A scow is a smaller type of

barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels. ...

. Some scows are rigged as sailing scows. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scows carried cargo in coastal waters and inland waterways, having an advantage for navigating shallow water or small harbours. Scows were in common use in the American

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

and other parts of the U.S., Canada, southern England, and New Zealand. In modern times their main purpose is for recreation and racing.

Scows

The name "scow" derives from the Dutch , ultimately from the German for a punt pole and subsequently transferred to mean the boat. Old Saxon has a similar word which means to push from the shore, clearly related to punting. The basic scow was developed as a flat-bottomed barge ( a large punt) capable of navigating shallow rivers and sitting comfortably on the bottom when the tide was out. By 1848 scows were being rigged for sailing using leeboards or sliding keels. They were also used as dumb barges towed by steamers. Dumb scows were used for a variety of purposes: garbage (see The Adventures of Tugboat Annie), dredging (see Niagara Scow) as well as general estuarine cargos.

Sailing scows

Sailing scows have significant advantages over traditional deep-

keel The keel is the bottom-most longitudinal structural element on a vessel. On some sailboats, it may have a hydrodynamic and counterbalancing purpose, as well. As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in the construction of a ship, in Br ...

sailing vessels that were common at the time the sailing scow was popular. Keelboats, while stable and capable in open water, were incapable of sailing into shallow bays and rivers, which meant that to ship cargo on a keelboat required a suitable harbour and docking facilities, or else the cargo had to be loaded and unloaded with smaller boats. Flat-bottomed scows, on the other hand, could navigate shallow waters, and could even be beached for loading and unloading. This made them useful for moving cargo from inland regions unreachable by keelboat to deeper waters where keelboats could reach. The cost of this shallow water advantage was the loss of the seaworthiness of flat-bottomed scow boats in open water and bad weather. The squared-off shape and simple lines of a scow make it a popular choice for simple home-built boats made from

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

. Phil Bolger and Jim Michalak, for example, have designed a number of small sailing scows, and the PD Racer and the John Spencer designed Firebug are growing classes of home-built sailing scow. Generally these designs are created to minimize waste when using standard 4-foot by 8-foot sheets of plywood. The scow

hull Hull may refer to: Structures * Chassis, of an armored fighting vehicle * Fuselage, of an aircraft * Hull (botany), the outer covering of seeds * Hull (watercraft), the body or frame of a ship * Submarine hull Mathematics * Affine hull, in affi ...

is also the basis for the shantyboat or, on the Chesapeake, the

ark Ark or ARK may refer to: Biblical narratives and religion Hebrew word ''teva'' * Noah's Ark, a massive vessel said to have been built to save the world's animals from a flood * Ark of bulrushes, the boat of the infant Moses Hebrew ''aron'' * ...

, a cabin houseboat once common on American rivers. The ark was used as portable housing by Chesapeake watermen, who followed, for example,

shad The Alosinae, or the shads,Alosinae
Thames sailing barge and the Norfolk wherry are two British equivalents to the scow

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoo ...

. The Thames sailing barges, while used for similar tasks, used significantly different hull shapes and

rigging Rigging comprises the system of ropes, cables and chains, which support a sailing ship or sail boat's masts—''standing rigging'', including shrouds and stays—and which adjust the position of the vessel's sails and spars to which they ar ...

. The term scow is used in and around the west Solent for a traditional class of sailing dinghy. Various towns and villages claim their own variants ( Lymington, Keyhaven, Yarmouth, West Wight,

Chichester Chichester () is a cathedral city and civil parish in West Sussex, England.OS Explorer map 120: Chichester, South Harting and Selsey Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publishing Date:2009. It is the only ...

), they are all around in length and share a lug sail, pivoting centre board, small foredeck and a square transom with a transom-hung

rudder A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally air or water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adve ...

Scow schooners

An American design that reached its zenith of size on the American

, and was also used widely in New Zealand, the

-rigged scow was used for coastal and inland transport, from colonial days to the early 1900s. Scow schooners had a broad, shallow hull, and used centreboards, bilgeboards or leeboards rather than a deep

. The broad hull gave them stability, and the retractable foils allowed them to move even heavy loads of cargo in waters far too shallow for keelboats to enter. The squared-off bow and stern accommodated a large cargo. The smallest sailing scows were

sloop A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...

-rigged (making them technically a ''scow sloop''), but were otherwise similar in design. The scow sloop eventually evolved into the ''inland lake scow'', a type of fast racing boat. Sailing scows were popular in the American South for economic reasons, because the pine planks found there were difficult to bend, and because inlets along the Gulf Coast and Florida were often shallow.

