INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 177 



Backwater Boats. 



Backwater boats on the. East Coast are generally either dug-out canoes, or rough 

 and usually clinker-built reproductions of that form. The latter are the craft generally 

 used on Pulicat Lake and the Madras backwaters for fishing. The cHnker-build 

 is noteworthy as I am not aware of this style being employed anywhere else in India. 

 Iron nails clinched upon iron washers are used for fastening the planks together. 

 These boats remain naked of paint or of oil dressing all their life, so the majority 

 always appear untidy and broken-down. For cargo carrying on the coast canals 

 large undecked barges running to 20 tons' burden are numerous. They are broad 

 and flat bottomed and of 3 to 31 breadths to length. They are built in the same 

 manner and on the same lines as the fishing boats but with a strongly marked 

 "swim-bow" such as Dutch eelers affect. It is simply a punt bow endhig roundly 

 instead of being truncated. The stern is shaped similarly, so, to support the rudder 

 properly, a strong heel has to be run out from the bottom of the boat to support 

 the vertical stern post. These canal boats frequently carry a coach roofing over 

 nearly their whole length, supported on uprights set along the gunwale. The rig 

 is a light cotton sprit-sail triced high up and carried on a fairly lofty spar stepped in 

 a tabernacle above the deckhouse roof. Karimanal at the south end of Pulicat lyake 

 is one of the chief places where these canal boats are built. For convenience, they 

 are constructed upside down and a preliminary to launching is the turning of them 

 right side up ! 



A considerable number of the Chilka Lake fishing boats are notably larger than 

 those in use on Pulicat Lake ; they are simply planked-up boats of canoe model, and 

 are of no special importance in design. 



Far otherwise is the novel rig of some of the smaller craft that ply on this great- 

 est of Indian backwaters. Alone of any of the craft we have noticed above, two 

 masts are here used, slender bamboos set up parallel on either gunwale well in the 

 bows. A short stay runs from each to the bow, while another runs from' each mast- 

 head to the stern. On the masts is fastened a narrow oblong strip of matting as a 

 sail. To give strength numerous transverse battens are fastened at short intervals 

 No mechanism exists to hoist the sail which has to be bound to the masts before 

 being set. (PI. V, fig. 5). 



The idea is probably borrowed from Burma, where a double mast is customary 

 on the big river rice-carrier which is one of the biggest and smartest forms of 

 river-boat in the world. In the Burmese boats the two spars are however not fitted 

 parallel but meet at the apex in a manner seen in Egyptian drawings of the third 

 and fourth dynasties.' 



Primitive catamarans made up of any old logs roughly tied together are fairly 

 extensively used by cast-net fishermen on backwaters, particularly in the Tamil dis- 

 tricts; the logs are usually old ones thrown out of use by sea-fishermen. 



Dug-out canoes of the ordinary kind are not greatly in evidence on the Coromandel 



I Holmes, G. C. V., Ancient and Modern Ships, London, 1900. 



