoes
The solo paddler in the foreground canoe sits high in the stern. The tandem paddlers in the other boat are paddling on opposite sides.

When paddling a balam, two men would sit in the stern on the deck, one in front of the other. One would sit on the forward thwart, and one would kneel in the bows.

Passengers always sat in the bottom. The place of honor for a passenger was nearest the stern, leaning against the rear thwart. 

Some passages through the reedbeds were kept open artificially by driving buffalo through when the water was low. Thereafter, regular boat traffic would keep them open. Even so, during the dry season many channels would dry up, requiring much dragging through mud or even completely restricting passage. Some areas of swamp were dammed to create water impoundments for grain growing during the dry season. These dams interfered with free movement of boats through formerly open channels, forcing users to negotiate narrow, rapid sluices both up- and down-current, or even to be dragged over the dams. With a loaded, 35-foot-long balam, this was a difficult chore.

We'll continue with Thesiger's The Marsh Arabs in a future post, looking at how the Madan used their boats.

Quotations and images from The Marsh Arabs, Wilfred Thesiger, Penguin Classics, 2008. Copyright 1959. Originally published by Longmans, Green, 1964. This author thanks the copyright holders. Should they object to this use, he asks that they contact him through the blog comments. Their wishes will be respected.

Madan Boat Use

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In the prior post we examined the watercraft of the Madan or Marsh Arabs. Now we'll look at how the Madan used those boats -- particularly the plank-built ones. As in the last post, all the photos and essentially all the content are fromThe Marsh Arabsby Wilfred Thesiger.

Almost all of the economic activities of the Madan depending upon their boats. The most important were raising buffaloes, fishing, wildfowling, reed cutting, mat-making, and smuggling. Others included raising sheep and goats and growing wheat, barley, and rice. Some entire communities specialized in boat building. 

Madan boatman with reed mats ready for export
Huge stacks of rolled mats at the extreme right and left of the image are ready for export downstream. (Click any image to magnify.)
Mat-making relied upon the reeds and rushes that were ubiquitous in the marshes. Two passages from The Marsh Arabs are illustrative:
“We passed . . . a large two masted boat loaded high with reed mats, being laboriously poled toward the Tigris. Later we passed a great raft made of dry reeds. Forty feet long and ten feet high, it was aground and temporarily abandoned. When the water-level rose, this stack of reeds would be floated downstream, perhaps as far as Basra, and there broken up and sold.”
and
“The Nuafil [one of the many tribes Thesiger visited] kept some buffaloes, but their livelihood depended on the weaving of mats, which they exported in great numbers. Large sailing boats, like the one we had already seen, fetched the mats when the water was deep enough.”
Although the Madan, as devout Moslems, do not eat pig, they frequently mounted hunting expeditions in which several boatloads of men would go after the wild pig that abounded in the marshes and played havoc with their crops. Some of the hunting may have been done for the pure sport of it, however.

Madan boats on market day
Boats congregating in great numbers on market days.
Aside from economic uses, virtually every aspect of life in the marshes depended upon boats. All visits to other villages, for courting, weddings, funerals, the prosecution of feuds, visits by itinerant circumcisers, etc., were made by boat. As few of the reed islands or marsh dwellers had privies, the call of nature was often answered by hopping into a canoe, paddling a short way off, and squatting over the side. Drinking water, by the way, was drawn from the same source.

Madan boat carrying a load of passengers
Even with full load of passengers, there's still several inches of freeboard on this balam. Three men are paddling: one in the bow, and two (on opposite sides) in the stern.
Thesiger described a scene in which a family was moving their settlement by boat:
“Two boys in a canoe urged on half a dozen buffaloes, following behind a balam that was paddled by an elderly man and another boy, who made yodelling cries to encourage the swimming animals. A woman and three small children, one of them wearing nothing but a silver collar round his neck, shared the back of the boat with two buffalo calves, a kitten, and a lot of hens. The front was piled high with their belongings, including the dismantled framework of their house, reed mats, water jars, cooking pots, sacks of grain and a pile of quilts. A dog stood on top of all this between the wooden legs of a churn, and barked at us as we edged past.”
As a social convention, it was customary for a man in boat to greet a man on shore first, rather than the reverse, and for boats traveling downstream to issue the first greeting to those traveling upstream. Perhaps the first of these traditions arose because a person traveling was more likely to have news for one at home than vice-versa, or that a stranger passing by one’s home was viewed as a potential threat, so it behooved  the boatman to be the first to express good intentions. As to the second tradition, perhaps those traveling downstream were assumed to be coming from home, while those traveling upstream were returning from market. News from home might have been valued more highly than news from the city. These are just speculations.

Fishing methods

Fishing, much of it done from boats, was the primary economic activity of many individuals and tribes in the marshes, and an important secondary one for others. Some fished on a subsistence basis, while others caught fish for market. The most common catch seems to have been different species of barbel, some of which are types of catfish, others being related to them. Several fishing methods were used, including spearing, netting, and poisoning. Also noodling – more on that in a bit.

Among those who used nets, differing tribes favored different types of nets and different associated methods, including the use of cast nets from shore, setting a net across a flowing channel, wading with a scoop net, and setting seines either from boats or by wading. Another shore-based fishing method involved setting up a barrier of reeds in a shallow area of current to provide fish with a resting place. When fish bumped up against the reeds, their movement alerted men waiting on the shore with spears

Fish poisoning was done in winter and early spring, before the water began to rise. Datura, a poison derived from a genus of plants of the same name, was purchased from local merchants, mixed with flour and chicken droppings or inserted into freshwater shrimps which were cast upon calm stretches of water. The fish ate the bait and the datura stupefied the fish, which floated to the surface where they could be easily collected. This was a more productive method of fishing than spearing.

Noodling (a Southern United States term for catching catfish by hand) was also practiced, particularly for a large fish called gessan, which was probably a type of barbel. Gessanwould shelter beneath floating islands of reeds, where they were safe from spear and net. They were targeted by teams of two men in a canoe. One man stayed in the boat while the other dove beneath the island with a rope tied around his leg. The swimmer would grab the fish (probably by the gills, if Southern practice is an indication) and be pulled back out by the man in the canoe.

Naturally, there was rivalry between different cultures and different tribes living in the marshes, and while this was probably based on simple “tribalism” (in the modern, nonanthropological sense), it manifested itself in a focus upon each others’ fishing habits. To quote Thesiger again:
“Far out on the lake, Berbera were fishing from boats. We could hear the beating of tins, and the smack of poles on water as they drove the fish into their nets. The Madan had a profound contempt for the Berbera and, except that they would eat with them, despised them hardly less than the Sabeans who were at the very bottom of the social scale. Yet no tribesman ever suggested to me that the Berbera were of a different origin. The prejudice was solely against their occupation. At first sight this appeared to be illogical, since the Madan themselves caught fish. But the Berbers netted fish to make money, whereas the Madan speared fish for food.”
This was changing however, and Madan were beginning to sell both fish and buffalo milk, which they previously had not done, instead keeping both commodities solely for their own use. Thus, when Thesiger visited, the Madan’s stated basis for their prejudice was in the process of shifting away from the occupation itself to the Berberas’ different method of fishing.

Madan fishing with spears from boats
Madan fishing with spears, their boats proceeding in line abreast to herd fish before them. One man paddles in the stern in each canoe. 

Of all the fishing methods employed by the Madam, the greatest prestige was associated with spearing – at least among the tribes with which Thesiger spent the most time. “In spring, before the water rose, the Madan collected in parties of forty or fifty canoes. They swept up and down a lagoon, in line and some four or five yards apart, while the spearmen tried to impale the fish as they broke back under the canoes. In summer they speared fish at night by the light of reed torches.”

During the height of fishing season, hundreds of boats might work a single lake at once. Merchants would set up buying stations on the shore, buying boatloads of fish, packing them in ice, and sending them by truck to Baghdad. (Fish were also salted.) There was fierce competition between groups employing spearing and netting methods, racing each other to the next favored spot and intentionally blocking each other’s access. Thesiger even described spearmen poaching a seine net already full of fish and in the process of being drawn in. This would seem to be strong evidence of the superiority of net fishing, but the spear-wielding Madan evidently didn’t see it that way.

Shuar Logboat at National Museum of Ecuador

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Following a two-year closure caused by money problems and the need for extensive renovation, the National Museum of Ecuador at La Casa de Cultura in Quito reopened last Saturday. The essentially new museum is attractive, sophisticated, and free.

In the current fashion of most museums, this one takes pains to tell stories. Artifacts are displayed in service of narratives constructed by the curators (and, one suspects, by the museum's board of directors and management). This means that one might not find an extensive display of items from a particular culture or artistic movement all in one place. Instead, one or a few such items might appear in a conceptually linear display with different types of items from different eras, movements, or cultures, in order to illustrate, for example, the evolution of a national identity, art movement, or economy, the widespread effects of colonialism, racism, or nationalism, or some other major theme. In terms of public education and opinion-shaping, this is probably a good approach, but for visitors interested in a particular, narrow subject, it can be disappointing or frustrating. Count me in the latter group, even while I acknowledge that the museum is a fine one and well worth a visit.

I was there on opening day (ticket #36) and went searching for boat-related content. In this post we'll look at one notable item, a beautiful 20th century logboat (i.e., dugout canoe) of the Shuar people of Ecuador's Amazonian region, on loan from Museo Pumapungo in Cuenca, Ecuador. (We posted previously about another Shuar logboat of a different design on display in Quito.) As always, click any image to enlarge it.


Shuar dugout canoe
The Shuar logboat is about 17' LOA with a narrow beam of about 15.5". Type of wood was not identified. (Dimensions are either eyeballed or based on armspan and handspan measurements.)
Shuar dugout canoe
The sides are straight and parallel. The ends are virtually identical, leading to square-ended  extensions or platforms.

Shuar dugout canoe
The interior sections are rather square. Sides and bottom are flat and at very close to right angles. The sides are about 7/8" thick at the sheer. The bottom is roughly 1.5" - 1.75" thick.

Shuar dugout canoe
The platforms/extensions are fairly narrow, rising out of thickened "gunwales" near the ends. A slight ridge appears on the underside of the platform.


Shuar dugout canoe end view
The exterior of the hull shows rounded chines and a flat bottom. A single bent nail appears sticking out to the right of the end extension/platform. It does not appear to be robust enough to serve as a tying-off point. Might it be a guide for a fishing line?
Shaur logboat detail
Even while the sides and bottom retain a sharp angle between them, the interior hollowing tapers and rises to a sharp point, leaving a large amount of timber intact at the ends. This visually appealing feature probably helps the hull resist cracking.

Shuar dugout canoe adze marks
The boat was hollowed out using an adze, marks from which are clearly visible.

Shuar dugout canoe decoration
Applied decoration near one end does not appear to be paint. Perhaps it is derived from a plant resin (?).

Shuar dugout canoe decoration
Decoration near midships. Ax and/or adze marks can be seen on the exterior of the hull. 

Shuar dugout canoe paddle
The paddle is about 5'6" long, but the upper end of the shaft is missing, along with any end-grip that may have existed (unlikely). The shaft and blade are carved from the whole. The shaft is flat on its front and back surfaces, but the sides are rounded and the edges are relieved. The blade has wide shoulders and tapers toward a broadly rounded tip.  

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Ancient Boat Artifacts at National Museum of Ecuador

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Watercraft played central roles in the economic, social, and spiritual lives of Ecuador’s prehispanic coastal cultures. Referring to the period of the region’s first civilizations, from 2000 to 200 BCE, Karen Olsen Bruhns states that “Transportation on the coast was … almost entirely by boat, and canoe models are common in the art of the region.”

Artifacts on display at the newly renovated National Museum of Ecuador in Quito demonstrate the importance of watercraft to Ecuador’s prehispanic populations and illustrate some of the ways in which they were used.