New Zealand trading scows

The American scow design was copied and modified in New Zealand by early immigrant settlers to

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about I ...

in the 1870s. In 1873, a sea captain named George Spencer, who had once lived and worked on the American Great Lakes and had gained a first-hand knowledge of the practical working capabilities of the sailing barges that plied their trade on the lakes, recognised the potential use of similar craft in the protected waters of the Hauraki Gulf, Auckland. He commissioned a local shipbuilder, Septimus Meiklejohn, to construct a small flat-bottomed sailing barge named the ''Lake Erie'', which was built at

Omaha Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest c ...

, not far from Mahurangi. An account of the launching of this vessel appeared in 1873 in the Auckland newspaper, ''The Daily Southern Cross'', which gave its readers a good idea of the distinctive construction and advantages over other vessels. The ''Lake Erie'' was 60 feet 6 inches in length, seventeen feet 3 inches in breadth and had a draught of three feet 4 inches. It was fitted with lee boards (a type of keel slotted onto the sides of the vessel), but these were highly impracticable in rough weather on the New Zealand coast. Later scows were constructed with the much safer slab-sided centre board, which crews raised and lowered as required. This one small craft spawned a fleet of sailing scows that became associated with the gum trade and the flax and kauri industries of northern New Zealand. Scows came in all manner of shape and sizes and all manner of sailing rigs, but the "true" sailing scow displayed no fine lines or fancy rigging. They were designed for hard work and heavy haulage and they did their job remarkably well. They took cattle north from the stockyards of Auckland and returned with a cargo of kauri logs, sacks of kauri gum, shingle, firewood,

flax Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, is a flowering plant, ''Linum usitatissimum'', in the family Linaceae. It is cultivated as a food and fiber crop in regions of the world with temperate climates. Textiles made from flax are known in ...

or sand. With their flat bottoms they could be sailed or poled much further up the many tributaries and rivers where the bushmen and bullock teams had the freshly sawn kauri logs amassed, thereby saving a great deal of time and energy on the part of the bushmen. Flat-bottomed scows were also capable of grounding on a beach for loading and unloading. Over the side went duckboards, wheelbarrows, and banjo shovels. The crew then filled the vessel with sand, racing against the turn of the tide. When the tide did turn, they loaded the equipment back on board and put off to sea. Occasionally an inexperienced skipper overloaded the scow. Then, as the water rose against the outside of the hull (diminishing the amount of safe "free board"), the crew had to shovel rapidly to reduce the contents in the hold to a safe level. Logs when hauled were always carried above deck, secured by heavy chain, the space between decks being left empty to give added buoyancy. The logs were taken to Auckland and unloaded into floating "booms" to await breaking down in the sawmills of the

Kauri Timber Company The Kauri Timber Company, Limited (KTC) Auckland was from 1888 to 1971 a large logging and sawmilling company in New Zealand. KTC was formed in 1888, with a capital of £1,250,000, paid up to £750,000, and its operations were of a very comprehe ...

and other such mills that operated right on the edge of Auckland Harbour. The golden age of scows and

schooners A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoo ...

lasted from the 1890s to the end of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, when schooners were superseded by steamers and scows were gradually replaced with tugs. The Subritzky family of Northland operated the scows ''Jane Gifford'' and ''Owhiti'' as the last fleet of working scows, operating between the

Port of Auckland Ports of Auckland Limited (POAL), the successor to the Auckland Harbour Board, is the Auckland Council-owned company administering Auckland's commercial freight and cruise ship harbour facilities. As the company operates all of the associated fa ...

and the Island communities of the Hauraki Gulf. The ''Jane Gifford'' was gifted to the Waiuku Historical Society by Captain Bert Subritzky and his wife Moana in 1985, where it was re-masted and re-rigged to its original splendour. The ''Owhiti'' was sold to Captain Dave Skyme and fully restored to its 1924 sea worthiness, and it subsequently starred in the 1983 movie ''

Savage Islands The Savage Islands or Selvagens Islands ( pt, Ilhas Selvagens ; also known as the Salvage Islands) are a small Portuguese archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, south of Madeira, and north of the Canary Islands.30,000), white-faced storm- ...

'' (starring

Tommy Lee Jones Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an American actor and film director. He has received four Academy Award nominations, winning Best Supporting Actor for his performance as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in the 1993 thriller film '' T ...

and amongst others Kiwi icon and singer

Prince Tui Teka Tumanako "Tui" Teka (8 March 193723 January 1985), better known by his stage names Tui Latui or Prince Tui Teka was a Māori singer and actor. Teka was a member of the Maori Volcanics Showband before having a successful solo career. Career T ...

as King Ponapa). Unfortunately the ''Owhiti'' was not maintained for a period of time, during which teredo shipworms destroyed much of her structure. She remains in a deteriorating condition at Opua. Her rig may see use in another scow when restored. The main differences from American scows were sharper bows and favouring the ketch rig instead of the schooner rig, although a great many schooner- and topsail schooner-rigged vessels were built. Some 130 scows were built in the north of New Zealand between 1873 and 1925; they ranged from 45 to 130 ft (14–40 m). New Zealand trading scows travelled all around New Zealand as well as to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

and to the west coast of America although the majority were based in the Hauraki Gulf of New Zealand.

