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Beaked canoes Home | Beaked canoes | Pointed canoes | Large boats
The canoe shown on the left has a thwart and mast step, which may be used for a sailing or hauling mast. I would suspect the former, as this type of boat is so light and easily moved that hauling would seem to be unnecessary. It also has rounded bilges. These were less common than hard chined bilges. It also struck me that rounded bilged canoes looked older. I wondered if the extra skill needed in their construction was getting harder to find.
Canoes are built upside down, in the open, without any weather protection that I could see. No doubt a thatched roof could be quickly erected if needed. This is a notoriously rainy area, with one town in Assam having the highest annual rainfall ever recorded. The picture below shows a brand new hard-chined canoe, the most common type, just about to be tarred. The beaks are slightly lighter, so maybe they are a different timber from the main hull. There are two planks per side, but that is variable. There is little attempt to match planks symmetrically, although the finished shape of the hull is quite symmetrical. The planks are joined by steel staples made from flat steel plate, bent over at each end and hammered into a groove so they don't protrude. There is very slight rocker to the bottom.
The picture below shows another beaked canoe being built. This one has no rocker at all and the stitching plates can be clearly seen along the joints. Construction is heavy and crude, but effective. The sandy nature of the ground makes it easy to accommodate the projection of the beaks above the general sheer line. You just dig a hole for them to go into.
The beaked canoes are versatile. They are used by men, women, children and livestock. The larger ones are clearly used as living accommodation, at least for short periods, but possibly on a semi-permanent basis. I was told that during flood season families will load themselves, their belongings and their huts onto their canoes as they were flooded out, and would then re-erect the huts after the water subsided. This would often be in a different location as the channels and islands would have moved. Goats and other animals seemed quite happy aboard and would run onto the canoes quite willingly. The beaks made this very easy and lack of a deck makes them more stable with a live cargo.
I recently found this reference to building canoes on Majuli Island, across the Brahmaputra from Jorhat. It refers to small boats being built from azar wood. A small boat would just take a few days to build. (Oct 2009) http://blog.taragana.com/n/assam-boatmakers-make-hay-with-rains-109977/
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I
don't know if there is such a thing as a beaked canoe, but that is the
first term that came to my mind when I watched a fisherman poised on the
extended end of his canoe, like a duck's beak over the water. Punting is
the most common form of propulsion, and the beak gives a solid, flat
platform, close to the centreline. I have never punted, but I would
suspect this makes steering much easier. The beak is solid wood and
jointed into the bottom and sides of the boat. They appear to be identical
at each end. The beak at the bow would also overlap the bank on landing,
and I watched goats being paddled across a stream and then running
along the beak and jumping ashore from it.
The
canoe on the right has a very pronounced beak, formed in a single piece of timber
jointed in between the sides. The sloping timber support on gunwale is a thole pin and
brace for an oar, so this is would be the prow of the boat
if rowed, but it could be punted or paddled either direction.
The builder is
applying the tar. This is a cold paint of some form. It is applied
along the seams first and then over the whole hull. It looked as thought the
planks may have been joined with tar first. Just under the builders right leg
you can see the oar support, so this is the prow of a rowed canoe. I was
surprised by how common rowing was, rather than paddling. It may be that this is
a more efficient way of stemming the strong current of the river. Punting
was by far the most common system, then rowing, paddling, man-hauling and
sailing, in descending order of common usage. At least that is how it seemed to
me in my very short visit.