Canoe paddlers, Tolita culture
The ceramic canoe paddlers in this and the following image, from the Tolita culture (600 BCE to 400 CE) have been found in significant numbers (see previous post for similar figures of Tolita paddlers), testifying to the importance of the canoeist in daily life. (Click any image to enlarge.) 
Canoe paddlers, Tolita culture
The bulging cheeks show that the paddlers are chewing coca leaves. Since coca is not native to Ecuador’s coast, this suggests regular trade between the coast and the Andes or even the Amazon. And because the medicinal effects of coca at countering altitude sickness are irrelevant on the coast, it may indicate that even common people – not just shamans – used coca for its stimulant/hallucinogenic effects.
Model of a Tolita canoeist with a stabilized logboat
A Tolita paddler in his ceramic canoe. Unlike the previous paddlers, who sat with their legs spread, this one sits with his legs together. Behind him are the remains of a second paddler with his legs spread to clear the first one’s hips, while in the bow are the feet of an otherwise missing standing or squatting passenger or high-status individual. The modeling of the complete paddler is more sophisticated than in the previous photos.
Model of a Tolita canoeist with a stabilized logboat
The canoe has stabilizer boards attached to both sides, at or just above the waterline. In case of a sudden loss of balance, these boards would provide some resistance to further tipping  and give the paddlers a precious moment in which to apply bracing strokes to prevent a capsize.
Jama Coaque figurine-drinking vessel
The item, from the Jama Coaque culture (350 BCE – 1532 CE) is identified on the exhibit card as a “paddler attached to a vessel” (Remero adosado a recipiente). I question the identification and suggest that the figure represents a warrior, not a paddler, as the item he holds looks more like a spear than a paddle to my eyes, and I have not seen the kneeling posture in other prehispanic depictions of Ecuadorian canoeists. The figure’s attachment to a drinking vessel strongly suggests ritual usage, which is not surprising for a warrior figure, somewhat more so for that of a canoeist. If the figure does indeed represent a paddler, this places canoeists at a high level of social significance.
Silver raft model from Bahia culture
A model raft in silver from the Bahia culture (500 BCE to 650 CE), manned by two paddlers, a steersman, and an individual of high status.
Silver raft model from Bahia culture
The logs are lashed together with silver wire. The figures are severely flattened sagitally, meant to be viewed only frontally, regardless of their orientation on the raft.
Silver raft model from Bahia culture
The longer logs are outboard and shorter ones inboard, counter to common practice of Ecuador’s later Manteño culture (500-1532 CE) and of many other raft-building cultures around the world, in which longer logs tend to be placed closer to the centerline, giving the raft a pointed bow (and sometimes stern as well).
Manteño tools for collecting Spondylus
Tools used by the Manteño culture to collect thorny oysters (Spondylus). On the left is a weight used by divers to enable them to descend rapidly to the depth where spondylus are found. On the right is a chisel used to loosen the mollusks from the rocks to which they attach themselves. Spondylus was important to many of Ecuador’s prehispanic coastal cultures for its spiritual symbolism, for the production of jewelry and other ornaments, and as an item of exchange.
Manteño collecting Spondylus
A fish's-eye depiction of diving for spondylus from a three-log raft using tools like those in the previous photo.

Not explicitly depicted by these artifacts are other activities for which prehispanic coastal Ecuadorians used watercraft, including: fishing for finfish, carrying produce and trade items, and traveling for social purposes and for war. According to Bruhns, “Canoes seem to have been the major means of transport in northern Ecuador, whereas the river rafts appear to have been much used in the huge, meandering rivers of the Guayas Basin [at the mouth of which is Guayaquil, modern Ecuador’s largest city], later being converted to coast-wise transport as well.”

Source: Karen Olsen Bruhns quotations from Ancient South America, Cambridge University Press, 1994 (reprint 1999), pp.148-9

A Logboat Under Construction in Amazonian Ecuador

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In June, I went searching for logboats along a portion of the drainage of the Rio Napo in el Oriente -- that part of Ecuador that lies to the east of the Andes Mountains. The Napo and all other rivers here drain ultimately into the Amazon.


Kichwa canoe builder
Fernando Vargas-Tapuy, Kichwa farmer and canoe builder, at the base of a chunchu tree. (Click any image to enlarge.)
On my first day in the forest, accompanied by a guide/translator and a driver, I explored the Rio Jatunyaco, a tributary of the Napo. In the dispersed rural community of Ichu Urku, I met Fernando Vargas-Tapuy. Like almost everyone in this area, Fernando is Kichwa (i.e., Quichua). He lives with his wife and toddler daughter on a small farm where they grow cacao, maize, yuca, plantain, and guava, consuming 5-10% of it and selling the surplus in the nearby city of Tena. He also pans for gold in the Rio Yucho Pino (in spite of the "rio" in its name, this tributary of the Jatunyaco is really just a mountain stream), typically collecting 1.0 to 1.5 grams in a day of work. Fernando's farm has no electricity, but he does have mobile phone coverage. 

Fernando told my guide that with the help of an uncle, he was building a dugout canoe nearby, and he was willing to take us there to see it. With Fernando leading, we walked through his farm, across muddy fields, then up a slick, narrow, steep path over a low mountain. Although the sun was overcast, the humidity was oppressive, and the 40- minute walk proved to be the hardest hike I have ever done. At one point, Fernando stopped to cut me a walking stick with his machete. This helped a great deal, especially when crossing and recrossing the rocky Rio Yucho Pino several times. 


dugout canoe construction in Ecuador's Amazon
Fernando at the canoe building site, high on the side of a steep hill.
High on the mountain we came to the canoe building site. The canoe was being carved where the trunk had been felled, on a fairly steep slope. At first sight, it looked abandoned, for it was full of sodden wood chips and partially covered in fungus. In fact, it was being actively worked, but the environment is so moist, and fungus grows so rapidly there, that a pause of just a few days suffices to give rise to a substantial crop. 

The canoe had been under construction since April and, working with his uncle, Fernando expected to finish it in June. It would not be moved, however, until the flow in the Rio Yucho Pino went down. Too steep to paddle, the Yucho Pino represents an impediment, not a canoe corridor, until it dries out. 

When it does, Fernando will call for a minga -- a Kichwa tradition in which the people of a community work together in a system of shared obligations. Approximately a dozen men will help carry the boat down the mountain and to the river, a process that will take about two days. Fernando will provide food and or drink to his helpers, but no payment. What is expected is Fernando's participation the next time a neighbor calls a minga.

Fernando plans to use the canoe to transport his produce to Tena and to bring his daughter to school when she is old enough. He says he will paddle it himself and not fit it with an outboard engine. With more than three people aboard or a heavy cargo, more than one paddler would be required. Based on observations of other canoeists nearby, I believe the canoe will also be poled as often as it is paddled, although I did not discuss this with Fernando. 


dugout canoe construction in Ecuador's Amazon
The canoe measures 7.50 meters LOA and 61cm beam. It is roughly 36 cm from the exterior bottom to the top of the gunwale and 25cm deep on the interior, but according to the builder, the bottom will be hollowed another 5cm or so, for a final interior depth of about 30cm and a bottom thickness of about 6cm. The sides are 27mm thick at the sheer. 
dugout canoe, Ecuador, detail
Fungus growth is apparent on the exterior. Rough exterior shaping was done with a chainsaw, tool marks of which are visible.
stump from canoe tree, Ecuador
Fernando called the tree from which the trunk was cut a chunchu, the wood of which he says is hard and durable.  He expects the canoe's lifespan to be four years. The stump was deeply lobed, not at all round. Its extreme measurements at the cut were 142cm x 86cm. (A blue pen was placed on the trunk for scale.)

Chunchu tree, Ecuador's Amazon
A chunchu tree on Fernando's farm -- not nearly as large in girth as the tree he and his uncle cut on the mountain for the canoe.
leaves of Chunchu tree
Leaves and branches of a chunchu.
dugout canoe building in el Oriente, Ecuador
After initial shaping with a chainsaw, the canoe is slab-sided with angular ends. The forefoot will be cut back later for an easier entry, and the square chines will be relieved for a round bottom. Fernando took a few swipes with his machete near the top of the bow to show that the red-colored wood was sound beneath the covering of fungus. 
dugout canoe in el Oriente, Ecuador
Another view of the rough-cut bow.
dugout canoe stern in el Oriente, Ecuador
A seat for the paddler is carved into the stern just forward of the aft platform. This feature is typical of the canoes on the upper Napo drainage.
dugout canoe stern and builder in el Oriente, Ecuador
A more complete view of the stern.
dugout canoe detail, el Oriente, Ecuador
From the cross-hatch marks in the bottom interior, it appears that gross material removal was performed with a chainsaw, although I did not confirm this with the builder. Later shaping was done with an axe and two-handed and one-hand adzes, marks of which are clearly visible on the sides.
dugout canoe transom, el Oriente, Ecuador
The end of the trunk split when the tree was felled. A cleat was nailed across the transom to prevent the split from spreading further. A large percentage of the dugouts I saw in this area were split at the stern, with heavy wire more typically used to prevent further splitting. 


Log Rafts on Ecuador’s Rio Napo

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While investigating logboats in the Rio Napo drainage in Ecuador in June, I observed six log rafts within a few kilometers of each other – and no others elsewhere in the same drainage. I do not know if this clustering of rafts was particular to a limited area or if further investigation would reveal more widespread usage.  

According to my guide and one other informant – a woman on a raft with her children on the Rio Arajuno, a tributary of the Napo – the rafts serve four or five functions. When observed, the woman's raft was tied to the shore and she was using it as a stationary platform on which to do her family’s laundry, the river bank near her home being too steep and muddy to allow her to do it directly on the shore. She indicated that she also uses rafts to cross the river (the reason for which is unclear) and to deliver her farm’s produce downstream to the nearest road crossing, where it is picked up by a truck for transport and sale in the nearest market town. The downstream trip with produce is a one-way excursion, there being no practical method to bring the raft back upstream. At least some of the time, therefore, the raft itself may be sold for its logs at the end of the voyage. According to my guide, rafts are also built by some of the numerous "jungle lodges" in the area to give tourists the experience of rafting in the Amazon basin  quite a different experience, by the way, from the whitewater rafting that is popular in the foothills of the nearby Andes in inflatable rafts.

All the rafts observed exhibited strong similarities in their basic construction. Their main logs were all bound together by two crossbeams locked in place by pegs driven obliquely into the tops of the main logs, and the crossbeams were lashed to the pegs. All had at least some of their main logs cut to a point in plan view at the (presumed) bow end for hydrodynamic efficiency. According to my guide, the main logs are typically balsa wood, although to my untutored view, they did not all appear to be of the same wood. I observed a push-pole on one of the rafts and presume this is the common method of propulsion, no paddles or other propulsive devices being seen. 

Beyond these similarities, though, the rafts exhibited distinctive differences that seem to indicate that the technology, while useful and surely rooted in tradition, is not rigidly bound by it. For example: the rafts were built of 3, 4, 5 or 6 logs – quite a range of variation in just six examples; some of the rafts had additional crossbeams above the crossed locking pegs    others did not; some of the pegs and crossbeams were milled lumber    others were not; and the lashing materials varied widely. The photos and captions below explore these similarities and differences in designs and construction. 

log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
The most archetypal of the six rafts has five logs, pointed at the bow end (left of photo) with two sets of cross-beams. (Click any image to enlarge.)
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
Each set of cross-beams consists of two beams, one atop the other, held in place and separated by pairs of pegs driven into the main logs in an X pattern. The beams and pegs are lashed together with what appear to be narrow palm leaves (possibly pandanus?).
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
The upper crossbeam is lashed indirectly to the lower one, and not to the pegs. Its purpose may be to spread the upper legs of the X'd pegs, locking them into the main logs.

log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
Just forward of the forward crossbeam assembly is a pair of crossed pegs set in the top in the middle log. Their purpose is unknown: perhaps they were placed incorrectly and could not be easily removed.
family on log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
The informant doing laundry with her children on a six-log raft. Most of the logs are tapered in plan view at the front. The boy wearing red shorts is sitting on a bench whose legs extend between the logs. The bench is not fastened to the raft and probably does not represent a permanent part of its furniture. 
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
Lashing and peg arrangement of the forward cross-beam assembly. The lower crossbeam appears to be let into the upper surface of the outboard log.
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
The cross-plank in front of the woman is nailed in to least one of the logs. It is unclear if the plank she is sitting on is fastened or loose. The lower aft crossbeam also appears to be let into the upper surface of the outboard main log. 
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
Unlike the previous rafts, the main logs on this 3-log raft are spaced away from each other, not adjacent. The outer logs are much larger in diameter than the central one and their bow ends are tapered both in plan view and from the bottom to the top for a true boat-bow shape. The smaller central log is only slightly tapered in plan view. 
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
The front crossbeam is a single beam. On the port log, it is secured by a single peg placed aft of it.
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
The aft crossbeam assembly consists of two crossbeams, the upper one being a piece of recycled milled lumber. The port (foreground) lashing is old fishnet. The starboard lashing is a piece of insulated electrical wire. There are no lashings at the middle log. Forward of this assembly (to the left) is a piece of milled lumber nailed into all three logs and serving as an additional crossbeam.
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
This four-log raft was found aground on a gravel bar in the middle of the Rio Napo, probably washed from its owner's shore front home by heavy rains a couple days previously. The logs are all adjacent, the outer ones being much larger in diameter than the inner ones and milled flat on their upper surfaces. The inner logs, however, extend somewhat further (but not equally so) than the outer ones. The ends of the outer logs are boat-shaped; the ends of the inner logs are square.
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
At the opposite end, however, one of the inner logs is tapered to a boat shape while the other remains square. Both outer logs have notches cut in the upper edges of their tapered sections, probably to hold ropes which are no longer in evidence. Perhaps the logs were previously used in another raft which was held together by lashing alone instead of the pegs-and-lashing method.
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
Next to one of the crossbeam assemblies are a pair of vertical rods that stick up more than half a meter from the upper surface of the outer logs. Their purpose is unknown. The crossbeam is a single piece of milled lumber
log raft, Amazon Basin, Ecuador
The other crossbeam, also a single piece of milled lumber (but of different dimensions) is lashed carelessly with old fishnet. One of the pairs of pegs in an outer log (left foreground) does not enclose the crossbeam, providing support to the notion that the outer logs previously belonged to a different raft.
End view of the same raft shows that the smaller, inner logs are set lower than the larger outer ones.


