Table Of ContentWhen the Land Meets the Sea
Amanda M. Evans Editor
The
Archaeology
of Vernacular
Watercraft
WHEN THE LAND MEETS THE SEA : An ACUA
and SHA Series
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Amanda M. Evans
Editor
The Archaeology
of Vernacular Watercraft
Editor
Amanda M. Evans
Tesla Offshore, LLC
Prairieville , USA
ISSN 1869-6783 ISSN 1869-6791 (electronic)
When the Land Meets the Sea
ISBN 978-1-4939-3561-1 ISBN 978-1-4939-3563-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-3563-5
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Foreword
The term “vernacular watercraft” has come into widespread use in North America
in recent decades where a number of research students have written theses on vari-
ous aspects of such vessels (Corbin 2 010; Damien 2 010; Evans 2 005 ; Merwin 2 000 ;
Tolson 1992 ) and occasional consultancy cultural heritage management reports and
book chapters have appeared (Goodwin et al. 1 997; Langley 2 011; O’Leary 1 994 ).
That the use of the term vernacular watercraft is by no means as common in places
outside North America should come as no real surprise in a (sub)discipline that has
regularly used slightly different, but partly (or largely) overlapping, defi nitions for
its activities that are often based on their particular geographical or historical ori-
gins. The three most common examples of which are probably maritime archaeol-
ogy, underwater archaeology, and nautical archaeology.
So is this simply a question of the meanings and usage of the term vernacular
watercraft in the English language but as used in different countries such as English
(US) or English (Aus)? To a certain extent it is; for example, for many years I have
been involved in, and watched others, conduct research on what in the USA would
probably be called vernacular watercraft. Here in Australia they are not usually
referred to as such but, perhaps a little parochially, as “Australian-built” boats and
ships (Bullers 2006 , 2007; Coroneos 1991; Jeffery 1989 , 1992; Nash 2003 , 2004 ).
In the UK, on the other hand, these types of vessels would commonly be called
“traditional” or “working” watercraft (McCaughan 2 008 ; McKee 1 983 ). Throughout
the world the term “indigenous” watercraft is often used for what in the USA may
be termed vernacular. Finally, even in the USA, the term vernacular is not used by
all researchers working on small, wooden-hulled, locally built watercraft (Moser
2011) . Differing terminology is by no means unusual as you will not fi nd the term
vernacular watercraft used at all in Basil Greenhill’s classic book T he Archaeology
of Boats and Ships , although the book is all about both traditional and indigenous
watercraft (Greenhill 1 995 ).
V ernacular watercraft may, in part, be defi ned as occurring or existing in a par-
ticular locality or, in other words, as “endemic” or local. Another aspect of a defi ni-
tion of vernacular watercraft might include an “indigenous” building style using
local materials and traditional methods of construction, decoration, and style. Such
v
vi Foreword
a defi nition will have an overlap of meaning with traditional watercraft in terms of
using traditional construction methods. It will also have overlapping meaning with
working watercraft as opposed to recreational vessels although clearly some ver-
nacular watercraft started life as working vessels and have ended up as recreational
vessels. The balance to this is that some authors do include recreational vessels or
“pleasure craft” in their defi nitions of vernacular watercraft (Damien 2 010 : 3).
Varying terminology over time and the diffi culties of developing classifi cations and
rigid typologies for vernacular watercraft are recurrent themes in this book as they
are, more broadly, in maritime history.
Evans and Smith (in Chap. 1 ) offer some defi nitions of vernacular watercraft and
point out some of the overlaps between traditional and vernacular watercraft. They
outline Doran’s three criteria for recognition of vernacular watercraft: local com-
munity recognition, built by rule of thumb, and attributable by outsiders to a par-
ticular community. They also suggest that relationships between environment and
social processes can be used to model the expected elements of vernacular
watercraft.
In Chap. 2 , Evans argues for vernacular watercraft as “common” boats and ships
highlighting the distinctly local aspects of their design and construction and sug-
gests that shipbuilding is a deliberate agent-based decisionmaking process. She also
makes the important link between colonization and adaptation to local conditions
and resources and identifi es the importance of the incorporation of local timbers
into ship construction and repair. She outlines Butzer’s useful model of adaptive
systems, which had three main components—technology, social behavior, and
resource opportunities—for analyzing shipwreck sites.
A daptation to the environment is clearly an important part of the development
and evolution of vernacular watercraft in a colonial setting, and in Chap. 4 Turner
considers colonization and the link between domestic and imported in the transition
processes from Old World to New World. He suggests that vernacular watercraft in
a colonial setting were often fi rmly based on preexisting traditions that were brought
by colonists and immigrants as signifi cant aspects of their parent culture and which
can therefore be seen as examples of cultural continuity. Adaptation, on the other
hand, is particularly important in terms of the use of endemic timbers in vernacular
watercraft as ship and boat builders in northern Europe, specifi cally in Britain, had
over many centuries developed detailed knowledge and understanding about ship-
building including the most suitable timbers for particular tasks: oak for frames,
beech for decks, ash for oars, and fi r for masts and spars. When these familiar and
traditional timbers were not available, the colonists had to use locally grown tim-
bers, often of unknown suitability, instead.
