A sewn boat is a type of wooden

boat A boat is a watercraft of a large range of types and sizes, but generally smaller than a ship, which is distinguished by its larger size or capacity, its shape, or its ability to carry boats. Small boats are typically used on inland waterways s ...

which has its planks sewn, stitched, tied, or bound together with natural fibre rope (e.g.

coir Coir (), also called coconut fibre, is a natural fibre extracted from the outer husk of coconut, and used in products such as floor mats, doormats, brushes, and mattresses. Coir is the fibrous material found between the hard, internal shell ...

in the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

)

tendon A tendon or sinew is a tough band of fibrous connective tissue, dense fibrous connective tissue that connects skeletal muscle, muscle to bone. It sends the mechanical forces of muscle contraction to the skeletal system, while withstanding tensi ...

s or flexible wood, such as roots and

willow Willows, also called sallows and osiers, of the genus ''Salix'', comprise around 350 species (plus numerous hybrids) of typically deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions. Most species are known ...

branches. Sewn boat construction techniques were used in many parts of the world prior to the development of metal fasteners, and continued to be used long after that time for small boats to reduce construction costs where metal fasteners were too expensive.

Name and similar techniques

Although well established, the ''sewn boat'' name is somewhat misleading since it suggests

textile Textile is an Hyponymy and hypernymy, umbrella term that includes various Fiber, fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, Staple (textiles)#Filament fiber, filaments, Thread (yarn), threads, and different types of #Fabric, fabric. ...

leather Leather is a strong, flexible and durable material obtained from the tanning (leather), tanning, or chemical treatment, of animal skins and hides to prevent decay. The most common leathers come from cattle, sheep, goats, equine animals, buffal ...

skin construction, as often found in

kayak ] A kayak is a small, narrow human-powered watercraft typically propelled by means of a long, double-bladed paddle. The word ''kayak'' originates from the Inuktitut word '' qajaq'' (). In British English, the kayak is also considered to be ...

s. Some have proposed to use ''laced boats'' ( German language, Ge. ''geschnürte Boote'') instead. A modern

plywood Plywood is a composite material manufactured from thin layers, or "plies", of wood veneer that have been stacked and glued together. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured boards, which include plywood, medium-density fibreboa ...

construction method that resembles sewn boats is the

stitch and glue Stitch and glue is a simple boat building method which uses plywood panels temporarily stitched together, typically with wire or zip-ties, and glued together permanently with epoxy resin. This type of construction can eliminate much of the need f ...

method; in this technique plywood panels are stitched together, often with wire, and the seams are reinforced with

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) is a common type of fibre-reinforced plastic, fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened i ...

composite; the stitching may then be removed or may remain in place. Also related is the treenailed boat. Lashed lug construction is used in the distinctive maritime technology of

Austronesian peoples The Austronesian people, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples who have settled in Taiwan, maritime Southeast Asia, parts of mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melan ...

Construction

Sewn boats start with the construction of the hull, or outside "shell" of the boat, rather than the ''frame'', resulting in a

monocoque Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell". First used for boats, ...

type of structure. Carefully shaped planks are connected at the edges. The planks may overlap, as in the

Hjortspring boat The Hjortspring boat () is a vessel designed as a large canoe, from the Scandinavian Pre-Roman Iron Age. It was built circa 400–300 BC. The hull and remains were rediscovered and excavated in 1921–1922 from the bog of ''Hjortspring Mose'' on ...

, or joined flush at their edges, as is found in Arab dhows and along the coast of India. As the planks are placed together, the hull begins to bend into the desired shape. Internal framing may be added to the planks after they are sewn in, providing additional rigidity. While wooden pegs (often called ''treenails'') can be used to fasten thicker clinker planks, this technique only works if the planks are thick enough to hold the pegs. Because of this, large ships were often built using pegs, while smaller boats would use sewn planks. The replica of the Belitung shipwreck, ''

Jewel of Muscat ''Jewel of Muscat'' is a ship based on the design of the Belitung shipwreck, an Arabian dhow that was found off the coast of Belitung Island, Indonesia, in 1998 and subsequently salvaged. It was built in a joint effort by the governments of Oma ...

'', was built mostly by Indian shipwrights with extensive experience of sewn planking construction. The

ropes used to sew the planks together were tightened to very close to their breaking strain. (This is in contrast to the much lower sewing tensions proposed in an earlier theoretical model.) The multiple stitches at each pair of holes and the relatively close spacing of those holes mean that there is a substantial clamping force holding the edges of the planks together. This has shown to have good structural properties and the designer argues that this is superior to a similar vessel with metal fastenings, where those fastenings concentrate forces whilst sewing distributes them across the hull structure.

History

The earliest surviving examples of plank-built boats are the

Abydos boats The Abydos boats are the remnants of a group of ancient royal Egyptian ceremonial boats found at an archaeological site in Abydos, Egypt. Discovered in 1991, excavation of the Abydos boats began in 2000 at which time fourteen boats were identified ...

