has increased the size in almost all classes of boats till they pass into the category of ships. At the same time the carvel-build is becoming more common, while, in the struggle for life, steam and motor power are threatening to obliterate the old types of rowing and sailing boats altogether.
Next to the Norse skiff and its descendants, perhaps the oldest type of boat in northern waters is to be found in Holland, where the conditions of navigation have hardly altered for centuries. It is to the Dutch that we chiefly owe the original of our pleasure craft, but, though we have developed these enormously, the Dutch boats have remained pretty much the same. The clinker-build and the wide rounded bow are now very much of the same character as they are represented in the old pictures of the 17th and 18th centuries.
The development of boat-building in the British Isles during the 19th century has been unceasing and would need a treatise to itself to do it justice. The expansion of the fishing industry and the pressure of competition have stimulated constant improvement in the craft engaged, and here also are observable the same tendencies to substitute carvel, though it is more expensive, for clinker build, and to increase the length and size of the boats, and the gradual supersession of sail and oar by steam power. Under these influences we hear of the fifie and the skaffie classes, old favourites in northern waters, being superseded by the more modern Zulu, which is supposed to unite the good qualities of both; and these in turn running to such a size as to take them outside the category of boats. But even in the case of smaller boats the Zulu model is widely followed, so that they have actually been imported to the Irish coast for the use of the crofter fishermen in the congested districts.
For the Shetland sexern and the broad boats of the Orkneys, and the nabbies of the west coast of Scotland, the curious will do well to refer to H. Warington Smyth’s most excellent account.
On the eastern coast of England the influence of the Dutch type of build is manifest in many of the flat-bottomed and mostly round-ended craft, such as the Yorkshire Billyboy, and partly in the coble, which latter is interesting as built for launching off beaches against heavy seas, and as containing relics of Norse influence, though in the main of Dutch origin.
The life-boats of the eastern coast are in themselves an admirable class of boat, with fine lines, great length, and shallow draught, wonderful in their daring work in foul weather and heavy seas, in which as a rule their services are required. Here, however, as in the fishing boats, the size is increasing, and steam is appropriating to itself the provinces of the sail and the oar.
The wherry of the Norfolk Broads has a type of its own, and is often fitted out as a pleasure boat. It is safe and comfortable for inland waters, but not the sort of boat to live in a sea-way in anything but good weather.
The Thames and its estuary rejoice in a great variety of boats, of which the old Peter boat (so called after the legend of the foundation of the abbey on Thorney Island) preserved a very ancient type of build, shorter and broader than the old Thames pleasure wherry. But these and the old hatch boat have now almost disappeared. Possibly survivors may still be seen on the upper part of the tidal river. Round the English coast from the mouth of the Thames southwards the conditions of landing and of hauling up boats above high-water mark affect the type, demanding strong clinker-build and stout timbers. Hence there is a strong family resemblance in most of the short boats in use from the North Foreland round to Brighton. Among these are the life-boats of Deal and the other Channel ports, which have done and are still doing heroic work in saving life from wrecks upon the Goodwins and the other dangerous shoals that beset the narrowing sleeve of the English Channel.
Farther down, along the southern coast, and to the west, where harbours are more frequent, a finer and deeper class of boats, chiefly of carvel-build, is to be found. The Cornish ports are the home of a great boat-building industry, and from them a large number of the finest fishing boats in the world are turned out annually. Most of them are built with stem and stern alike, with full and bold quarters, and ample floor.
It is not possible here to enumerate, much less to describe in detail, the variety of types in sea-going boats which have been elaborated in England and in America. For this purpose reference should be made to the list of works given at the end of the article.
The following is a list of the boats at present used in the royal navy. They have all of them a deep fore foot, and with the exception of the whalers and Berthon boats, upright stems and transom sterns. The whalers have a raking stem and a sharp stern, and a certain amount of sheer in the bows.
| Length. Feet. | Beam. Ft. In. | Depth. Ft. In. | |
| 1a. Dinghy. Freeboard about 9 in. Weight 3 cwt. 2 qr. Between thwarts 2 ft. 9 in. Elm. | 1312 | 4′ 8″ | 2′ 2″ |
| 1b. Skiff dinghy for torpedo boats. Freeboard about 9 in. Carry about ten men in moderate weather. Between thwarts 2 ft. 712 in. Weight 3 cwt. 4 ℔ Yellow pine. | 16 | 4′ 6″ | 1′ 10″ |
| 2a. Whaler for destroyers. 5 in. sheer. Yellow pine. | 25 | 5′ 6″ | 2′ |
| 2b. Whaler. Between thwarts 2 ft. 10 in. Freeboard about 12 in. Weight, 8 cwt. Strakes No. 13. Lap 34 in. Elm. | 27 | 5′ 6″ | 2′ 2″ |
| (All have bilge strakes with hand-holes.) | |||
| 3. Gig. Between thwarts 2 ft. 912 in. Weight 8 cwt. 2 qr. 15 ℔ 13 Strakes. Elm. | 30 | 5′ 6″ | 2′ 2″ |
| 4. Cutter. Between thwarts 3 ft. 1 in. To carry 49 men. Carvel built. | 30 | 8′ 1″ | 2′ 812″ |
| 5. Pinnace. Between thwarts 3 ft. Carvel-built. Elm. | 36 | 10′ 2″ | 3′ 5″ |
| 6. Launch. Between thwarts 3 ft. 1 in. To carry 140 men. Double skin diagonal. Teak. | 42 | 11′ 6″ | 4′ 6″ |
| 7. Berthon collapsible boats weighing 7 cwt. for destroyers. |
With the exception of the larger classes, viz. cutters, pinnaces and launches, the V-shape of bottom is still preserved, which does not tend to stability, and it is difficult to see why the smaller classes have not followed the improvement made in their larger sisters.
Though the number and variety of sea-going boats is of much greater importance, no account of boats in general would be complete without reference to the development of pleasure craft upon rivers and inland waters, especially in England, during the past century. There is a legend, Pleasure boats and racing. dating from Saxon times, which tells of King Edgar the Peaceable being rowed on the Dee from his palace in Chester to the church of St John, by eight kings, himself the ninth, steering this ancient 8-oar; but not much is heard of rowing in England until 1453, when John Norman, lord mayor of London, set the example of going by water to Westminster, which, we are told, made him popular with the watermen of his day, as in consequence the use of pleasure boats by the citizens became common. Thus it was that the old Thames pleasure wherry, with its high bows and low sharp stern and V-shaped section, and the old skiff came into vogue, both of which have now given way to boats, mostly of clinker-build, but with rounder bottoms and greater depth, safer and more comfortable to row in.
In 1715 Thomas Doggett (q.v.) founded a race which is still rowed in peculiar sculling boats, straked, and with sides flaring up to the sill of the rowlock. Strutt tells us of a regatta in 1775 in which watermen contended in pair-oared boats or skiffs.
At the beginning of the 19th century numerous rowing clubs flourished on the upper tidal waters of the Thames, and we hear of four-oared races from Westminster to Putney, and from Putney to Kew, in what we should now consider large and heavy boats, clinker-built, with bluff entry.
Longer boats, 8-oars, and 10-oars, seem to have been existent at the end of the 18th century. Eton certainly had one 10-oar, and three 8-oars, and two 6-oars, before 1811. The record of 8-oar races at Oxford begins in 1815, at Cambridge in
