What Type Is This?

[Dave Fleming]

Found it on the 'net' with no explanation and I'm curious.


[ 04-06-2002, 02:08 PM: Message edited by: Dave Fleming ]

[gary porter]

How about a schooner rigged Columbia River Gilnetter???????

[Thad]

Beautiful fun sailing type. I know the question is serious, but doesn't she look great?!

[johnw]

Looks like a Makinaw Island boat. See Chapelle's American Small Sailing Craft. Wooden Boat sells plans for a small one, roughly half the size of the workboats.

[Dave Fleming]

Thad ayup, the question is serious but, I gotta agree with ya. She is sweet lookin' dats fer sure.

[Buddy Sharpton]

Sail plan is a gaff rigged ketch, hull a double ended open boat. As to a locale name-clueless.

[Don Maurer]

Does this look like the same boat?
http://www2.mailordercentral.com/wbs...ges/400014.jpg

18'8" Mackinaw Boat
An open shoal-draft centerboarder suitable for rowing, daysailing, or coastal cruising.

LOA - 18' 8"
Beam - 6'
Draft (cb up) - 1' 6"
(cb down) - 2' 1"
Displ. - about 3,000 lbs.
Sail Area - 242 sq. ft.
Lofting is required
Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced
Plans include 3 sheets.

Study plans are show in Fifty Wooden Boats.

[Paul Scheuer]

I could be wrong, but I think the Mackinaw's had (have) unstayed masts for net handling, and a flat "drooping" bowsprit.

[ 03-14-2002, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: Paul Scheuer ]

[NormMessinger]

Syrinx, a Mackinaw Boat on Branched Oak Lake Nebraska (who'd a thought it?) last fall. Unstayed masts.

--Norm

[Paul Denison]

Dave, when you find out let us know. it's gorgeous!

[plimsol]

Perhaps a converted USCG surf boat? She looks about 26'. The hulls are lapstrake and double ended with a nice sheer. A surf boat would be able to carry that rig and the ballast for it.

[Dave Fleming]

Plimsol, I don't think so. Being an ex-coastie and having help build 2 Monomoy Surfboats for the California Maritime Academy I have a recollection of a line of freeing ports just above the waterline and the floor was solid over floatation voids.
Looks like the boat in question has some decking and then a coaming interior of that whereas Monomoys just had a beefed up gunnel for row locks and coming alongside another vessel. I tried to 'blow up' the photo to pick up something about the name on the bow but my meager photo software was not really up to the task.

[plimsol]

I should have been more specific. A motorized surf boat, not the rollover types, but a ships boat. Several have been converted up here, Puget Sound, to steam launches. The type was built around the Second World War. Waht ever the boat is, she is quite beautiful.

[SailBoatDude]

My father bought a surplus life boat after his bit in WWII. Though he made a cabin cruiser of her, the lines look very close. It was built for the US Navy and sat on the deck of those purpose built supply ships keeping England afloat. Looks great as a ketch.

[JimD]

I've seen that photo too. Was it published in WB mag a few issues back in the Mackinaw article? I don't have the issue with me, lent it to a friend

[Jeff Evans]

I lived on a 29' Mackinaw boat for a summer teaching sailing. She was much fuller in the bow than what you've shown in the photo there. From what I can see, she was also much finer in the stern than that. Looks like your boat only built backwards! I don't know if it's universal, but all the "Macs" I've seen have also had the characteristic downturned bowsprit that appears in the other photo. Never seen one built lapstrake either. Check out http://www.chewonki.org/trips_coast.htm for a stern-on view of the Mackinaw.

[Paul Scheuer]

29 feet sounds a lot more like it for a Mackinaw boat. Maybe even a little small. I'm looking at two photos taken in 1870 and 1890 at Collingswood (Georgian Bay), of the fishing fleets of that time. The book says that the term "Mackinaw Boat" has never been fully defined. I'll post the pictures as soon as I can get them scanned (and learn how to post here). I believe that it was more defined by how the boats were used than how they were designed or built. Maybe their ability to fish from the south end of Georgian Bay, through the North Channel Islands and the north end of Lake Huron to Mackinaw (and survive). From the pictures, I see lapstrake boats, all over 30 feet judging by the men standing on the gunnels posing for the pictures, a lot more freeboard (no fish aboard),
and symetrical, relatively straight sheers, with plumb stems. The pictures do show the full bow and fine stern. All of the rigs showing are unstayed and loose-footed, with several different sail shapes, and colors.