Notable sailing scows

The scow schooner ''Alma'' of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

, built in 1891, restored in the 1960s, and designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places liste ...

(NHL) in 1988, was one of the last scow schooners in operation. She is a small example, 59 feet in length, 22.6 feet in beam, with a draft of 4 feet and a loaded displacement of 41 tons. ''Elsie'' was the last scow sloop operated on the Chesapeake Bay. Although sailing scows were once numerous around the Bay, they are poorly documented. The ''Ted Ashby'' is a ketch-rigged scow built in 1993 and based at the New Zealand National Maritime Museum in Auckland, it regularly sails the Auckland harbour as a tourist attraction. It was named after an old-time New Zealand seafarer and scowman, Ted Ashby, who had the foresight to document much of the history of these coastal work horses in his book ''Phantom Fleet - The Scows and Scowmen of Auckland'', which was published by A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington, in 1976. The ''Jane Gifford'' is a ketch-rigged deck scow built in 1908 by Davey Darroch, Big Omaha, New Zealand. The vessel was re-launched at Waiuku on the 28 November 1992, with Captain Basil Subritzky, the son of the late Captain Bert Subritzky and his family as guests of honour. The ''Jane Gifford'' then commenced sailings and tours on the Manukau Harbour between Waiuku and the Onehunga Wharf. In 1999 she was pulled out of the water for a rebuild, which commenced at Okahu Bay on the Waitemata Harbour. She then sat rotting until 2005, when she was moved to Warkworth for rebuilding. A full rebuild, using modern materials has been done at Warkworth, and the vessel was relaunched on 16 May 2009. She returned to sail later, and has been occasionally under sail in the Hauraki Gulf. She is the only original New Zealand scow still afloat to carry sail. The '' Echo'' was built in 1905 of Kauri in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...

. She is 104 feet (32 m) long, with two masts and topsail rigged. Twin diesel engines were installed in 1920. In 1942–44 she was used by US forces in the Pacific, see

USS Echo (IX-95) USS ''Echo'' (IX-95), an unclassified miscellaneous vessel, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for the nymph Echo. A sailing scow, she was used as a supply ship in the South Pacific from 1942 to 1944. History A twin-maste ...

. Her story was the basis for the 1960 film with Jack Lemon, The Wackiest Ship in the Army and the 1965

TV series A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed b ...

. She was nearly broken up in 1990, but is now preserved at Picton, New Zealand Scow in Grand Canyon

Howard I. Chapelle Howard Irving Chapelle (February 1, 1901 – June 30, 1975) was an American naval architect, and curator of maritime history at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. In addition, he authored many books and articles on maritime history a ...

documented a number of scows in his book ''American Small Sailing Craft''.

North American commercial scows

Scows were widely used to carry freight and passengers along or across inland waterways, sometimes preceding the arrival of railway transportation. Many scows were pulled/pushed by a tug or shore cable, whereas others were powered only by the current. Historic 19th-century US canals used work scows for canal construction and maintenance, as well as ice breaker scows, filled with iron or heavy objects, to clear ice from canals. The Niagara Scow is a former dredging scow stuck on the rocks in the

Niagara River The Niagara River () is a river that flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It forms part of the border between the province of Ontario in Canada (on the west) and the state of New York in the United States (on the east). There are diffe ...

upstream from the brink of

Niagara Falls Niagara Falls () is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the Canada–United States border, border between the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario in Canada and the U.S. state, state ...

Horseshoe Falls since 1918. After being stuck in place for more than 100 years, in November 2019, the scow broke loose during a wind storm and moved closer to the edge of the Horseshoe Falls.

Racing boats: the inland lake scows

In the early 20th century, smaller

and cat rigged scows became popular

sailboats A sailboat or sailing boat is a boat propelled partly or entirely by sails and is smaller than a sailing ship. Distinctions in what constitutes a sailing boat and ship vary by region and maritime culture. Types Although sailboat terminology ...

on inland

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

s throughout the

midwestern The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. First popularized by Johnson Boat Works in

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over t ...

, these boats were distinguished by their larger sail plans, retractable bilgeboards, and (in some classes) twin

s. There are many active racing classes throughout the

Midwest The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...