The Survival of the Log Canoe

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Persistence of Logboats in Latin America: a framework to assess prospects of survival
(This essay is slightly modified from one written for a course in the maritime aspects of culture at University of Southampton.)

Introduction

Vernacular watercraft are disappearing from many parts of the world (McGrail, 2001:201, 211; Blue, 2003:334; Pham et al., 2010:274), under pressure from a variety of forces often related to modernization. As vernacular boats represent living parts of the world’s maritime heritage and may, through the practice of ethnoarchaeology, offer insights into maritime archaeology per se, it is important to document as many of them and their uses as possible while they remain (Figure 1). With an unknown but large number of boat types at risk, a method by which to assess the level of threat in each instance would be useful, so that documentation efforts might be prioritized.

Measuring a logboat (McGrail, 2001:209)
Figure 1: Documenting a boat type threatened with extinction. (McGrail, 2001:209)
This essay proposes a simple framework of supply-and-demand-based factors to assess the survival prospects of traditional boat types. The essay examines examples of logboat use in Latin America found in recent literature to test the method’s utility, but the framework will accommodate all vernacular boat types and locales.

Craft traditions

A boatbuilding craft tradition embodies “a system of ideas about what boats and ships are and how they should be designed and constructed. This will impose constraints in terms of design parameters on the practice of construction” (Adams, 2010:301, 2013:24). But, Adams notes, while traditions exist to protect “best practice,” they are also capable of adapting in response to outside influences.

As will be shown below, the construction of logboats in Latin America occurs within craft traditions. Although these traditions vary from one society to the next, common among them is the conception of the boat as a tree that is felled and hollowed by one’s own labour or with the assistance of others in the community, using hand tools. Changes might occur in building methods over time (for example, the adoption of power tools) without fundamentally impairing the tradition of producing boats of a generally similar type by generally similar means. But at some level of change, a tradition becomes defunct. For example, a boatbuilder who shifts from the one-off production of logboats to the mass production of fiberglass hulls could not maintain the same conception about how boats are designed and built.

Understanding how a logboat building tradition responds to change is therefore central to assessing its prospects for survival.

Supply and demand

For a technology to persist in any society, there must be a sufficient number of people who want or need it, and a sufficient number of people willing and able to provide it. In other words, supply and demand must both remain positive. In most cases, this involves monetary payment or barter for goods or services of comparable value, although there are instances in which logboats are exchanged on other terms – for example, through a generalized practice of reciprocity (described below).

As noted by Lemmonier, “the rejection or adoption of technological features” (1993:18) – in other words, demand for technology in a given form – is not solely a matter of practical utility and economics, but also involves issues of status, group identity, social relations, and symbolism. Considering logboats, then, as a specific form of the general technology of “small boats,” an analysis of demand, and of the forces of supply that respond to it, requires that we look at a variety of factors, some straightforwardly utilitarian or economic in nature, and others ideological.

Demand factors

Although supply and demand are inextricably intertwined, it is convenient to address them separately. This section explores the positive and negative effects of various social and economic phenomena on logboat demand.

Usage

In several locations where logboats traditionally have been used as fishing craft, fewer individuals now fish for subsistence and more fish commercially, using larger boats and boats that are otherwise better suited to fishing with modern equipment (McSweeney, 2004:642; Heyman and Granados-Dieseldorff, 2012:139; Fuquen Gomez, 2014:192; Orofino et al., 2017:2783-2786), reducing demand for logboats. Decline in demand has also been attributed to an overall drop in fishing effort (Orofino et al., 2017:2785).

On the other hand, new niches occasionally arise which can be exploited effectively with logboats. This was the case in Santa Catarina, Brazil (Orofino et al., 2017:2789), and in Central America’s Mosquitia region (McSweeney, 2004:642), where logboats came into use as platforms from which to dive for lobsters for an emergent export market.

Construction and materials

Users may shift from logboats to other boat types because they perceive advantages in other boatbuilding methods and materials, notably plank-on-frame, glass-reinforced plastic (i.e., fiberglass), and metal (McSweeney, 2004:642; Orofino et al., 2017:2783, 2784-2786). Although a full discussion of the performance advantages and disadvantages of these methods/materials relative to logboats is outside the scope of this essay, it is relevant that all three can be used to build larger craft than is possible with logboats, and the latter two offer superior durability.

Some users, however, valorize logboats over other materials because they are perceived as being safer, due to their inherent buoyancy, and quieter when moving through the water, and so less likely to scare away fish (Orofino et al., 2017:2784). The higher purchase price of other types of boats, and the very fact that logboats are not durable in the tropics and so require frequent replacement, also tend to support a steady market for logboats in some areas (McSweeney, 2004:641).

Economics

Logboats can thrive where goods and services are exchanged through nonfinancial transactions (Gilmore et al., 2002:12; Fuquen Gomez, 2014:176-181). As boat users become more highly integrated into a modern cash economy, however, they become more likely to purchase ready-built boats of other materials (Heyman and Granados-Dieseldorff, 2012:139; Fuquen Gomez, 2014:220). The reason for this preference is unclear in some cases, as many logboat builders operate in a cash economy, and even those who practice barter may also accept payment in cash (Fuquen Gomez, 2014:173-174). In fact, market economics are central to the practice of some logboat builders (McSweeney, 2004; Fuquen Gomez, 2014:176-177; Orofino et al., 2017:2789). It seems probable that fishers who are not closely integrated in cash economies are more likely to fish for subsistence, and logboats continue to suffice for their relatively small-scale needs. In contrast, fishers who are more involved in modern cash economies may require larger boats to compete effectively.

As lesser-developed societies become more closely integrated within modern market economies, commercial credit becomes available to some individuals, making possible the acquisition of larger boats and thus depressing demand for logboats. However, owners of larger boats often find their costs of operation unsupportable. In response, many downsize to logboats (Emdad Haque et al., 2015:405). Meanwhile, individuals who do not have access to commercial credit may rely upon informal credit arrangements with family and friends. Such loans are typically for smaller amounts and tend to be used to purchase logboats (Emdad Haque et al., 2015:405). Being less costly than other boat types, logboats thus continue to provide utility by which poorer individuals can live by fishing.

Government policy

Government regulations may influence demand for logboats. In Santa Catarina, fishers previously stored their logboats in boat houses to protect them from the sun. When new rules banned boat houses from beaches, logboats became less practical and demand dropped off (Orofino et al., 2017:2784-2786, table 2), because the lack of sun protection significantly shortened the boats’ lifespan.

Although I have found no other published examples from Latin America, one could posit other common forms of government policies that could (and likely do) influence logboat demand. For example, policies that promote commercial fishing might result in reducing the fish stocks upon which artisanal fishers depend, while policies that promote tourism might have the effect of displacing them from the beaches where they operate.

On the other hand, policies that protect artisanal fishing or fish stocks or restrict coastal development could have the effect of supporting demand for logboats.

Transportation infrastructure

Demand for logboats remains strong in many areas that lack terrestrial transportation infrastructure (Gilmore et al., 2002; McSweeney, 2004:641; Fuquen Gomez, 2014:10). The construction of new roads and bridges tends to depress demand (pers. obs.).

Social stability

Where traditional lifeways prevail, logboats play a central role in people’s economic and social lives, and demand for them remains strong. For example, within a remote community of Maijuna people in the Peruvian Amazon, logboats serve multiple purposes, including hunting, fishing, traveling, communication, and carrying agricultural and forest produce. One informant observed:

“(I)t is very necessary to have a canoe [i.e., logboat]. I cannot live without a canoe because you cannot go anywhere (without one) . . . Sure you can go and fish for a little while with a friend’s canoe but you cannot take it for a long time. If you have a family you need to own a canoe” (Gilmore et al., 2002:12).

A similar situation obtains in the community of Coquí, in the Chocó region of Columbia (Figure 2). Although more closely integrated within larger economic systems than the Maijuna community mentioned above, Coquí remains somewhat isolated from the “outside world” by a complete lack of road connections (Fuquen Gomez, 2014:10). Fuquen Gomez observed:

Boats are fundamental for the people of the Chocó littoral. They are seenacross the landscape, being used and mentioned daily in a remarkable variety ofcontexts. They are central to people and their activities. Many such activities cannotbe conceived in the absence of logboats and therefore, the role they play in theirdaily life is essential. Boats allow people to travel to their farms, and to transportback the production of their main agricultural crops for their own consumption orto be traded. They represent a source of income to the boatbuilders and theirfamilies, by being themselves a product with a commercial value that is greatlyappreciated and widely used. Moreover, the place boats take in the lives of thepeoples (sic) is easily perceived, as they are not only physically present but alsocontinuously mentioned in riddles and games, in legends, and stories. Boatspermeate all sorts of social spheres both physically and symbolically . . . ” (2014:173).

A logboat on a river in Coquí, Columbia. (Fuquen Gomez, 2014:120)
Figure 2. Logboats play a central role in the lives of the people of Coquí. (Fuquen Gomez, 2014:120)
Conversely, where traditional ways lose adherence, so does the valorization of traditional means of transportation supplied through traditional methods of exchange and produced by traditional craft methods. As a Santa Catarina logboat builder stated, ‘‘The culture has no value, it is dead, it ended, the carpenter is not valued, paid well or hired anymore’’(Orofino et al., 2017:2786). Although referring specifically to the difficulty of recruiting new workers to build logboats (i.e., the supply side of the transaction), the informant is effectively identifying a demand-side problem in his society: boatbuilding pays poorly because users do not value logboats highly.

Supply Factors

As with demand, a single phenomenon can have both positive and negative effects on logboat supply, depending upon the particulars of the craft tradition.

Access to trees

Access to suitable trees is obviously essential for the construction of logboats. In several locales, access is restricted relative to previous times, impairing boatbuilders’ ability to pursue the craft (McSweeney, 2004:650-652; Heyman and Granados-Dieseldorff, 2012:139; Orofino et al., 2017:2783-2786).

Restrictions on access to logs stem from: environmental regulations limiting the cutting of trees (Orofino et al., 2017:2784-2786); over-logging (McSweeney, 2004:646); transfer of ownership of the forest “commons” to commercial forestry companies  (McSweeney, 2004:650-652); the “colonization” of previously common areas by new settlers (McSweeney, 2004:650); and excessive fees charged for timber cutting rights (McSweeney, 2004:650-652).

These restrictions can increase the time builders must spend searching for trees and the distance logs must be transported, thereby increasing their costs (Orofino et al., 2017:2784-2786). On the other hand, improvements in roads and trucking services can make long-distance transport of logs easier (Orofino et al., 2017:2787-2788), ameliorating these problems in some areas.

Where access to trees of the preferred species is restricted, builders may substitute less-favoured species (Gilmore et al., 2002; Fuquen Gomez, 2014:131). Species substitution may force related changes in logboat design and building techniques (Gilmore et al., 2002) (Figure 3). Both of these phenomena illustrate adaptability within the craft tradition, the implications of which are discussed below.

