178 J. HORNELL ON 



Coast backwaters as they are difficult and expensive to obtain. In Vizagapatam 

 district I have seen two or three of the chpper form of dug-outs used in Burma ; 

 these were spoils of the sea, brought by the drift which sets across from Burma during 

 the north-east monsoon ; a similar one I saw recently at Muthupet on Palk Strait. 



For a long time I believed the outrigger canoe to be unknown to the north of Point 

 Calimere ; quite recently I found them numerous on a backwater near Cuddalore, 

 where at one place fifteen were seen together ; they are also reported as numerous on 

 the Vellar River near Porto Novo. Each is formed of a small dug-out, usually about 

 1 6 feet long by 22 inches broad, furnished with an outrigger float of ordinary form 

 boomed out by means of two poles, at a distance of 5 feet from the canoe. They are 

 used generally in conjunction with the casting net ; mast and sail are never fitted. This 

 extension in the range of the outrigger is particularly interesting, as we now find it in 

 use at intervals along the coast line lying between Baluchistan in the north-west to 

 a point well north on the Coromandel Coast in the south-east. A small one is also 

 often carried as a ship's dinghy by the coasting dhonis sailing out of the northern ports 

 of Ceylon (text-fig. 5). 



Sea-going Ships on the East Coast. 



Of ships in contradistinction to boats properly so-called many fine examples 

 running from 50 to 300 tons' register were engaged in the Indian coasting trade a few 

 years ago. The baggala and pattamar are run so cheaply that true ships were never 

 able to compete with them on the West Coast. In the Bay of Bengal this competi- 

 tion was not severe, and as there has always been much carrying trade between 

 Bengal and Burma on the one hand and the South Indian and Ceylon ports on 

 the other, a fine fleet of brigs, barques and dhonis found these remunerative runs 

 till the regularity and insurance advantages of steam traffic ran the slow and irregular 

 sailers almost off the sea. Coringa near Cocanada, and Masulipatam, the ancient 

 eastern sea-gate of the Deccan, were the rhost famous of the old Indian ship-building 

 ports. Some of the small ports on the north of Ceylon, notably Valaveddithurai, and 

 others on the Ramnad coast, also turned out a fair number of medium and small 

 craft, chiefly however of the dhoni class. Even to-day all these ports do a certain 

 amount of shipbuilding, but the number and average size have become reduced, not 

 on account of lack of skill on the part of the present-day designer and workpeople 

 but solely owing to the difficulty which owners experience in earning remunerative 

 freights with large tonnage sailing vessels, part of the handicap lying in the difficulty 

 of effecting insurance upon cargo carried in native craft. 



In the designs of the larger of these craft, European influence has been para- 

 mount during the last> three hundred years ; the models on which the Coringa and 

 Masulipatam builders founded their designs were chiefly the splendid vessels of John 

 Company and the grand products of the eighteenth century French naval ship- 

 yards, refined during the past century by the infiuence of the clipper design that 

 brought sailing ship construction as nearly to perfection as it seems possible to 

 attain. The favourite rigs with Indian builders and shipmasters were those of 



