INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 157 



lish lines, rigged as small schooners with fore and aft sails and jibbom. The trade 

 appearing likely to prove lucrative, some of the local Parawa boat-owners began to 

 build other lighters. They rejected the English model as this had been found un- 

 handy in going alongside steamers ; instead of that they followed in simplified fashion 

 the lines and rig of the Arab buggalas which at that date regularly traded between 

 Busra, Bombay and Tuticorin. The boat-builders while adopting the raked stem and 

 stern and lateen rig, made both stem and stern sharp as in present-day Calicut lighters. 

 The model did not serve over-well and gradually the rake of stem and stern was 

 reduced till to-day both are almost vertical and the mast instead of being raked 

 forward is now raked very slightly aft and is fixed at about one- third the boat's 

 length from the bows (fig. 4). The present-day lighter appears as though it had 

 evolved directly from the plank-built canoe used in the coral-stone trade, a course 

 which it has not followed as shown above. Originally Tuticorin lighters, having 

 been introduced b}^ English firms, were known locally as "boats" (boatu), but now 

 this has given way to the vernacular term of dhoni. 



It is interesting to know that the first built native lighters had their bottom 

 coated with white chunam pitch in the Arab style. Later some owners employed tin 

 sheets as a protection, and then with greater prosperity the further step was taken 

 of sheathing in copper. A few have tried Muntz metal sheets, but the general 

 opinion is that copper is the only reliable metal to use. In this I concur, experience 

 of the yellow metal which sheaths the bottom of our Inspection schooner showing it 

 is no protection whatever against the settlement of oysters and other growths, 

 whereas lighters sheathed with copper keep clean and unfouled. No further sail 

 than a single big lateen is used when engaged in lighterage to and from steamers 

 lying in the roads (fig. i, pi. v), but when coasting between ports — they now go as far 

 up the East Coast as Bombay — they add a jib and small lateen mizzen. 



Quite recently a further evolution has been made, an enterprising boat-owner 

 having built several larger vessels {padagu) solely for coasting trade. They are 

 two-masted and fully-decked, but retain the straight stern of the lighter design. 

 As regards rig, they are fitted with jibs but whereas the first one built had a great 

 lateen on the main mast and a fore and aft sail on a big mizzen, the later ones exchanged 

 the clumsy lateen for another fore and aft sail, so that now the final form evolved is 

 a fore and aft schooner rig such as one may see anywhere in British seas among small 

 coasting craft in out-of-the-way places. 



CeyIvON. 



No greater contrast can be found in boat designing than that between the types 

 used on the opposite sides of the Gulf of Mannar south of latitude 9° N. On the 

 Tamil or Indian side the catamaran and boat canoe alone are used ; on the Sinhalese 

 side, the outrigger canoe is the national and dominant design, the catamaran being 

 used only in the northern or non-Sinhalese part of the island, and by immigrant 

 Tamil fishermen at Colombo, while the dug-out is restricted to its proper sphere 

 on rivers and other inland waters. 