Maijuna boatbuilders expanding a logboat with fire (Gilmore et al., 2002:24)
Figure 3. Maijuna boatbuilders began expanding logboats only after their preferred tree species became unavailable, forcing them to use narrower logs. (Gilmore et al., 2002:24)
Labour

Logboat builders report difficulties attracting labour in general and skilled workers and apprentices in particular, these problems being related to low rates of pay and the existence of alternative employment opportunities (McSweeney, 2004:650-652; Orofino et al., 2017:2784-2786), including other forms of boatbuilding (Walter et al., 2017:574-575). As a result, the majority of logboat builders in some communities are elderly (Orofino et al., 2017:2784-2786; Walter et al., 2017:574-575), and age-related health problems and the generally arduous nature of the work causes some builders to drop out of the market (Orofino et al., 2017:2785-2786). In coastal Brazil, the attractiveness and availability of alternative employment opportunities for younger workers is related to their generally higher levels of education, which is a result of government education policies (Walter et al., 2017:574-575).

Age is not invariably an impediment, however. Among the Tawahka Sumu people in Mosquitia, older men possess many advantages over younger ones, including stronger kin relationships (a source of unpaid labour), established business relationships (which gives them better access to suitable trees at good prices), and better access to credit and to information about market conditions in downstream market towns (McSweeney, 2004: 650-652).

Builders in some societies have access to unpaid labour through kin obligations (McSweeney, 2004:650), mingas(Gilmore et al., 2002:20; McSweeney, 2004:650; Fuquen Gomez, 2014:217-220; pers. obs.), or less formalized modes of cooperation. The minga is a common phenomenon in rural Latin America, in which members of a community are enlisted by an individual to assist with a specific large-scale task (such as hauling a log from the forest or carving it), with an implicit promise that the favour will be returned at an unspecified time in a manner also unspecified. Unpaid labour obviously enhances builders’ ability to supply logboats.

Materials and methods

The presence of alternative boatbuilding materials and methods (i.e., plank-on-frame, fiberglass, metal) does not directly impair a builder’s ability to produce logboats, but it has negative supply-side effects nonetheless. Many builders now choose to work exclusively with the newer methods (Walter et al., 2017:574-575), evidently because there is stronger demand for them in their local markets.

Economics

Logboat building remains remunerative for some builders (Fuquen Gomez, 2014:177). It can provide a better income than small-scale agriculture and, if pursued only part-time, can provide important incremental income and income during periods of agricultural “down time” (McSweeney, 2004:652-653; Orofino et al., 2017:2789).

To the extent that builders are willing to barter for goods or services (Fuquen Gomez, 2014:176-181), they make logboats easier for users to obtain and thereby strengthen demand. The casual nature of the business thus works in some ways to preserve the craft. But because logboat building tends to be practiced on a small scale, its practitioners have limited access to commercial credit with which to obtain logs and equipment (McSweeney, 2004:650-652), and this, of course, works against its persistence.

Social structures

Among the more powerful forces for the logboat’s persistence is the fact that its construction occurs within a craft tradition, and traditions are by definition conservative. For example, the Tawahka Sumu’s very identity is “tied to the production and export of canoes. Their regional reputation in this regard dates from at least the 1820s, continues to the present, and remains a source of some cultural pride” (McSweeney, 2004:648, internal references omitted).

Logboat builders have strong connections with their communities. They may be themselves fishers or otherwise use the boats in the same ways as their “customers” (Gilmore et al., 2002; Fuquen Gomez, 2014:147-153; Orofino et al., 2017:2775), and so feel emotionally bound to provide the service of logboat building to their communities (Orofino et al., 2017:2782).

Adaptability

Another characteristic of craft traditions that works toward the persistence of logboats is adaptability or flexibility. Among examples noted above, flexibility in selection of tree species and adaptability in production methods to accommodate them, as well as flexibility in terms of exchange, represent positive factors for supply.

On the other hand, builders’ adaptability can also function against the logboat’s survival. Where demand shifts toward other kinds of boats, some builders shift production accordingly. For suppliers, this may not represent the abandonment of tradition: it may be a logical adaptation within their tradition as boatbuilders, as opposed to logboatbuilders. Along the Rio Napo in Ecuador, end-users make little distinction between logboats and plank canoes of similar form (pers. obs.), and builders may have a similar perspective. A builder who has adopted a chainsaw for felling trees may see it as a natural transition to use the chainsaw to mill planks, and thereby produce more boats and greater profit from a given tree.

Conclusion

This paper proposes supply-and-demand as a framework within which to assess a vernacular boat type’s prospects for survival in a given society. It has focused on logboat production in Latin America because an appropriate number of examples was found in recent literature for convenient analysis, not because they represent a single, coherent tradition. (They do not.) For the framework to be practically applied, a detailed ethnographic description of a boat type’s role in a single society is necessary. Such a description exists in Fuquen Gomez’s thesis (2014). This paper uses examples from several societies as a heuristic, to consider a wider variety of supply and demand factors and cultural responses to them, and thus further explore the framework’s utility.

As Adams (2010:301, 2013:24) makes clear, ideology and tradition play key roles in craft traditions. As long as these factors are considered along with more obvious utilitarian and economic issues, the supply/demand framework provides a useful tool with which to assess the survival prospects of vernacular watercraft.

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References cited

Adams, J. (2010) ‘Ships and boats as Archaeological Source Material’, World archaeology, 32(3), pp. 292–310. doi: 10.1080/00438240120048644.
Adams, J. (2013) A Maritime Archaeology of Ships: Innovation and Social Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Blue, L. (2003) ‘Maritime Ethnography: The Reality of Analogy’, in Beltrame, C. (ed.) Boats, Ships and Shipyards: Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology, Venice 2000. Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp. 334–338.
Emdad Haque, C. et al. (2015) ‘Small-scale fishers’ adaptations to change: the role of formal and informal credit in Paraty, Brazil’, Marine Policy. Elsevier, 51, pp. 401–407. doi: 10.1016/j.marpol.2014.10.002.
Fuquen Gomez, C. (2014) Logboats of Coquí: An ethnographic approach to maritime material culture. Doctoral thesis. University of Southampton.
Gilmore, M. P., Eshbaugh, W. H. and Greenberg, A. M. (2002) ‘The use, construction, and importance of canoes among the Maijuna of the Peruvian Amazon’, Economic Botany. Springer-Verlag, 56(1), pp. 10–26. doi: 10.1663/0013-0001(2002)056[0010:catuca]2.0.co;2.
Heyman, W. D. and Granados-Dieseldorff, P. (2012) ‘The voice of the fishermen of the Gulf of Honduras: Improving regional fisheries management through fisher participation’, Fisheries Research. Elsevier B.V., 125–126, pp. 129–148. doi: 10.1016/j.fishres.2012.02.016.
Lemonnier, P. (1993) ‘Introduction’, in Lemonnier, P. (ed.) Technological Choices: Transformation in material cultures since the Neolithic. London: Routledge, pp. 1–35.
McGrail, S. (2001) ‘The “Boats of South Asia” Project’, South Asian Studies, 17(1), pp. 209–211. doi: 10.1080/02666030.2001.9628602.
McSweeney, K. (2004) ‘The Dugout Canoe Trade in Central America’s Mosquitia: Approaching Rural Livelihoods Through Systems of Exchange’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(3), pp. 638–661. Available at: http://content.ebscohost.com/ContentServer.asp?EbscoContent=dGJyMMTo50Sep7Q4zOX0OLCmr1Cep7BSr6u4SK%2BWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGptk%2B3rLJNuePfgeyx43zx1%2B6B&T=P&P=AN&S=R&D=sih&K=14228375(Accessed: 16 November 2018).
Orofino, G. G., Roque, T. V., da Fonseca Kruel, V. S., Peroni, N. and Hanazaki, N. (2017) ‘Local knowledge about dugout canoes reveals connections between forests and fisheries’, Environment, Development and Sustainability, pp. 1–21. doi: 10.1007/s10668-017-0016-8.
Pham, C., Blue, L. and Palmer, C. (2010) ‘The traditional boats of Vietnam, an overview’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 39(2), pp. 258–277. doi: 10.1111/j.1095-9270.2010.00266.x.
Walter, Y., Kindlein, W. J., Walter, T. and Marielce De Cássia Ribeiro Tosta, M. de (2017) ‘Artisinal Boatbuilding in Brazilian Shores: Craftsmen, Boatyards, and Manufacturing Process’, International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, 10(6), pp. 572–584. Available at: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1988423214/fulltextPDF/64BF29E71BBC476CPQ/7?accountid=13963(Accessed: 18 November 2018).

  

Why Oak?: Material Choice in British and Irish Logboats

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(This post is slightly revised from a paper submitted for a class in Materials, Technology and Social Life at University of Southampton, 2018.)


Referring to wooden tubs, buckets, flasks, and cups recovered at Sutton Hoo, Comey (2013:109) wrote, “A fundamental aspect of any wooden object is the species of tree or woody shrub from which it originates. Identification of species is an important consideration for understanding these wooden vessels and this is true of all archaeological wood….”

The consideration is important because material choices reflect cultural decisions and practices (Conneller, 2011). The act of producing any wooden object is mediated through and by the material. Obtaining the wood, producing and selecting appropriate tools, and the techniques or methods employed to work it – all steps in the châine opératoire– are cultural acts influenced by the material (Hurcombe, 2014). The finished object thus reflects culture independently of the use to which it is put. As described by Conneller, “materials are meaningful and these meanings are reciprocally generated in the varied processes of people’s engagement with them. Tracing these connections reveals past worlds” (2011:9).

Logboats are the largest and most technologically sophisticated portable objects recovered from pre-Bronze Age Britain and Ireland (Figure 1). Introduced in the Mesolithic or Neolithic, they remained in use in the Atlantic Archipelago until the second half of the second millennium AD (Gregory, 1997:23-24; Lanting, 1997), fulfilling important economic and social functions in a range of applications, including transportation, fishing, and warfare. With wood types and dates known for hundreds of archaeologically-recorded logboats (Lanting, 1997-1998), an analysis of the choice of wood used in their construction might prove revealing of “lost worlds.”

Figure 1
Discovery of the Brigg logboat.
Discovery of the Brigg logboat. At 14.78 metres long and an estimated 2,809 kg (McGrail, 1978a:171), it was the largest logboat in the archaeology of Britain and Ireland. (image: Illustrated London News, 1886. Click any image to enlarge.)
Although dozens – perhaps hundreds – of additional European finds have been made in the more than two decades since Lanting’s summary and analysis of logboat dates (1997), I have not updated his list, believing that the patterns he identified are unlikely to change significantly by the addition of the new data. Likewise, patterns present in the summary works of McGrail (1978a, 1978b, for England and Wales), Mowat (1996, for Scotland), Gregory (1997, for Ireland and Scotland), and Fry (2000, for Northern Ireland) are assumed to remain substantially unchanged and no attempt has been made to gather new data specific to Britain and Ireland, other than by reference to Lanting (1997-1998).

A Preponderance of Oak

Wood types identified in archaeological logboats in Britain and Ireland are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1
Archaeological Logboats by Wood Genus, Britain and Ireland

England and Wales1
Scotland2
Ireland
Total

#
%
#
%
#
%
#
%
Oak
76
96
58
92
1683
98
302
96.5
Pine
1
1.3
5
8


6
1.9
Elm
1
1.3




1
0.3
Ash
1
1.3




1
0.3
Alder




24
1.1
2
0.6
Poplar




14
0.6
1
0.3
1 McGrail, 1978a:309
2 Gregory, 1997:162
3 Gregory, 1997:162
4 Lanting, 1997-1998-1998:628/table 1

Non-oak boats that have been reliably dated are shown in Table 2. Where a range of dates was available, the mean is shown.

Table 2
Dated Archaeological British and Irish Logboats by Wood Genus (non-oak only)
Location
Date BP
Wood type
Ireland


Carrigdirty, Co. Limerick
5820±40
poplar
Derrybrusk 1
2876±34
alder
Derrybrusk 2
2912±38
alder
Britain


Giggleswick Tarn
650±30
ash
Warrington 11
950±90
elm
(Lanting, 1997-1998-1998)

The preponderance of oak in the record is striking and calls for investigation. Was oak simply the best choice, everywhere and always?

