16 
FOREST AND STREAM 
January, 1920 
THE HUNTING AND FISHING SKIFF 
HOW TO BUILD AN IDEAL BOAT WHICH WILL BE LIGHT AND SEAWORTHY 
AND COMBINE ALL THE FEATURES NECESSARY FOR SPORTING PURPOSES 
By LIEUT. WARREN H. MILLER. U.,S. N. R. 
I N all my life as an outdoorsman, the 
waters of the earth have always 
played a large part as a recreation 
and cruising ground. The open ocean, 
the bays and sounds, lakes of all sizes, 
and rivers of varying length and wild- 
ness, have always been attractive to me 
as the best of places to enjoy nature and 
outdoor sport. Water was made to fish 
in, and, as wildfowl do there congregate, 
it is, further, made to gun over. A gun, 
and a canoe, and an old pair of pants, 
have always represented the limit of 
my earthly ambitions, for they represent 
fishing, on salt and fresh water, have en- 
abled me to compare and observe the 
utility of the various standard small 
craft — rowboats, duck boats, canoes and 
the like, — and I offer to the Forest and 
Stream readers, herewith what seems to 
me the ideal of such a craft. 
T HIS ideal should combine lightness, 
so that it can be managed alone 
or carried by two men; and sea- 
worthiness, so that it will be “able” in 
the rough cross-chops that get up on our 
^large lakes and salt water bays. In ad- 
— Freedom ! As a boy I spent the great- 
er part of my time in or on the water, 
and that good old custom has survived 
to this late date. 
Carpentry, of sorts, has also been to 
me a keen recreation. While other men 
golf or tennis, I prefer to build something 
with saw and plane, if the spare hour 
does not permit going afield after fish 
or game. Boat building has always been 
a fascinating recreation, and during a 
long career as an outdoorsman, I have 
built four canoes, three small sailing 
craft and one large power cruiser, all 
but the first three canoes of which, are 
alive and happy today. Every year I de- 
sign a new large cruiser, either a forty- 
five foot steamer, or a ketch of the same 
dimensions; which recreation is economi- 
cal, and satisfies the urge to build some- 
thing, even if never carried out to ex- 
pensive actual construction! 
Many years of practical hunting and 
- . 
dition, such a boat should be one that 
anyone with a fair skill with ordinary 
tools can build himself. As a one-man 
or two-man cruiser, the Barnegat sneak- 
box of all the standard designs, comes 
the nearest to this ideal, but it is hard 
to build, cramped as to space, and a wet 
boat in rough water. The open batteau 
rowboat is easy to build, but unsea- 
worthy, heavy, and impossible to use as 
a blind in duck shooting. The wooden 
decked canoe is fine, but hard to paddle 
for one man, and a nervous thing to sail. 
The Adirondack guide boat and St. Law- 
rence skiff are almost impossible for any- 
one but a professional boat builder to 
make; and the dory comes under the 
same head, being a deep sea boat with 
too much draft for shoal ponds and re- 
quiring special planking for the gar- 
board strakes. 
So, in search of the ideal, we are com- 
pelled to strike out further and try to 
combine the various excellencies of these 
types in a new one, which can be home 
built, is light, and able, and as good a 
fishing boat as it is a duck boat. A study 
of the plans herewith will show the 
writer’s ideas on such a boat. It is of 
the batteau type, which is easy to build, 
yet has the transom frames of the dory, 
so that one can gain lightness by using 
light pine or cedar side strakes. It has 
a roomy cockpit, yet is decked so com- 
pletely that it makes a very able boat, 
riding easily in heavy seas, and, by erect- 
ing a screen of marsh rushes in the rack 
along the inside of the cockpit and cover- 
ing the deck with grass and seaweed, it 
makes a comfortable and efficient blind 
for point duck shooting. The boat only 
weighs 250 lbs, so it can be carried about 
on a trailer made of a pair of old wagon 
wheels with tongue, or carried by two 
men across a field to the pond edge, or 
turned over or hauled across a mud flat 
by one man alone. 
To make a cruiser out of her, for one 
or two men, for a week’s trip down some 
such bay as Barnegat, I have added a 
sail plan and dagger centerboard for those 
nautically inclined. In a small rice- 
grass lake, or farm pond, this gear had 
best be omitted, for it is not worth the 
extra trouble and expense, but, for wide 
stretches of water, where one’s cruise 
may last a week and cover a hundred 
miles of travel, the sail is a life-saver to 
people who do not want to row any more 
than is necessary — and most of us do 
not! And, to provide sleeping arrange- 
ments on board, all that is needed is a 
bottom grating, which at night is raised 
up and caught level with the thwarts by 
cleats, folded under the edge of the 
thwarts when not used. On this space, 
6 feet long, one spreads out the boat 
cushions, or a mattress filled with beach 
browse, and sleeps very comfortably. I 
know, for I used the same scheme with 
my first cruiser, the Margaret, a small, 
decked sailing batteau of boyhood days. 
In her I have slept for a week at a time, 
using the mainsail for a tent, but, con- 
cerning the latter idea, a regular cockpit 
tent, with mosquito screen ends that will 
fit tightly over the cockpit coaming, is 
much better, since a tent made of the 
mainsail stretched over the boom is by 
no means mosquito-proof, although it will 
turn any storm of rain. 
As to cooking arrangements on board, 
I used a kerosene stove in those days, 
but we have now the two-burner Steero 
folding stove, which, with either the 
regular solidified alcohol cans, or two 
alcohol burners and a can of denatured 
alcohol, will provide all the meals, when 
set up temporarily on the forward 
thwart. 
With such a small cruiser, one or two 
men can put in a week of fishing and 
shooting on Barnegat, Great South Bay, 
