Elven dory with lapstrake construction

[willfish4food]

Here's a tough question for wooden-boat lovers out there:

In the movie "The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring," the fellowship members are given boats by the elves of Lothlorien to speed their travels. I did a bit of research and found that they were built by Wayne Roberts (of whom I had not heard until now). By their appearance, they are double-ended dories with lapstrake construction. The "queen elf" Galadriel has her own boat, similar but with a more decorative bow.

The question is this: How do I build one for myself? I have built two tandem sea kayaks (the Guillemot double by Nick Schade, a design proven this last summer by some dicey weather on Yellowstone lake!), but not a dory or any kind of plank-on-frame boat. Before the movie, I had wanted a McKenzie boat for river fishing, but these movie boats have some nice character!

I'm sure the plans are property of the movie, but is there a way to get them? If not, I'll likely be able to guess on the proportions if I have a good book to guide the building process. Recommendations?

This is a late-night posting, but I got sucked into reading many of the previous subjects. I'm sure I'm not alone!

[Keith Wilson]

They're not dories, not all of them anyway. In a few of the stills I've seen from the movie, you can see the bottom from inside, and it's not flat. Seems to be normal lapstrake over steamed frames. However, there were several different boats to different scales; larger ones for use by "hobbits" alone, and smaller ones to be filmed with actors playing men or elves, and dummies for the smaller hobbits.

The "Elvish" boats look like they are derived from scandinavian designs, but with a little more bow overhang than would be normal. There are a lot of very nice small boat designs based on boats from Norway or Sweden; perhaps one of Iain Oughtred's double-enders, or Joel White's Shearwater? Doesn't Iain Oughted have a design called "Elf" based on a Hardangersjetke (sp?) - seems appropriate. Wm. Atkin's Valgerda might be another possibility. I'd personally be a bit nervous about building a boat identical to those in the movie without knowing a lot more about them, since they were certainly designed for appearance first and function second (or maybe third or fourth).

Here'a link to a site showing Iain Oughtred's "Elf" (http://www.cyberus.ca/~canoe/news.html), with the man himself rowing it.

[ 01-22-2003, 10:47 AM: Message edited by: Keith Wilson ]

[Roger LaPrelle]

I have the special edition DVD that contains 30 minutes of additional footage. Quite a bit of this additional footage takes place in the boats. They are definitely round bottom, lapstrake boats with steamed frames. The only differences between them and more commonly seen boats is the extended ends, and the fact that the stems and sterns seem to be reversed from normal practice. This is purely for esthetics, as the same approach can be seen in Legolas' boots, which are higher in the back than in the front.

BTW, the hobbits in the boats with men aren't dummies, but are actually 'little people' doubles for the actors playing the hobbits. They even wear masks made from the actors faces. The extended DVD went into how the scale effects were accomplished in great detail.

I would enjoy finding plans for these boats as well. If anyone manages it, please post!

Thanks,
Roger LaPrelle

[ 01-22-2003, 08:15 PM: Message edited by: Roger LaPrelle ]

[Meerkat]

I posted a note awhile back when this topic came up from John Welsford in NZ. He knows the guy who made the boats. They're glued lapstrake ply with the "frames" added after for versimilitude. If you search the forum (don't really recall which section - sorry), I think there's more info. I no longer seem to have the original email from John.

(later) one of the threads was: <a href="http://media5.hypernet.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=003593&p=" target="_blank">
[URL=http://media5.hypernet.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=003593&p=</a>]

and even more to the point: http://media5.hypernet.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=005660&p=

[ 01-24-2003, 04:10 AM: Message edited by: Meerkat ]