According to McGrail (1978a:117), the “ideal tree” for the construction of a basic logboat has the following characteristics:
  • “Long straight bole of substantial girth and little taper, with straight grain and no recent branches low down.”
  • durable, resistant to rot, easy to work, strong, lightweight
  • located where it can be easily and safely felled and readily moved to a water-course
McGrail goes on to state, “Of the species of timber available during the past 6000 years in north-west Europe, forest-grown oak (Quercus sp) appears to be the nearest to the ideal for logboat hulls” (1978a:117). This statement is subject to amendment, as will be seen below. For the moment, it is sufficient to observe that it would be remarkable if the “ideal tree” for more than 90 percent of logboat builders throughout Britain and Ireland had been of a single genus, readily available over the course of nearly 6,000 years and always growing in a convenient location for felling and easy transfer to the desired watercourse.

Five possible explanations might account for the preponderance of oak:
  1. With few exceptions, oak was the only suitable timber available for logboat building.
  2. Oak is represented disproportionately because other woods decay more rapidly out of the archaeological record.
  3. Oak is represented disproportionately for reasons other than decay resistance – for example, because of the fortuitous nature of many logboat discoveries.
  4. Oak is functionally superior to other timbers to such a degree that it was the only logical choice.
  5. Oak was preferred for reasons other than functional ones – i.e., wood choice was influenced by ideological considerations.

Timber Availability

In the “fully developed wildwood” of 5500-3100 BC, six different forest communities were present in British Isles:

1.      Pinewoods: central Scottish Highlands, localized in Lake District and Fens, certain mountains in Ireland
2.      Birchwoods: Scottish Highlands, other Irish mountains, locally in southern Scotland, Lake District, Wales, southwest England
3.      Hazel and elm woods: most of Ireland, locally in Wales and southwest England
4.      Oak and hazel woods: western Ireland “and the rest of the Highland Zone of Great Britain.” A variant of this community in northern England included ash.
5.      Lime: predominant across lowland England and north to Lancashire. The second-most common tree in limewoods was variously oak, hazel, or ash.
6.      Alder: Throughout Britain but rare in Scottish Highlands, western Ireland and southwest England (Rackham, 1980:99, 1995:28-32).


Beginning in the Neolithic, forests throughout Britain and Ireland were cleared for agriculture and swine forage (Rackham, 1995:33-34). Forestry practices to ensure a consistent supply of “wood” (i.e., small stuff suitable for building hurdles and making charcoal, for example, as opposed to “timber” for heavy construction) – were “widespread and ancient by the time of the Domesday Book (1086)” in England (Rackham, 1980:3), although this practice of “woodmanship” did not become common in Scotland until perhaps the 16th century (Rackham, 1980:6).

After 1251, oak was “(b)y far the commonest timber tree in nearly all kinds of woodland” (Rackham, 1980:145). It is important to note the qualifier “timber” in this statement. Starting in the Neolithic, many trees that were not valued as timber were coppiced to produce a steady supply of “wood” and constituted major components of many woodlands (Rackham, 1995:38, passim). Had they been valued for construction purposes, trees such as alder and poplar could have been allowed to grow to timber.

Little oak grew in the Scottish Highlands, but Scots pine was among the major forest communities there (Rackham, 1980; Mowat, 1996:6, 114-115, 129). Gregory states that oak was the only readily available, suitable tree for logboats in Ireland (1997:168-170), but this ignores alder and poplar, both of which are native (Tree Council of Ireland, no date a, no date b). As in the case of Britain, alder, poplar, and perhaps other genera might have been used, had they been managed for timber.

In summary, other tree types suitable for the construction of logboats were available across much of Britain and Ireland throughout the logboat era. Logboat builders’ material choice was not limited to oak by lack of alternatives.

Differential Preservation

Differential preservation was mooted as an explanation for the preponderance of oak in the archaeological record in the first modern, comprehensive study of logboats in the region. Writing of England and Wales, McGrail stated, “allowance must be made for possible bias in the survey, due to oak’s greater durability” (1978a:309. See also Rackham 1980:18; Rogers, 2011:196).

Others have noted that several of the earliest boats in the records of Europe and the British Isles are of non-oak genera, concluding that these other woods would probably appear more frequently in later finds had they been used (Gregory, 1997:168, 171; Lanting, 1997:631; Rogers, 2011). Instead, the record shows not differential preservation, but an evolution in wood choice. “The oldest logboats, from Pesse (NL), Nandy l and 2 (Fr) and Noyen-sur-Seine (Fr) are made of pine. This is certainly not a coincidence. Before 8000 BP, in northwestern Europe pine was the only tree of sufficient length and diameter available for this purpose. During the Later Mesolithic a clear preference existed for soft and easily workable wood such as lime, alder and poplar/aspen” (Lanting, 1997-1998:645). Oak becomes common in the record only with the arrival of the Neolithic.

In summary: if the record is skewed toward oak by its superior resistance to rot, any such effect is likely to be small. Given the size of Lanting’s survey (considering more than 600 dated logboats), the possibility that the record is skewed substantially by random factors of discovery is also small.

Functional Considerations

Oak is an excellent boatbuilding wood. It is hard, strong, durable, and it does not absorb water readily (Boulton and Jay, 1944:54; McGrail, 1998:26). Forest-grown trees tend to be tall and straight and without low branches so that, given sufficient time to build girth, they produce boles highly suitable to logboat construction (McGrail, 1998:26). According to Rogers, “In comparison with other species, oak has an ideal combination of size, grain, strength, workability and durability for building logboats” (2011:196).

This overstates the case. Workability varies considerably from tree to tree (Boulton and Jay, 1944:55), and oak logboats can be carved with hand tools only while the wood is green, as seasoned oak is too tough (Gregory, 1997:60-61). Fresh oak will not burn (Gregory, 1997:65, 71; but see Arnold, 2006, cited by Rogers, 2011:196, for possible exceptions), precluding the use of fire as a transformative tool.

Oak’s reputation for workability is, in fact, so dependent upon the availability of metal tools that it was formerly believed that oak logboats could not be built with stone tools (Rogers, 2011:196. See also Godwin and Deacon, 1974:60-61). Only late in the 20th century were oak logboats dating to the Neolithic discovered (Rogers, 2011:196), strongly suggesting that the polished stone axe is the minimum technology needed for their production. Even so, the number of oak logboat finds in Britain and Ireland increases dramatically with the Bronze Age (Lanting, 1997-1998), suggesting that processing with even the best stone tools remained difficult.

The shift toward oak in the Neolithic was “probably connected with a preference for longlasting wood” (Lanting, 1997-1998:645). Oak is extremely durable and rot-resistant (Boulton and Jay, 1944:54), but so, too, are some other woods. Alder is notably rot-resistant in wet environments, and Scots pine is also moderately durable (Boulton and Jay, 1944: 37-38, 90).

While durability is a desirable quality, it may come at an associated cost. Less durable timber may be more economical overall if it costs less to purchase and can be worked more quickly into a finished boat. Using published case histories (Goodburn and Redknap, 1988:19-20; Gilmore, et al, 2002:20-25), the author has compared the time required to build logboats in oak and a softer species. The unpublished results indicate that softer woods can be converted into finished logboats with less labour – a conclusion supported by common sense.

The importance of oak’s proverbial strength is also questionable. A logboat is a monocoque structure with a great deal of inherent strength, and it is not clear that small logboats built of woods of lesser strength would be more prone to breakage in use. Splitting, not shear failure, appears to be the most common form of breakage, as many archaeological oak logboats exhibit repairs made to splits that occurred while the boats remained in use (McGrail, 1978a, 1978b; Mowat, 1996; Gregory, 1997; Fry, 2000) (Figure 2). Oak is “very prone to split and check” (Boulton and Jay, 1944:55). Alder, lime, poplar, and Scots pine are all less prone to splitting (Boulton and Jay, 1944:37, 52, 59, and 89). Neither alder nor lime are strong woods; but poplar is “fairly strong for its weight,” and Scots pine, while variable, can be notably strong (Boulton and Jay, 1944:37, 52, 59, 89).

Figure 2
The logboat from Ballinphort, Ireland
The logboat from Ballinphort, Ireland, had repaired cracks in the bottom and port side. (image: Gregory, 1997:280/fig.4)

Oak’s weight is another liability. A boat of lime, a less dense and therefore more buoyant wood (~35 lb./cu.ft. vs. ~45 lb./cu.ft., Boulton and Jay, 1944:52, 54), would have higher freeboard and greater loading capacity than an equivalent one of oak. With identical loads, the lime boat would be lighter and thus easier to maneuver (Gregory, 1997:166) both on and off the water.

Location

The final functional consideration in the selection of logboat timber is its location (McGrail, 1978a:117). Obviously, this is related to the previous discussion of availability within the surrounding environment. Here, however, I will discuss location in terms of its implications for the builder.

By the late Bronze Age, Britain had undergone significant deforestation (Hooke, 2010:113-121). This, combined with oak’s natural rarity in some regions, must have made it even more difficult of access and costly. The smaller average size of Scottish than English logboats (Mowat, 1996:125) and the occasional use of washstrakes to increase their freeboard (Mowat, 1996:123) (a feature present on but a single English example (McGrail, 1978a:313)) may reflect a shortage of timber of adequate size.

In most situations of this nature, woodworkers choose alternative timber. “Trees are more interchangeable than is often supposed, and people adapt their carpentry to the trees at their disposal rather than vice versa,” writes Rackham (1980:7). “Most of the work traditionally done by oak, ash, elm, hazel, and beech in England is done in the Alps by larch, spruce, and two species of pine and in north Norway by birch alone.”

Rackham was writing of wood use in general, but the principle applies to logboats in particular. In the absence of oak, other hardwoods and softwoods were used to build logboats in Scandinavia (Eskerod, 1956, cited in Gregory, 1997:19; McGrail, 1978a:28-29). When their preferred tree species became locally unavailable late in the 20th century, the Maijuna people in the Peruvian Amazon adapted by using at least seven alternative species and going so far as to change construction methods and boat design to make best use of the new woods (Gilmore et al, 2002:13-18).

In contrast, where oak was rare or absent in the England, it was imported from other parts of the island (Rackham, 1980:164). “Man uses all sorts and sizes of timber available, and will import them if they are not available locally” (Quelch, 2005:104). It is unclear oak was ever moved long distances within Britain specifically for logboat construction, but this would appear so at least in the case of the Scottish Highlands, where oak did not grow. It is possible, however, that finished oak logboats, not oak timbers, were imported to the Highlands.

It is a surely coincidence that the percentage of timber comprised by oak in ancient English buildings – 97% (Rackham, 1980:145) – aligns so closely with the percentage of oak in the logboat record of Britain and Ireland – 96.5%(see Table 1) – but the overwhelming dominance of oak in both contexts is probably related. That builders of buildings and logboats in many parts of Britain were apparently willing to incur the additional expense of imported oak when other functionally suitable genera were available locally, and that such a practice persisted for so long, suggests motivation of an ideological nature.

Oak’s Ideological Implications

An abundance of tree- and wood-related symbolism, folklore, and religious practices attest to the material’s widespread ideological significance throughout European pre/history. Sacred groves and trees – entire species as well as individual trees – appear in ancient Greek, Roman, Germanic, and Celtic history and myth, and particularly in those of Britain and Ireland (Dowsett, 1942:101; Hooke, 2010:10-11).

Oak was only one of the trees held sacred in Britain and Ireland, along with ash, elder, whitethorn, hawthorn, hazel, and yew (Hooke, 2010:13-14, 98, 103-104, 244-245; Mac Coitr, 2010:8-11). Oak was associated with qualities such as life, strength, long or eternal life, kingship, and “the sacred,” but so were others (Mac Coitr, 2010:61-68). Of five great legendary trees in Irish mythology, one was oak, one was yew, and three were ash (Hooke, 2010:13).