, Western New York, the New Jersey Shore and parts of the

South South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...

. These boats are traditionally identified by their class letters: * A: The largest inland lake scow at 38 feet long, the A normally requires a crew of six or seven. The sail plan includes a mainsail, a jib, and a large asymmetrical spinnaker. It has twin rudders. A new A scow (with sails and a trailer) cost $200,000 in 2020. Once the fastest monohull sailboat in the world, has been clocked in at . It is possible to waterski behind these sailboats, as demonstrated by

Buddy Melges Harry C. "Buddy" Melges Jr. (born January 26, 1930) is a competitive sailor. He has earned national and international championships in several classes in conventional sailing and ice-boating. Early life Born in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, Melges ...

. * E: This is essentially a smaller version of the A scow. Only 28 feet long, it requires a crew of three or four. In 2007, the class association NCESA voted to make the asymmetrical spinnaker the class legal standard. *

M-16 The M16 rifle (officially designated Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16) is a family of service rifle, military rifles adapted from the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle for the United States Armed Forces, United States military. The original M16 rifle was a ...

: This 16-foot scow crews two, and has a mainsail and jib but no spinnaker. It has tiny dual rudders like the A and the E. * M-20: A 20-foot version of the M-16, with the addition of a backstay, a tunnel hull, twin bilgeboards and rudders, and a spinnaker. Modern boats are built with both the symmetrical spinnaker, or the

I-20 Interstate 20 (I‑20) is a major east–west Interstate Highway in the Southern United States. I-20 runs beginning at an interchange with I-10 in Scroggins Draw, Texas, and ending at an interchange with I-95 in Florence, South Carolina. Betwe ...

version with an asymmetrical spinnaker. Because of the hull configuration, at a substantial angle of heel, it is similar to having a catamaran on one hull: the ratio of waterline length to breadth increases dramatically, along with a geometric increase in speed. * C: This is a 20-foot

catboat A catboat (alternate spelling: cat boat) is a sailboat with a single sail on a single mast set well forward in the bow of a very beamy and (usually) shallow draft hull. Typically they are gaff rigged, though Bermuda rig is also used. Most are ...

with one large sail set far forward on the hull. It requires a crew of two or three. Unlike the A and E, the C-scow has a large, efficient single rudder. It has no permanent backstay, so jibing the boat requires the quick use of running backstays. * MC: The MC is a "mini-C" of sorts, a 16-foot cat-rigged boat with a higher and narrower sailplan. It also has a large efficient single rudder. It can be sailed competitively by 1 person. This is a growing class, especially popular in the midwest and southern USA. * 17: Introduced in 2005 by

Melges Performance Sailboats Melges Performance Sailboats, is an American Boat building, sailboat manufacturer founded by Harry Melges, father of former Olympic sailor Buddy Melges. Melges Boat Works, Inc. was founded by Harry C. Melges, Sr. in 1945. The company was origin ...

, the 17 is a departure from traditional scow design. It has an asymmetrical spinnaker and retractable bowsprit, a high-roach full-battened mainsail, and unusually long and thin rudder and bilgeboards. *

Butterfly Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group compris ...

: This small scow is meant to be sailed by one person. It features a cat rig, and unlike the boats above, it has a

daggerboard A daggerboard is a retractable centreboard used by various sailing craft. While other types of centreboard may pivot to retract, a daggerboard slides in a casing. The shape of the daggerboard converts the forward motion into a windward lift, co ...

. Contrary to the connotations of the old definition of "scow" (large and slow), the inland lake scows are extremely fast—the wide, flat bottom hull allows them to plane easily. As a consequence of this, the A scow is the highest rated

centerboard A centreboard or centerboard (US) is a retractable hull appendage which pivots out of a slot in the hull of a sailboat, known as a ''centreboard trunk'' (UK) or ''centerboard case'' (US). The retractability allows the centreboard to be raised ...

boat according to the US Portsmouth yardstick numbers.

Alternative design

A 'semi-flying' scow that uses a host of design tricks, including wings/foils and a telescopic canting keel, a retractable bowsprit and an asymmetrical spinnaker, has been designed in France.

References

Citations

General bibliography

*
Chapelle, ''ASSC'' Chapter 3, Scow and Bateau
* * * * * Flipper Scow (in Swedish) The Danish constructed (Peer Bruun) dinghy class.
History of the Inland Lake Yachting Assn.
Excerpts from Dr. Thomas Hodgson's History of the Inland Lake Yachting Association, 1998.

External links

* ttp://janegifford.org.nz Preserved scow Jane Gifford, Warkworth, New Zealand
A new look at scows!
* David Raison's ''Magnum'' scow won the 2011 Mini Transat. {{Portal bar, Transport Boat types Dinghies Scows