clinker-built. (1) A boat is carvel-built when the planks are laid edge to edge so that they present a smooth surface without. (2) A boat is clinker-built when each plank is laid on so as to overlap the one below it, thus presenting a series of ledges running longitudinally.
The former method is said to be of Mediterranean, or perhaps of Eastern origin. The latter was probably invented by the old Scandinavian builders, and from them handed down through the fishing boats of the northern nations to our own time.
The accounts of vessels used by the Egyptians and Phoenicians generally refer to larger craft which naturally fall under the head of Ship (q.v.). The Nile boats, however, described by Herodotus (ii. 60), built of acacia wood, were no doubt of various sizes, some of them quite Ancient boats.small, but all following the same type of construction, built up brick fashion, the blocks being fastened internally to long poles secured by cross pieces, and the interstices caulked with papyrus. The ends rose high above the water, and to prevent hogging were often attached by a truss running longitudinally over crutches from stem to stern.
The Assyrian and Babylonian vessels described by Herodotus (i. 194), built up of twigs and boughs, and covered with skins smeared with bitumen, were really more like huge coracles and hardly deserve the name of boats.
The use of boats by the Greeks and Romans is attested by the frequent reference to them in Greek and Latin literature, though, as regards such small craft, the details given are hardly enough to form the basis of an accurate classification.
We hear of small boats attendant on a fleet (κελήτιον, Thuc. i. 53), and of similar craft employed in piracy (Thuc. iv. 9), and in one case of a sculling boat, or pair oar (ἀκάτιον ἀμφηρικόν, Thuc. iv. 67), which was carted up and down between the town of Megara and the sea, being used for the purpose of marauding at night. We are also familiar with the passage in the Acts (xxvii.) where in the storm they had hard work “to come by the boat”; which same boat the sailors afterwards “let down into the sea, under colour as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship,” and would have escaped to land in her themselves, leaving the passengers to drown, if the centurion and soldiers acting upon St Paul’s advice had not cut off the ropes of the boat and let her fall off.
There can be little doubt that boat races were in vogue among the Greeks (see Prof. Gardner, Journal of Hellenic Studies, ii. 91 ff.), and probably formed part of the Panathenaic and Isthmian festivals. It is, however, difficult to prove that small boats took part in these races, though it is not unlikely that they may have done so. The testimony of the coins, such as it is, points to galleys, and the descriptive term (νεῶν ἅμιλλα) leads to the same conclusion.
It is hardly possible now to define the differences which separated ἄκατος, ἀκάτιον, from κέλης, κελήτιον, or from λέμβος or κάραβος. They seem all to have been rowing boats, probably carvel-built, some with keels (acatii modo carinata, Plin. ix. 19), and to have varied in size, some being simply sculling boats, and others running up to as many as thirty oars.
Similarly in Latin authors we have frequent mention of boats accompanying ships of war. Of this there is a well-known instance in the account of Caesar’s invasion of Britain (B.G. iv. 26), when the boats of the fleet, and the pinnaces, were filled with soldiers and sent to assist the Legionaries who were being fiercely attacked as they waded on to the shore. There is also an instance in the civil war, which is a prototype of a modern attack of torpedo boats upon men of war, when Antonius manned the pinnaces of his large ships to the number of sixty, and with them attacked and defeated an imprudent squadron of Quadriremes (B.C. iii. 24). The class of boats so frequently mentioned as actuariae seems to have contained craft of all sizes, and to have been used for all purposes, whether as pleasure boats or as despatch vessels, or for piracy. In fact the term was employed vaguely just as we speak of craft in general.
The lembus, which is often referred to in Livy and Polybius, seems to have been of Illyrian origin, with fine lines and sharp bows. The class contained boats of various sizes and with a variable number of oars (biremis, Livy xxiv. 40, sexdecim, Livy xxxiv. 35); and it is interesting to note the origin in this case, as the invention of the light Liburnian galleys, which won the battle of Actium, and altered the whole system of naval construction, came from the same seaboard.
Besides these, the piratical myoparones (see Cic. In Verrem), and the poetical phaselus, deserve mention, but here again we are met with the difficulty of distinguishing boats from ships. There is also an interesting notice in Tacitus (Hist. iii. 47) of boats hastily constructed by the natives of the northern coast of Asia Minor, which he describes as of broad beam with narrow sides (probably meaning that the sides “tumbled home”), joined together without any fastenings of brass or iron. In a sea-way the sides were raised with planks added till they were cased in as with a roof, whence their name camarae, and so they rolled about in the waves, having prow and stern alike and convertible rowlocks, so that it was a matter of indifference and equally safe, or perhaps unsafe, whichever way they rowed.
Similar vessels were constructed by Germanicus in his north German campaign (Ann. ii. 6) and by the Suiones (Ger. 44). These also had stem and stern alike, and remind us of the old Norse construction, being rowed either way, having the oars loose in the rowlock, and not, as was usual in the south, attached by a thong to the thowl pin.
Lastly, as a class of boat directly descended from the raft, we may notice the flat-bottomed boats or punts or lighters which plied on the Tiber as ferry-boats, or carrying goods, which were called codicariae from caudex, the old word for a plank.
It is difficult to trace any order of development in the construction of boats during the Byzantine period, or the middle ages. Sea-going vessels according to their size carried one or more boats, some of them small boats with two or four oars, others boats of a larger size fitted with masts and sail as well as with oars. We find lembus and phaselus as generic names in the earlier period, but the indications as to size and character are vague and variable. The same may be said of the batelli, coquets, chaloupes, chalans, gattes, &c., of which, in almost endless number and variety, the nautical erudition of M. Jal has collected the names in his monumental works, Archéologie navale and the Glossaire nautique.
It is clear, however, that in many instances the names, originally applied to boats properly so called, gradually attached themselves to larger vessels, as in the case of chaloupe and others, a fact which leads to the conclusion that the type of build followed originally in smaller vessels was often developed on a larger scale, according as it was found useful and convenient, while the name remained the same. Many of these types still survive and may be found in the Eastern seas, or in the Mediterranean or in the northern waters, each of which has its own peculiarities of build and rig.
It would be impossible within our limits to do justice to the number and variety of existing types in sea-going boats, and for more detailed information concerning them the reader would do well to consult Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia, by H. Warington Smyth, an excellent and Existing types. exhaustive work, from which much of the information which follows regarding them has been derived.
In the Eastern seas the Chinese sanpan is ubiquitous. Originally a small raft of three timbers with fore end upturned, it grew into a boat in very early times, and has given its name to a very large class of vessels. With flat bottom, and considerable width in proportion to its length, the normal sanpan runs out into two tails astern, the timbers rounding up, and the end being built in like a bulkhead, with room for the rudder to work between it and the transom which connects the two projecting upper timbers of the stern. Some of them are as much as 30 ft. in