But in many respects, oak has played the starring role in the sylvan culture of Britain, if somewhat less so in Ireland (Hooke, 2010:193-195). It was used symbolically in much ritual architecture, including timber circles (Hooke 2010:7-8), cathedrals (Hadfield, 1974:127), and in mortuary contexts (e.g., Evans and Hodder, 2006:192). Oak is prominent in folklore, myth, lore, and legend throughout British culture, examples including:
  • Celebrations featuring symbolic use of oak, including Beltane and Samhain (Dowsett, 1942:99-100) and the Yule log (Miles, 2013:82-83)
  • Gospel oaks (Miles, 2013:83-84)
  • a wide range of “sayings and beliefs,” for example, “Great oaks from little acorns grow.” (Miles, 2013:90-91, 110)
  • thousands of place-names incorporating variants of the word “oak” (Hadfield, 1974:174; Nelson and Walsh, 1993, cited in Mac Coitr, 2010:21; Hooke, 2010:167, passim)
  • the tale of Charles II hiding in an oak after the Battle of Worcester, and the roughly 600 pubs named “Royal Oak” in commemoration of the event, plus Royal Navy ships of that name, and Royal Oak Day (Miles, 2013:85-87, 108-109) (Figure 3)
  • depictions of oak leaves on coins and on various military medals and insignia (Miles, 2013:109)
  • dozens of named trees, famous for their size, longevity, or role in history or legend (Miles, 2013)
  • “Hearts of Oak” – the official quick-march of the Royal Navy and a symbol of its sailors – and the patriotic symbolism represented by the “wooden walls” of England’s largely oak-built sailing navy. 

Figure 3
"Royal Oak" signboards from pubs
Hundreds of “Royal Oak” establishments attest to the tree’s special role in Britain’s culture and collective psyche. (image: Miles, 2013:108).
Miles, cited above, is no scholar, but the very existence of books like his and others’ about British oaks for a popular reading audience is yet more evidence of the reverence in which the oak is held.

On the other hand, oak was also used widely throughout pre/history for the most mundane affordances, including causeways, livestock enclosures, charcoal, tools, tanning, pig feed, barrel staves, and fish-smoking (Miles, 2013:14, 23). On a superficial view, these mostly destructive or temporary applications hardly appear to reflect reverence for the material.

One must be cautious, though, of imposing a contemporary worldview on the past. “Modern, Western perceptions of trees and timber will differ from those (of the past)” (Bintley and Shapland, 2013:5). The nature of the sacred residing in the archaeological mundane is eloquently expressed by Mac Coitr:

“Taking an example unrelated to trees, the Plain (sic) Indians of North America regard the buffalo as sacred, since it provides them with food from its meat, clothing and shelter from its hide, and various implements from its bones. It is seen as a gift from the Creator, imbued with supernatural powers, sacred because of its many important practical uses, not despite them. In the same way the oak was regarded as particularly favoured by the gods due to its many valuable attributes. The distinction between the sacred and the practical, therefore, is a very modern approach and it is inappropriate to project the distinction onto people who would not have understood it” (2010:5).

Among oaks’ several symbolic meanings are strength, steadfastness, longevity, courage, dignity, abundance, and nobility (Hooke, 2010:104; Mac Coitr, 2010:16-17; Miles, 2013:14). In various contexts, it has been associated with Christianity, unredeemed paganism, fertility, and nature in general (Hooke, 2010:99-100). Most of these associations are positive, but they are also diverse.

“Problems are encountered … when wood species are attributed so many powers, symbolic meanings, and uses as status indicators that it would seem impossible to unravel which precise or multiple motive induced the use of a certain wood. This applies especially to the most common species of wood …” such as oak (Therkorn et al., 1984:362).

Given their likely priorities of strength and durability in logboats (separate from the question of whether softer woods might be suitable in these regards), it seems probable that logboat builders and owners were influenced by oak’s symbolic strength and steadfastness. Beyond that, reliable conclusions about the “meaning” of oak in logboats are probably not possible.

Historical Implications

Influenced by its symbolism, British and Irish logboat builders might have attributed to oak greater functional superiority over other wood types than was warranted. This might have caused them to overlook the affordances of other genera and may help explain the disappearance of the logboat from the islands.

Logboats disappeared from Scotland and Ireland sometime after the middle of the eighteenth century – about the same time that Ireland became almost entirely deforested and Scotland was denuded of deciduous trees, including oak (Gregory, 1997:56). While this would inevitably have killed off the craft in Ireland, the Scots might have, but did not, avail themselves of the remaining alternative of Scots pine. Was this due to the belief that oak was the only suitable timber for logboats?

The situation south of Scotland is less clear. The latest scientifically dated English logboat dates to 410 +60 BP (Lanting, 1997-1998:629/table 2)– i.e., a century or two earlier than the latest evidence for Ireland and Scotland. Although large areas of England were deforested by this time, huge amounts of oak, much of it imported, continued to be used in buildings and ship construction well into the 19th century (see, for example, Oster, 2015:3‑4 for Royal Navy timber consumption and imports). The end of logboat use in England therefore appears to be unrelated to availability, although increased cost may have been an issue.

Throughout Britain and Ireland, the near-exclusive use of oak may have constrained not only logboat size, but also boat designs and construction techniques. Softer timbers, including poplar and some pines, can be used to build expanded logboats. Wider than an unexpanded boat built from the same log, an expanded logboat is more stable, and thus better suited to certain uses (McGrail, 1998:66-70). Although expansion results in lower freeboard, this can be overcome by the addition of washstrakes (Figure 4). A simple “dugout” can thus become the basis for a larger and more capable boat, and expanded-extended logboats are known from many cultures (Johnstone, 1980:47-51). The British commitment to oak, which is generally thought not to be expandable, foreclosed this line of development. (See, however, Black, ND.) Likewise, because green oak does not burn, British logboat builders never had the luxury of using fire as a tool to make hollowing the log easier (Gregory, 1997:258).Whether theseaffordances of other woods would have been explored in Britain in the absence of a near-exclusive commitment to oak is, of course, unknowable.

Figure 4


Top: carved but unexpanded. Center: expansion in process. Bottom: washstrakes being added
Stages in construction of an expanded-extended logboat. Top: carved but unexpanded. Center: expansion in process to increase beam. Bottom: washstrakes being added to raise freeboard. (images: Johnstone, 1980:49-50/figures 5.5, 5.6, 5.7)

Summary and Conclusions

This paper noted the predominance of oak in the logboat record of Britain and Ireland and posited a variety of possible explanations. Lack of available timber options, preferential preservation in the archaeological record, and oak’s superior engineering characteristics were considered. These explanations were found to be false or inadequate, leaving ideologically-based preference as the remaining explanation.

Trees in general were shown to have profound spiritual implications throughout pre/history and cross-culturally, and some of the symbolic qualities associated with oak were discussed. It was suggested that the symbolic association between oak and the qualities of strength and durability was a likely factor influencing its preferred status in logboats.

Finally, the implications for logboat design and construction were discussed, and it was suggested that the near-exclusive commitment to oak in Britain and Ireland might have limited the technological development of the logboat type and associated construction methods.

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References cited

Arnold, B. (2006) ‘Archéologie expérimentale: la pirogue néolithique expansée Paris-Bercy 6 et les arts du feu’, Archéologie neuchâteloise, 34, pp. 65–77.
Bintley, M. D. and Shapland, M. G. (2013) ‘An Introduction to Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World’, in Bintley, M. D. and Shapland, M. G. (eds) Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–18.
Black, L. W. (ND) 'Fieldwork Report: An Experimental Study on oak as a viable material for the manufacture of expanded log boats', Available at: https://www.academia.edu/31030854/An_Experimental_Study_on_oak_as_a_viable_material_for_the_manufacture_of_expanded_log_boats
Boulton, E. H. B. and Jay, B. A. (1944) British Timbers: Their Properties, Uses and Identification. London: Adam and Charles Black.
Mac Coitr, N. (2010) Irish Trees: Myths, Legends & Folklore. Cork: The Collins Press. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [4 December 2018]. Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/soton-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1620188.
Comey, M. G. (2013) ‘The Wooden Drinking Vessels in the Sutton Hoo Assemblage: Materials, Morphology, and Usage’, in Bintley, M. D. and Shapland, M. G. (eds) Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 107–121.
Conneller, C. (2011) ‘Introduction: Making Materials Matter’, in An archaeology of materials: substantial transformations in early prehistoric Europe. London: Routledge, pp. 1–23. doi: 10.1364/OE.26.027058.
Dowsett, J. M. (1942) The Romance of England’s Forests. London: The Scientific Book Club.
Eskerod, A. (1956) ‘Early Nordic Arctic Boats’, Artica, pp. 57–87.
Evans, C. and Hodder, I. (2006) A Woodland Archaeology: Neolithic sites at Haddenham. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Fry, M. (2000) Coití: Logboats from Northern Ireland. Antrim: Greystone Press.
Gilmore, M. P., Eshbaugh, W. H. and Greenberg, A. M. (2002) ‘The use, construction, and importance of canoes among the Maijuna of the Peruvian Amazon’, Economic Botany. Springer-Verlag, 56(1), pp. 10–26. doi: 10.1663/0013-0001(2002)056[0010:catuca]2.0.co;2.
Godwin, H. and Deacon, J. (1974) ‘Flandrian History of Oak in the British Isles’, in Morris, M. G. and Perring, F. H. (eds) The British Oak: Its History and Natural History (B.S.B.I. Conference Reports 14). Faringdon, Berkshire, UK: E. W. Classey, Ltd. for The Botanical Society of the British Isles, pp. 51–61.
Goodburn, D. and Redknap, M. (1988) ‘Replicas and wrecks from the Thames area.’, The London archaeologist, 6(11), pp. 7-10,19-22.
Gregory, N. (1997) A Comparative Study of Irish and Scottish Logboats. University of Edinburgh.
Hadfield, M. (1974) ‘The Oak and its Legends’, in Morris, M. G. and Perring, F. H. (eds) The British Oak: Its History and Natural History (B.S.B.I. Conference Reports 14). Faringdon, Berkshire, UK: E. W. Classey, Ltd. for The Botanical Society of the British Isles, pp. 123–129.
Hooke, D. (2010) Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press.
Hurcombe, L. M. (2014) Perishable Material Culture in Prehistory: Investigating the Missing Majority. London and New York: Routledge.
Illustrated London News (1886) ‘Discovery of logboat in Brigg in 1886’. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Discovery_of_logboat_in_Brigg_in_1886.jpg.
Johnstone, P. (1980) The Sea-Craft of Prehistory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Lanting, J. N. (1997) ‘Dates for origin and diffusion of the european logboat’, Palaeohistoria, 39/40, pp. 627–650. Available at: https://ugp.rug.nl/Palaeohistoria/article/view/25107/22563.
McGrail, S. (1978a) Logboats of England and Wales with comparative material from European and other countries, Vol. 1. Greenwich: BAR British Series 51(i), National Maritime Museum.
McGrail, S. (1978b) Logboats of England and Wales with comparative material from European and other countries, Vol. 2. Greenwich: BAR British Series 51(ii), National Maritime Museum.
McGrail, S. (1998) Ancient Boats in North-West Europe: the archaology of water transport to AD 1500. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman.
Miles, A. (2013) The British Oak. London: Constable & Robinson.
Mowat, R. J. C. (1996) The Logboats of Scotland. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Nelson, C. and Walsh, W. (1993) Trees of Ireland. Dublin: Lilliput Press.
Oster, R. (2015) Great Britain in the Age of Sail: Scarce Resources, Ruthless Actions and Consequences. Air University. Available at: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1012795.pdf.
Quelch, P. R. (2005) ‘Structure and utilisation of the early oakwoods’, Botanical Journal of Scotland, 57(1–2), pp. 99–105. doi: 10.1080/03746600508685087.
Rackham, O. (1980) Ancient Woodland: its history, vegetation and uses in England. London: Edward Arnold.
Rackham, O. (1995) Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape. Revised Ed. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Rogers, J. S. (2011) ‘Czech Logboats : Early inland watercraft from Bohemia and Moravia’, in Sborník prací Filozofické fakulty brněnské university, řada archaeologická. (Proceedings of the Masaryk University Faculty of Arts, Archaeology series). Brno, Czech Republic, pp. 171–202.
Therkorn, L. L. et al. (1984) ‘An Early Iron Age Farmstead: Site Q of the Assendelver Polders Project’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 50, pp. 351–373.
Tree Council of Ireland (no date a) Alder - Fearnóg (Alnus glutinosa). Available at: https://treecouncil.ie/project/alder/(Accessed: 8 January 2019).
Tree Council of Ireland (no date b) Aspen - Crann creathach (Populus tremula). Available at: https://treecouncil.ie/project/aspen/(Accessed: 8 January 2019).

