418 
FOREST 
AND 
STREAM 
Inexpensive But 
Comfortable Shanty 
Boat for Camping 
Plans, Specifications and Instructions That Tell you How to Build a Floating Home that Costs 
but Little More than a Tent, and Will Last for Years 
By R. S. Spears 
HEN I was down the Mississippi 
River a few years ago, I saw 
hundreds of what the river 
people call “shanty-boats” or 
“cabin-boats,” and what are 
generally known as “house¬ 
boats.” Some of them were of 
huge size, used for theaters, 
store-boats and junking, but others were little 
floating homes, and I propose in this article to 
tell how one of these boats was built, for it was 
a small, safe and comfortable craft, fit for trip¬ 
ping down the Mississippi, or floating in a still 
water lake or pond. 
In the first place, the man who built the boat 
The Side and Hull. 
did not have very much money. He could not 
build a fancy boat. But he had to have a craft 
in which he could float from a little landing on 
the Ohio River above the mouth of the Cumber¬ 
land down into the Mississippi and thence about 
800 miles to New Orleans. He had to have a 
boat which would not leak;, which would ride 
waves and steamer wash up to three feet high; 
which would house him safely from the freezing 
cold of late autumn and winter winds; and which 
would not capsize or fill with water in a hard 
rain and wind. 
Being a river man, he knew how to use what 
he had to make his boat. He had for tools a 
hammer, saw, square and plane. He took a piece 
■of paper and drew on it, first of all, a little 
sketch of the boat which he proposed to make, 
and I have drawn a similar sketch which is la- 
bled No. 1, and is reproduced on this page. 
This is the side view of the boat. Its great¬ 
est length is 16 feet; the length on the bottom 
is 13 feet; the depth of the hull is 30 inches; 
the height of the cabin above the gunwales, or 
top of the hull, is 4 feet; the deck is 5 feet long; 
the length of the cabin is 11 feet. All of these 
figures are shown on the dotted lines. 
Also, there is shown on this diagram two win¬ 
dows, each 18 inches square. One could have 
larger or smaller windows, and instead of hav¬ 
ing two windows, one larger window, say one 
two feet square. There is no rule for building 
a shanty-boat. One can vary the plans according 
to whim or material. I knew a man who built 
a shanty-boat in which there was not a piece of 
wood more than four feet long, using only pack¬ 
ing box boards. The boat was 10 feet long, 
4 feet wide, and a clearance or headroom of 
5 feet in the cabin. He lived in this boat all 
winter. 
Now there are two other views to be had of 
the cabin-boat which the river man planned. 
These were the end and top views. No. 2 shows 
the end view. 
This is the end view of the cabin, and shows 
the door from the deck into the cabin. This 
doorway is 28 inches wide by 4 feet high. The 
floor of the cabin is shown, resting on the string¬ 
ers, which are 2x6 inches. The roof is shown. 
It is almost, but not quite, a flat roof. The cen¬ 
ter is six inches higher than the sides. 
The bottom and sides of the hull are shown, 
nailed to the frame-work of the hull—the sim¬ 
plest kind of a frame. It consists simply of a 
piece of hemlock or other studding, 6 feet long, 
6 inches wide by 2 inches thick. Then two pieces 
of studding 30 inches long, 4 inches wide, and 
2 inches thick are sawed. (The studding may 
be had V/2 inches thick, if desired). These two 
short pieces are nailed to the long pieces in 
Diagram No. 2. For a boat hull 16 feet long, 
there should be seven of these frames, one 
every 22 inches, center to center, except the bow 
one, which will be 20 inches from the next one 
aft from it. 
The arrangement of these frames is seen in 
both No. 1 and No. 2 diagrams—the wide, black 
lines. The three bow frames are rectangles; 
each one has two pieces six feet long, one for the 
bottom plank, one for the deck plank. 
The planking for the hull, sides and bottom 
may be either matched lumber, or flooring, 1 y 2 
inches thick, or it may be planed boards, V/i 
inches thick. The matched flooring is easiest 
to make water tight. 
The hull, as the river man built it, was upside 
down. He put up the frames, and tied them at 
exactly the right distances apart with strips of 
r --> .-, 
board, nailed lightly to each of the studding 
frames. The frames rested on boards on a level 
piece of ground. 
Having got the hull frames accurately placed, 
he nailed on the matched flooring for the bottom 
of the boat. It was just like laying a floor, ex¬ 
cept that he painted each tongue and groove of 
the thick flooring with white lead, and stretched 
a light cotton cord in each groove, plentifully 
daubed with white lead. This was to prevent the 
water from leaking through the seams. As the 
flooring came in 14-foot lengths, one strip 
reached from bow to stern of the bottom. 
The tongue on the first outside piece was 
carefully cut off and planed down. Also, the 
first board laid projected over the ends of the 
frames so that the side planking would rest 
upon it. 
When the bottom was nailed on, the side 
boards were nailed on, the tongue having been 
shaved off, and plenty of white lead and cotton 
string being used to make a tight joint. 
Now the side planks had to be 16 feet long. 
As the sides were 30 inches high, there were five 
planks six inches wide (not counting the tongue). 
Also, the ends of these planks had to be shaped 
for the rake at the bow and the stern. 
The first plank was cut 13 feet long on the 
bottom, which rests on the bottom plank. The 
top of this plank was cut 14 feet long. That is, 
each end was cut at an angle of 45 deg., as 
appears in Diagram No. 4. 
After the first planks have been nailed on the 
sides, the second planks are cut. As these planks 
are six inches wide, the second pair are 15 feet 
long at the longest, the next 16 feet long; and 
the two top planks are 16 feet long, and square 
at the ends. The five widths of plank make the 
boat hull 30 inches deep. Many houseboats have 
only 24-inch deep hulls, even on the Mississippi. 
The hardest work on the whole boat, perhaps, 
is fitting in the plank for the bow and stern 
rakes so that they will not leak. There are two 
ways of covering the two rakes. One is to lay 
the rake planks lengthwise of the boat, as the 
bottom planks are laid. The other way is to cut 