So can we tease out some features of vernacular watercraft that somehow encap-
sulate what they are? In the purest sense vernacular watercraft are:
• S mall boats and small vessels. While there is no accepted maximum size for a
vernacular watercraft, the vast majority were probably under 100 ft long and/or
100 tons in size though these sizes grew as time went by and a vernacular water-
craft built at the end of the nineteenth century may well have been larger than
Foreword vii
those built in previous centuries. In general, however, larger vessels tended to be
built in shipyards by large teams of men that included one, or more, shipwright(s)
who, until the nineteenth century, had learned his trade either from father to son
or through the apprenticeship system (MacGregor 1 997 ).
• M ostly wooden hulled and usually powered by sail—but by no means exclu-
sively. The introduction of iron and steel hulls and steam-, and later coal- or oil-,
powered vessels in many cases tended to result in these vessels being built in
large shipyards by “professionals” or specialists. But there are clearly examples
of steam-powered or iron-hulled or unpowered (barges) vernacular watercraft as
Chap. 5 shows.
• S ometimes one-off or “unique” or at least only a small number of vessels of
similar construction—again the construction of many vessels of similar size and
shape tended to signify “mass” production, and vernacular watercraft were not
generally built by commercial/industrial or specialized or large-scale shipyards.
Certainly they often have unusual construction features, idiosyncratic design,
and strange, or reused, fi ttings as Meide shows in Chap. 6 .
• Not built from detailed plans and the involvement of a naval architect, or even a
“trained” shipwright, signaled something other than a vernacular watercraft. In
general vernacular watercraft were built by men who had little or no “formal”
training (book learning) or trade qualifi cations as a naval architect or a ship-
wright. Some, but not all, were built by men who did not ordinarily make their
full-time living building watercraft and only constructed watercraft on a part-
time basis.
• Built for a local or regional trade or activity such as river, lake, inshore, and
coastal trades or fi shing rather than for the long-distance, offshore, or ocean-
going transport of goods.
• Generally in daily use, which is not a terribly useful idea as most watercraft, at
least until relatively recently, were designed and built to be in daily use.
N eedless to say such defi nitions are diffi cult, overlapping, and often more a pro-
cess of defi nition by exclusion—it is not something so it is (or just might be) a
vernacular watercraft. For example, most defi nitions of vernacular watercraft would
not include naval (or military) warships or “elite” vessels associated with royalty
such as M ary Rose and Vasa which is a point made by Scott-Ireton and Horrell in
Chap. 5 .
Why then are we interested in vernacular watercraft? They refl ect the values of
the people who create and use them.
Vernacular watercraft are interesting to archaeologists because they are a class of
vessel that has limited evidence available in the historical record and that has been
largely ignored by mainstream historians. One reason for this is that most were
small vessels that were often unregistered and therefore largely unrecorded, which
is a point made by Damour in Chap. 7 . To paraphrase others, vernacular watercraft
can be called “ships without voice,” yet these vessels were vital for the establish-
ment and expansion of settlement throughout newly established colonies.
Clayton, VIC, Australia Mark Staniforth, Ph.D., F.S.A.
viii Foreword
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Contents
1 Vernacular Watercraft: In Concept and in Practice ............................ 1
Amanda M. Evans and Sheli O. Smith
2 Improvise, Adapt, Overcome: Vernacular Boats
as Environmental Adaptations ............................................................... 9
Amanda M. Evans
3 The Caymanian Catboat ........................................................................ 19
Roger C. Smith
4 The Bergantín, a Little Known Craft from the Early
Spanish Period in the New World .......................................................... 29
Samuel P. Turner
5 Expressions of a Dying Tradition: Vernacular Watercraft
in Apalachicola, Florida ......................................................................... 53
Della A. Scott-Ireton and Christopher E. Horrell
6 Some Assembly Required: The Analysis and Reassembly
of the Larkin Boat, a Vernacular Watercraft Recovered
from Gregory Mill Creek in Liberty County, Florida ......................... 65
Chuck Meide
7 Born on the Bayou: Louisiana’s Vernacular Constructed
Watercraft ................................................................................................ 99
Melanie Damour
8 The Watercraft of Castle Island, Washington, North Carolina .......... 129
Bradley A. Rodgers , Nathan Richards , Franklin H. Price ,
Brian Clayton , Andrew Pietruszka , and Heather White
9 The Shallop of Hart’s Cove .................................................................... 157
David C. Switzer
ix