Corfu's Reed Raft, the Papyrella

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Corfiot papyrella, a reed raft
The papyrella built for the Exeter Maritime Museum, now held by the National Maritime Museum of Poland, photographed in Suffolk, England by Bob Holtzman (click any image to enlarge).
Rafts made of reeds are among the oldest types of watercraft, and remained in use in many areas through the end of the previous millennium “wherever there is a good supply of reeds” (McGrail, 2001:21, 104). Papyrus, among the most common reeds used for raft building, may have been among the earliest as well. Papyrus rafts are known from Egyptian tomb carvings, paintings, and funerary models as early as the Fifth Dynasty (2492-2345 BCE) (Hornell, 1970:47-48); McGrail, 2001:22), and these appear quite finely modeled and highly developed, so that much earlier use can be safely assumed (Hornell, 1970:48-49).
Reed raft under construction in an Egyptian 5th Dynasty tomb relief
Papyrus reed raft under construction in an Egyptian 5th Dynasty tomb relief (McGrail 2001:21).
Modern examples of papyrus rafts are known from Lake Tsana (i.e., Tana) in Ethiopia; among the Buduma and Kuri people on Lake Chad; in Palestine; and elsewhere (Hornell, 1970:53-56). Among the last European reed rafts was the papyrella of Corfu, whose use apparently petered out only in the 1970s. Although the Corfiot name papyrella is clearly etymologically related to papyrus, the reeds from which they were built is disputed. They have been identified as giant fennel, Ferula Communs L.(Tzamtis, 1990:329), although a later observer states that they were Scirpus lacustris L. ssp lacustris, of the same Cyperaceafamily as Egyptian Cyperus papyrus (Tzalas, 1995:456).

The basic papyrus raft can be built with no tool other than a stone blade for cutting reeds, and with no specialized techniques other than rope-making (McGrail, 2001:21-22), and this goes a long way to explain the papyrus raft’s early appearance in history. The papyrella, however, is a unique hybrid design incorporating some wooden components and requiring a few additional tools and techniques.

Construction began with six to eight light cypress saplings about 3m long. These were tied together at their narrow ends – the end that would be the bow – and splayed to a width of 1.1-1.3m at the stern. Three broad planks were laid beneath this framework, one at the stern, one about a meter back from the bow end, and one halfway between. Papyrus reeds were gathered into bundles with their butt ends all aligned and tied with cordage, so that the bundles were roughly 20cm in diameter at the butt end, narrower at the other end. These bundles were laid over the frame, perhaps six or seven bundles across, in two layers. Three more planks were then placed on top of the bundles, directly above the lower planks. The two layers of planks were then lashed with heavy rope passing through two holes in both ends of each plank, sandwiching the reed bundles and holding them in place. More reeds were bundled and tied into a horseshoe shape on top of the raft to serve as a coaming or gunwale. Finally, the saplings at the bow were bent upward and back and tied in place to form a prow (Tzamtis, 1990:330).

Papyrus is delicate and easily crushed and abraded, and when damaged, it absorbs water readily and loses its buoyancy. To protect the reeds on the bottom of the bundles when the boat was grounded, “common reeds” of a more durable type than papyrus were sometimes placed between the cypress bottom poles. A second set of cypress poles, tied like the first set, was sometimes placed on top of the reed bundles and beneath the top set of planks(Tzamtis, 1990:330). This might have been done to stiffen the structure, although it is unclear if rafts without this feature were subject to excessive flexing. Since the poles run mostly parallel with the bundles, it does not appear to be useful for containing them. A third modification sometimes present was the substitution of short cypress poles for the transverse boards (Tzamtis, 1990:330).

Papyrella raft stern view
Stern of the papyrella (photo: Bob Holtzman)
Descriptions of a few aspects of construction are ambiguous. Tzamtis states that the bottom cross-planks were placed beneath the cypress longitudinals (1990:330), which would hold the saplings in place sandwich-wise. In the example shown, however, the planks are on top of the longitudinals, so the saplings had to have been tied to the boards to remain in place. As one of the final steps, “two cypresses were placed on the stern, and bound there from the bottom to around the top, thus completing the caging in of the papyri bundles” (Tzamtis, 1990:330). This feature did not appear on the example I examined, and the disposition of these two poles on the stern is unclear. Also, the cypress base poles which extended beyond the reed bundles at the bow, were bent up and back and tied in place to bring the tips out of the water and create somewhat of a prow shape. Tzamtis (1990:330) indicates that this was done as the very last step in construction, but Tzalas (1995:444) states they were bent into this shape when green and held under pressure until the wood dried, after which they held the shape on their own. It is unclear if the square stern was the natural result of aligning the bottoms of the bundles, or if the aft ends of the bundles were all sheared even and square after being bound together. There is an account of papyrellas with a rounded stern (Tzamtis, 1990:330), which surely would have been cut to shape after the bundles were bound together.

The entire building process took two to three days. Finished rafts were 2.5-3m LOA, with their greatest beam of 1.1-1.3m at the stern and maximum thickness of 45-50cm, also at the stern (Tzamtis, 1990:330; Tzalas, 1995:443-445).

Papyrella were used for fishing in sheltered waters, “confined to lakes and bogs, rarely faring out to sea and far from the coast” (Tzamtis, 1990:330). Reports refer to their use for lobster fishing, but it would be surprising if other forms of fishing did not occur. There are reports that double-length papyrellas of 5-6m LOA were built by joining two single boats stern-to-stern, and that these larger boats would venture offshore for lobster fishing, but no such boats have been properly documented. Long poles were used to hold the two boats together, but it is unclear if the poles were forced through the bundles of both boats or lashed to their exterior surfaces or frameworks(Tzamtis, 1990:330-331).

Papyrella raft in Corfu with standing paddler using a double-bladed paddle
Papyrella under way in Corfu by a standing paddler using a double-bladed paddle (Tzalas 1995:466)
The standard “single” papyrella was a one-man craft, propelled from a standing position with a double-bladed paddle 2.3-2.5m long, including the two 50cm blades (Tzamtis, 1990:330; Tzalas, 1995:449). With the paddler standing, the gunwales would have done nothing to protect him from waves, so their purpose must have been to protect his gear and his catch.

Fisherman standing a papyrella on end to dry
Fisherman standing a papyrella on end to dry (Tzalas 1995:465)
The tighter the bundles are tied, the better a reed raft will resist waterlogging and decay (McGrail, 2001:22, 104). The bundles in the example examined were still tightly bound some 50 years after the raft was built. Another key to longevity was to dry the bundles after every use by pulling the raft out of the water and standing it on its stern end. Treated this way, the bundles might last two to three years, which the framework could be used over and over (Tzalas, 1995:443).

Regular use of the papyrella continued into the late 1970s or early 1980s, at which time a single user remained in Palaiokastritsa, in northwest Corfu (Tzalas, 1995:443). During the 1970s, three had been built for museums – one in Corfu, one in Piraeus, and one in Exeter, England (Tzalas, 1995:443), the original home of the papyrella I examined. The Exeter collection was subsequently transferred to the World of Boats collection in Eyemouth, England, and when that museum closed abruptly in 2017, the papyrella and a few other craft were purchased at auction by Valerie Fenwick, a renowned British maritime archaeologist who kept them secure in a barn in Suffolk until a proper caretaker organization could be found. This is where I photographed it and documented its basic features in concert with the fellow student who appears in the photos. The papyrella, along with the rest of the small collection, was recently transferred to the National Maritime Museum in Gdansk, Poland, where, one hopes, it will be stabilized and displayed (Fenwick and Pink, 2020).

For a 50-some-odd-year-old reed raft, it remains in quite good condition. The reeds are beginning to disintegrate, however, and lightweight monofilament fishnet has been fastened over them in an attempt to hold them together. It is unclear if the bundles at the bow were originally larger than in the photos or if they extended further forward. Some of the ropework is sloppy and haphazard, the result, I suspect, of attempted repairs by an individual unskilled in knots.

Harry Tzalas's raft Papyrella
Harry Tzalas's double-ended papyrella, named Papyrella (Sampson, 2018:23)
Certainly the most famous individual papyrella was one named Papyrella and used in an experimental voyage from the Greek island of Melos to the mainland in the 1988 (Tzalas, 1995). Seafaring by Mesolithic people has been indirectly but firmly established by the presence on the Peloponnesian mainland of obsidian from Melos, and Harry Tzalas (following Tzamtis’s lead) hypothesized that this was mostly likely accomplished by means of a reed raft. Tzalas had a double-length, double-ended papyrella built which he and five crew paddled from the mainland to Melos over the course of 16 days (Tzalas, 1995). Tzalas claimed that this voyage supported his hypothesis, but I and some others (Cherry and Leppard, 2015:745) find the experiment to be fraught with errors of theory, logic, and methodology and view its results as dubious.

map: route of reed raft Papyrella from Melos to Greek mainland
The route of Papyrella from Melos to the Greek mainland (Cherry and Leppard, 2015:746)

Bibliography

Cherry, J. F. and Leppard, T. P. (2015) ‘Experimental archaeology and the earliest seagoing: the limitations of inference’, World Archaeology. Routledge, 47(5), pp. 740–755. doi: 10.1080/00438243.2015.1078739.

Fenwick, V. and Pink, J. (2020) ‘The Fate of the ISCA Collection: The World’s Largest Collection of Traditional and Vernacular Boats’, Nautical Archaeology Society. Available at: https://www.nauticalarchaeologysociety.org/the-fate-of-the-isca-collection (Accessed: 12 February 2020).

Hornell, J. (1970) Water transport: origins & early evolution. Newton Abbot: David & Charles.

McGrail, S. (2001) Boats of the World: from the Stone Age to Medieval times. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sampson, A. (2018) ‘The Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers in the Southeastern Mediterranean and Their Contribution in the Neolithisation of the Aegean’, Archaeology and Culture, 1(1), pp. 11–36. doi: 10.22158/ac.v1n1p11.

Tzalas, H. E. (1995) ‘On the Obsidian Trail with a papyrus raft in the Cyclades’, in Tzalas, H. E. (ed.) Tropis III: 3rd International Symposium on Ship Construction in Antiquity. Athens: Hellenic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition, pp. 441–470.

Tzamtis, A. I. (1990) ‘Papyrella: remote descendant of a middle stone age craft?’, in Tzalas, H. E. (ed.) Tropis II: 2nd International Symposium on Ship Construction in Antiquity Proceedings (1987). Delphi: Hellenic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition, pp. 329–332.

Boat Iconography at the British Museum #1: Egypt

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When it comes to studying the earliest watercraft, direct archaeological evidence, in the form of artefactual boats and ships, is extremely rare and fragmentary. In contrast, the iconography of ancient boats -- in the form of models, relief carvings, images on pottery, etc. -- is relatively abundant, and often well-preserved. If you read enough nautical history or archaeology, you'll come across a number of oft-used images that provide some of our best clues about the design and construction of early watercraft. Although subject to differing interpretations, these mostly well-known examples of boat iconography are crucial to current understandings of such fundamentals as when sails were first used, how Egyptians built reed, and then wooden, boats, and what Greek and Roman galleys looked like. Interpretation of fragmentary shipwrecks can be greatly hampered by a lack of relevant iconography.

On a visit to London in January, I realized for the first time how so many of these "iconic examples of iconography" are held in the British Museum. It was like walking into a well-illustrated textbook, and a thrill to see these classic examples up close and in 3D. There are too many to include in a single post, so I'll begin with the Egyptian boat models, all of which are from funerary contexts. Later posts will examine examples from other areas and cultures. Photos were taken through display case glass, so image quality is not poor, for which I apologize.