, the earliest of which is dated to . These are sewn boats. The investigated example, BG10, had an unusual sewing technique, with the continuous fibrous strap running at right angles to the long direction of the planks. Therefore each length of strap went through all the planks on that side of the vessel. In contrast, other sewn boats that use continuous sewing (as opposed to a series of individual stitches) have the thread go along the seam between two planks. A well-known early example of a sewn boat is the 40+ metres long "Solar barque" or funerary boat on show near the Gizeh pyramid in Egypt; it dates back from c. 2500 BC. The sewn construction was a natural step when coming from raft or reed boatbuilding, which dates from some thousands of years before that. The oldest sea-going vessel was the

Zambratija boat The Zambratija shipwreck is a Late Bronze Age shipwreck dated to the 12th to 10th century BCE discovered in the Bay of Zambratija near Umag on Croatia's Istrian peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea. Signs of the wreck were first spotted by a fishe ...

in Croatia, c. 1200 BC. In other parts of the world, the oldest sewn craft comes from

North Ferriby North Ferriby is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Haltemprice area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. History Humber Estuary "The archaeology of the intertidal wetlands of the Humber Estuary is of internatio ...

, where one sample (called ''F3'') mass-spectrometry dates to 2030 BC. Later finds include some early Greek ships. The oldest Nordic find is the

in Denmark (c 300 BC). In

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Karelia Karelia (; Karelian language, Karelian and ; , historically Коре́ла, ''Korela'' []; ) is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Russia (including the Soviet Union, Soviet era), Finland, and Sweden. It is currentl ...

and Estonia small sewn boats have been constructed more recently; until the 1920s in poor areas of Russia. Sewn construction is used in the various forms of the Austronesian "

proa The ProA is the German basketball league system, second-tier Sports league, league of professional club basketball in Germany. The league comprises 16 teams. Officially the ProA is part of the ''2. Basketball Bundesliga'', which consists of the t ...

s" of the

Indo-Pacific The Indo-Pacific is a vast biogeographic region of Earth. In a narrow sense, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, it comprises the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the ...

(which also used the lashed-lug techniques) and the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

ern and

South Asia South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...

dhow Dhow (; ) is the generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with settee or sometimes lateen sails, used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Typically sporting long thin hulls, dhows are trading vessels ...

native to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean.Ralph K. Pedersen. "Traditional Arabic watercraft and the ark of the Gilgamesh epic: interpretations and realizations." ''Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabic Studies'' 34 (2004) 231-238, p.231. Despite their proximity and similarity, they differ markedly from each other, indicating that they developed independently. Austronesian boat-sewing techniques are discontinuous and are only visible from the inside surfaces of the hull, while South Asian and Middle Eastern boat-sewing techniques are visible in both the exterior and interior of the hull and are continuous.

Comparison with other traditions

Though the sewn boat technique (but not the lashed lugs) is also used for boats in the western

traditions, it differs in that the stitching in Austronesian boats are discontinuous and only visible from the inside of the hull. This indicates that the sewn boat techniques of the Indian Ocean and Austronesia are not culturally-linked and developed independent of each other. The planks of ancient Austronesian ships were originally joined together using only the sewn boat technique. However, the development of

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...

in Maritime Southeast Asia in the last two thousand years resulted in the replacement of the sewing technique with internal dowels, as well as increasing use of metal nails.

Examples of sewn boats

Dhow Dhow (; ) is the generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with settee or sometimes lateen sails, used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Typically sporting long thin hulls, dhows are trading vessels ...

* INSV Kaundinya *

* Mtepe *

Nordland Nordland (; , , , ) is one of the three northernmost Counties of Norway, counties in Norway in the Northern Norway region, bordering Troms in the north, Trøndelag in the south, Norrbotten County in Sweden to the east, Västerbotten County to t ...

* Itaomacip *

Dover Bronze Age boat The Dover Bronze Age boat is one of fewer than 20 Bronze Age boats so far found in Britain. It dates to 1575–1520 BC, which may make it one of the oldest substantially intact ''boat'' in the world (older boat finds are small fragments, some ...

* Mirror dinghy, a 1960s self-build sailing dinghy design, based on plywood panels sewn together with copper wire, then strengthened with adhesive.

Notes

References

External links

A full-scale replica of a Hjortspring Boat
an early Nordic sewn boat
Reconstruction
of sewing boatbuilding technique & building of a sewn boat replica at Fotevikens Museum
Abstract
of ''Construction and Qualitative Analysis of a Sewn Boat of the Western Indian Ocean''

definition of ''sewn boat''
Ferriby Boats
website, with information on archeological finds
Odyssey 5.234-53 and Homeric Ship Construction: A Reappraisal
an analysis of

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

ship ''laced boat'' construction methods
Traditional watercraft of Viet Nam
Construction of a sewn plank boat by two of the last living Vietnamese builders, documented in photographs.
HAND - SEWN BOAT. Local fishing-boat constructed off accurately crafted planks, sewn together with coir rope.
flickr.com {{Authority control Boat types