March 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



361 



FOREIGN AND HOME FISHING VESSELS AND BOATS* 



Amidst the variety, or rather the profusion, of objects which the 

 Exhibition displayed, ships and vessels of all kinds were few in number, 

 and occupied but little space, notwithstanding the large share they had 

 in bringing these very objects to our doors from every part of the 

 habitable globe, the intercommunication they keep up between remote 

 nations, and the deep influence they have exercised on mankind by 

 being the pioneers of discovery and the means of spreading civiliza- 

 tion to the uttermost parts of the earth. And especially does this 

 remark of scarcity of specimens apply to the various forms of native 

 vessels, boats, and canoes which the navigator meets with in the eastern 

 seas and among the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean, where each 

 group has its peculiar form, some of which, when we were first introduced 

 to them by our earlier circumnavigators, as Tasman, Vasco da Gama, 

 Cook, La Perouse, Dumont-Durville, Liitke, and Krusenstern, were 

 found to be of unusual shape, to have many good qualities, to be very 

 picturesque under sail, and occasionally ornamented by most elaborate 

 carving. As from some cause or another these types are fast passing 

 away, it may not be without interest to mention some of the more cha- 

 racteristic of them, and to compare them with the more familiar 

 European forms. At the same time we cannot but express our regret 

 that so few specimens of them were to be found in the Exhibition of 

 1862 ; nor, indeed, as far as we are aware, is there anything approach- 

 ing a complete collection of models of native boats and vessels in 

 any museum in Europe. The best, we believe, is in the Louvre at 

 Paris. 



On the western coast of Africa, in the deep rivers of Senegal, and 

 the delta of the Niger, the canoes are hollowed out of the trunks of large 

 trees, and some of them, especially those used for war, are fine powerful 

 boats, propelled by thirty paddles. On the shores of Arabia, the dhow 

 and bagala of Mokha, and Maskat, with a high poop and very low 

 raking stem, appear to have been the type of vessels of the middle ages. 

 One peculiar feature is having the maximum of displacement abaft. The 

 gariikuli boat, with its long raking stem, the beden safar, or great fishing 

 boat of Maskat, with an upright stem and one large lateen sail, and the 

 dunyiyah of the Gulf of K'ach, has each its peculiarity. On the Malabar 

 coast is the putamar, with its arched keel, and farther south the snake 

 boat, a long pirogue, which is light for use on the back waters or lagoons 

 that extend south of Cochin. In Ceylon the outrigger becomes a pro- 

 minent feature, and with its aid the boat carries a larger sail in propor- 

 tion than any that swims the seas. It is of light cotton cloth, and its 

 surface is more than 200 times that of the immersed section of the canoe 

 and its outriggers. 



* From the Jurors' Rerort on Class XII., International Exhibition, 1862. 



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