Ancient Egyptian boat model at British Museum
From tomb 56 at the necropolis of Asyut, the burial of Hetepnebi, a local official, 1st Intermediate Period, about 2090 BC. I'm unsure if this represents a papyrus raft or a plank-built boat. Two masts are present (possibly used as towing posts?). Aboard are the owner, a pilot, six oarsmen, who I believe are kneeling, and five soldiers, who stand. Shields and staves are stacked amidships. Paddles and a steering oar have been lost. (Click any image to enlarge.)
Ancient Egyptian boat model at British Museum
From the same tomb: crews of two papyrus rafts. The raft on the left is a replica of the original, which disintegrated. Unlike the oared craft above, these are propelled by forward-facing paddlers, who work from a crouching posture. A pilot originally stood at the bow, and a figure of the owner at the stern.
Ancient Egyptian boat model at British Museum
The museum's online catalog search isn't working and the display signage only indicates that this and the next model are from a tomb from "the end of the Old Kingdom to the mid Twelfth Dynasty", which is roughly 2181 BC to 2000 BC. This model appears to represent a wooden boat, propelled with 8 oarsman, with a pilot in the bow and a helmsman astern. The oarsmen wear a skirt-like garment that covers their legs, making it difficult to say if they crouch or kneel. The model once included a mast, sail, and rigging as well.
Ancient Egyptian boat model at British Museum
Apparently found with the previous model, this one is set up strictly for sail, although two of the crew were apparently using poles (lost) as well. Three other crew manage the rigging, and again there's a pilot forward and a helmsman aft. The owner sits with boxes of cargo beneath the decorated canopy. The rudder arrangement is interesting. The upper end of the stock rests on a post forward of and high above the helmsman; the lower end, just above the blade, rests on top of the transom. A tiller (lost) extended down from the stock between these two pivot points. The significance of the grid-like lines painted on the deck of this and all of the models below is unclear. Did they represent removable deck panels? Perhaps thwarts and a longitudinal strength member?
Ancient Egyptian boat model at British Museum
This funerary boat (12th Dynasty, about 1850, from Thebes) carries the deceased owner's mummy. attended by a mourner, a priest, and provisions for the afterlife. The boat represented was probably wooden, but the upturned ends are reminiscent of papyrus rafts, a design holdover from the older, more "traditional" technology. Twin quarter-rudders are supported at the upper end by an A-frame that is topped by a carved falcon head, and managed by a single helmsman who has two tillers to manage. 


Ancient Egyptian boat model at British Museum
This top view of the previous model shows a painted grid pattern on the deck, similar to the previous two models.

Ancient Egyptian boat model at British Museum
12th Dynasty, about 1985-1795 BC, provenance unknown. With the crew sitting on boxes and posed for rowing, and the boat is rigged for sail, the deceased's soul will be able to travel both upstream and down. 
Ancient Egyptian boat model at British Museum
The same model as in the previous photo.  The square-profile squaresail rig has a yard with multiple lifts and a boom with multiple halyards.The rudder has lifting tackle to raise it in shallow water or for beaching. 


Boat Iconography at the British Museum #2: Pre-Classic

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This is the second in a series of posts on ancient boat iconography at the British Museum. The first post looked at ancient Egyptian boat models. (Click any image to enlarge.)

Naqada jar with sailing ship image
Dating from the second phase of the Naqada culture (3500–3200 BC) in what is now Egypt, this is one of the earliest undoubted images of a boat with a sail from anywhere in the world. The medium-aspect squaresail, hung from a mast stepped far toward the bow, appears to have a boom along the bottom edge. As the mast crosses the sail somewhat off-center, it could conceivably have been a lugsail, although there is no good evidence for the use of lugsails in ancient Egypt, and with the mast so far forward, the boat could only have sailed before the wind in any case, so it was likely used only while traveling upstream on the Nile. No rigging is shown, but this is surely a function of the illustration’s overall paucity of detail, not an indication that none was used. The prow rises vertically very high and the stern is also raised. There is a great deal of rocker and sheer. Just behind the raised stem and beneath the leading edge of the sail is what appears to be a tiny platform: perhaps this was a pilot’s station or a base for a votive image. Aft, vertical posts support a forward-sloping platform, roof, or awning. Rectangular blocks of “waves” all around the boat represent the sea. Here is the British Museum’s record and another photo.

Naqada jar with sailing ship image
The redware pottery jar stands 58.5cm tall. 
Meopotamian bitumen boat model
This big (75cm long) model, from a grave in Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, dates to the Akkadian period (2300-2150 BC). It’s made of bitumen mixed with earth and is very similar in form to plank-built boats called taradas used in the Iraqi swamps well into the 20thcentury. Taradas and boats made of reeds were both coated with bitumen, which occurs naturally in the area. It’s unclear if the model represents a boat of reeds or planks, but to me it feels more like the former. Grave boats in Ur were originally loaded with containers thought to have held provisions for the afterlife, or possibly as bait to distract evil spirits. British Museum record and photos.

Bronze Age Cyprian jar with ship image
We’ve leapt forward well over a milennium, to 750 BC-600 BC. The vessel depicted on this Bronze Age Cypriot jar has its mast stepped amidships and would have been more capable than the earlier Naqada boat of sailing across or into the wind on the open Mediterranean. The furled sail, of low or medium aspect, has no boom along its bottom edge. Rigging is clearly shown but is hard to interpret. (Guess: the lower, upside-down V represents shrouds; the upper, rightside-up V represents braces.) Both bow and stern turn up abruptly and rise to great heights, with decorative flourishes at their upper ends. There is a large structure in the bow (right side), and a helmsman stands at the stern managing double steering oars or side rudders. Large amphorae, probably containing wine, oil, or fish sauce, constitute the cargo.Just out of the frame to the left side, a crewman defacates over the stern, making this probably the world’s earliest depiction of shipboard sanitary arrangements. The Nautical Archaeology Societyuses this image (minus the biological function) as its logo. More about this item in thisarticle from the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. British Museum recordand photos.

Cyprian Bronze Age boat models
Three terracotta ship models from tombs on Cyprus. Top and middle: 600BC-500BC. Bottom: 750 BC-475 BC. With no suggestion of a rig, they appear to be rowing galleys, probably warships, judging by the rams on two of them. Although they’re similar, they all differ slightly in the forms of the ram or prow, the upper extensions of the stem and sternpost, and decoration. All three have oculi and are 16-17cm long. British Museum records and photos:top, middle, bottom.

Cyprian Bronze Age boat models
The starboard sides of the Cypriot galley models.
Cyprian Bronze Age ship model
This terracotta merchant ship from Cyprus (600-500 BC) has a mast step amidship in the bottom, and the vessel was surely rigged with a square sail. The ends of the posts have fishtail-like shapes. The broken parts of the hull aft (right) may have been the location of steering oars. Where the sides bend inward at the top probably represents a bulwark, not a tumblehome hull shape. Forward is a cross-beam that probably served as catheads for anchor handling. British Museum record and photos.

Cyprian Bronze Age ship model
This more elaborate merchant ship model is also from Cyprus (750-500BC) and also has a mast step amidships. There are several cross-beams and an elaborate sterncastle and poop deck, with structures to secure steering oars or side-rudders. As this was a sailing merchant ships, the rows of holes on both sides do not represent oar ports, and they are too low and too numerous to be fastening points for shrouds. I believe they are scuppers that would have been located at deck level, at the bottom of the bulwarks. British Museum record and photos.
Cyprian copper "ox hide" ingot
Not iconography, but an example of an important type of cargo carried by Cypriot ships. This is a 37 kg copper ingot, dated to about 1200 BC. It’s thought that the distinctive "ox hide" shape made them easier to carry. Copper was the primary metal required for the establishment of the Bronze Age. British Museum record and photo.

“Woodskin” Canoes of Guyana

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Logboats are probably the best-known Amerindian watercraft in Guyana, but another boat type in common use – at least into the first half of the 20th century – is the bark canoe. Although terminology differs among various writers, the term “woodskin” is commonly applied to all Guyanese bark canoes.

Bark canoe on the Mazaruni River, Guyana
Akawai open-ended woodskin on the Mazaruni River (Roth, W., 1924:plate 177) Click any image to enlarge.

The most common type of woodskin appears to have been the one with open ends, which was used by many of Guyana’s Amerindian peoples, both near the coast and in the inland “hinterlands”. This was usually made from the bark of the purpleheart tree (Copaifera pubiflora). Several aspects of its construction are unusual, if not unique.

The tree is felled with the bark still attached. Cuts the desired length of the canoe are then made along both sides of the trunk, then these lineal cuts are connected by circumferential cuts at both ends around the top and sides of the trunk and the bark is pried off with wood wedges. There is thus no need to roll the trunk to get at the surface that rests on the ground. Once it is off the trunk, the bark is propped open with sticks between the opposite edges to keep it from closing up again.

This is quite different from the method of harvesting birch bark for North American canoes. There, the tree is left standing and is not killed by being barked. A single slit the length of the canoe (or as long a piece as the tree allows) is made along the height of the trunk, and cuts are made around the entire circumference of the trunk at the top and bottom of the slit, so that the bark is removed in a single piece that completely surrounds the trunk, thus maximizing its width. This is possible because birch bark is relatively thin and quite flexible, while the bark of purpleheart is so thick and stiff that a full circumference could not be opened up around a single split to remove it from the trunk without cracking.

Detail of bark preparation for bark canoe, Guyana
Outer bark removed (right); inner bark folded (left) (Roth, W., 1924:615)

The purpleheart bark is of two layers – a thick, stiff outer one, and a more flexible inner one. The two are removed together from the trunk, then wedges of the outer layer are cut and removed from both edges 2-3 feet (70-100cm) in from both ends, leaving the inner layer intact. With one man standing amidships, another raises one of the ends so that the flexible inner bark folks in upon itself. Holes are punctured through the four layers of bark and the overlapping sections are stitched together with “bush rope” – presumably thin roots, withies, or possibly natural fibers taken from palm leaves or similar. The other end is treated the same way.

Fully-outfitted bark canoe, Guayana
Fully-outfitted woodskin with inwales, thwarts, spreaders and tightening ropes (Roth, W., 1924:616).

Details seem to differ from one boat to the next, or possibly according to the practices of different communities or Amerindian peoples, but one common modification is the addition of inwales, which are stitched along the upper edge of the bark amidships, and extend into the raised ends below the top edges, where they help keep the open ends elevated above the waterline. Sometimes sitting thwarts are added, suspended by hangers attached to the inwales. Beams are tied in place to keep the sides apart amidships. Conversely, ropes are used to keep the sides from spreading out too far toward the ends.

Dimensions are typically about 15-16 feet (450-500cm) LOA (although lengths of 25-30 feet/8-9m are reported), 4 feet (125cm) beam, and depth 6-8 inches (15-20cm), with freeboard a mere 3-5 inches (8-12cm).

Closed-end woodskin. Top: bark cuts.Closed-end bark canoe, Guyana: construction details.
Closed-end woodskin. Top: bark cuts. Middle: ends folded up. Bottom: outfitted. (Farabee, W. C., 1918:75)

An alternative form, used by the inland Wapisiana Arawak people, has pointed, closed ends. The bark is harvested in the same manner, but after it is removed from the trunk, the top corners at both ends are removed, so that the bark is pointed at both ends. The bark is placed open-side down over a low fire to soften it, then it is expanded and sticks are placed between the opposite sides to keep them spread apart, but apparently not as wide as in the open-ended type. The ends are then folded and raised as above, except that the wedge-shaped sections from which the stiff outer bark is removed are longer, almost touching each other from opposite sides on the bottom of the hull. This seems to produce a hull with a rounder bottom and greater freeboard than the open-ended type.

Bark canoe on Rupununi River, Guyana
Woodskin on the Rupununi River (Roth, W., 1924:plate 179)

Woodskins generally carried one to three people and were used for fishing and general transportation. They drew little water (about 3 inches/8cm), so were useful on shallow and rocky streams, and could be more easily portaged around rapids and falls than heavier logboats. Their low freeboard, however, was a disadvantage because they could afford to take on very little water, the purpleheart bark being so dense that the boat would sink if swamped. Propulsion was with single-bladed paddles, an example of which can be seen clearly in the first photo.

I have found no recent references to woodskin use, but hope to determine whether they are still in use during a planned visit. If you have “on the ground” knowledge, please contact me.

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Sources

Arnold, B. (2017) Bark-canoes of South America: from Amazonia to Tierra del Fuego (English text without illustrations; French original: Les canoës en écorce d’ Amérique du Sud: de l ’Amazonie à la Terre de Feu). Le Locle: Editions G d’Encre (Le tour du monde en 80 pirogues, fascicule 3).

Brindley, M. D. (1924) ‘THE CANOES of BRITISH GUIANA’, The Mariner’s Mirror. Routledge, 10(2), pp. 124–132. doi: 10.1080/00253359.1924.10655267.

Farabee, W. C. (1918) The Central Arawaks. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Anthropological Publications. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/central-arawaks/84081CF333475CE23BA33C43187D17BC.

Roth, W. E. (1924) An introductory study of the arts, crafts, and customs of the Guiana Indians. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. Available at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c006937560&view=2up&seq=4.

Worcester, G. R. G. (1956) ‘Notes on the canoes of British Guiana’, Mariner’s Mirror, 42(3), pp. 249–251.

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