[Ron Williamson]

Since you mentioned Collingwood,I dug up a book about William Watts and Sons,Boatbuilders,by Tracy Marsh and Peter Watts.In it there is a photo of a boat called Nahma.I believe that this is the very same boat.
She would have been built in 1923 for a Sir Edmund Walker,as a replacement for the original,built 1890.
Watts and Sons were builders of something called a Collingwood Skiff,which is as Paul describes.
Nahma is apparently the only original Skiff surviving.
A few years ago WB printed an article,also by Tracy Marsh, on a replica Skiff built in Collingwood,about 1996.
R

[Paul Denison]

A google search provided the following:

www.oakvilletrails.com/bron_harb/bh_e4.htm

Bronte Harbour Panel 4:
Bronte: A Fishing Village
Andrew Armitage

According to the mariner-historian, C. H. J. Snider in his Tales From the Great Lakes, these schooner-rigged fishing boats went by several names including Collingwood skiffs, Huron boats and Mackinaw boats. Because it was thought that this type of fishing boat originated in the Straits of Mackinaw, Lake Ontario fishermen tended to call them "Macs," whether they were sharp-sterned like the Collingwood skiff, square-sterned like the true Mackinaw or with overhangs like the Huron boats.1

Of all the types of boats produced on the Great Lakes, it was the Collingwood skiff built by W. Watts and Sons of Collingwood, Ontario that had the greatest influence on boat builders. According to Peter Watts and Tracy Marsh in W. Watts and Son Boat Builders: Canadian Designs for Work and Pleasure, 1842-1946, the extremely seaworthy Collingwood skiff, clinker-built, schooner rigged, with a movable iron centre-board became a much copied model throughout the Great Lakes. On Lake Ontario, fishermen at Bronte received a trainload of Watts-built fish boats. Only after the arrival of the Collingwood model did local builders start to duplicate their design.2

Bronte's fishing fleet, which by 1900, numbered some twenty-two boats, were, in appearance, either transom-sterned or double-ended skiffs. With the foremast stepped well forward and the mainmast just aft of the centreboard box, they were able to carry over 500 square feet of sail on a 26 foot hull.

[Paul Scheuer]

The photos that I mentioned above are from a 1947 photo book "The Ships & Sailing Albums, Book 2 Great Lakes Sailing Ships", compiled by H.N.Barkhausen, published by Kalmbach Publishing Co. Milwaukee. Barkhausen was apparently the son of Captain Tom Barkhausen, who is pictured at the wheel of the "Edward E. Skeele" in 1915. Barkhausen credits C.H.J. Snyder lake sailor, historian and chronicler of "Schooner Days" in the Toronto Telegram, for historical information. The book mainly show the last days of the schooner era. In the small section on the fishing boats, Barkhausen says - "Although there were several types (of Mackinaws), they were light, shoal draft, centerboard, carrying inside rock ballast and noted for their speed and weatherly qualities. Fishermen sailed them in all weather, spring, summer and fall ... The origin and basis for the name mackinaw has never been satisfactorily explained but the type is considered to have been first developed in Georgian Bay and the Canadian side of Lake Huron around 1850 ". He notes that the collingswood double-ended model was probably the most famous and was widely copied and well represented in the two pictures. He seems to classify the collingswood skiff as a sub type of mackinaw. He also shows a square-sterned Huron boat, which loooks like a whole different critter. I'll work on getting the pictures posted.

[Ron Williamson]

As of two years ago,Henry Barkhausen was still sailing his Huron Boat in the North Channel.The name has slipped my mind,but I think it was drawn by Fenwick Williams.IIRC he had it built here(Ontario) for about $750. [img]smile.gif[/img]
R

[ 04-04-2002, 06:17 AM: Message edited by: Ron Williamson ]

[Paul Scheuer]

Could he be the same H.N.Barkhausen ? The photo album compiled by H.N. was published in 1947. If so, what a resource. The schooner photos appear to be from a large collection belonging to H.N. Someone should find this guy.

[Ron Williamson]

It would be the same guy,he is about 85.We saw his boat ghost(unencumbered by an engine)into John Island harbour in July 2000.I'm pretty sure that he lives in Milwaukee.
I found the WB,it is issue #130,May/June 1996.
It turns out that the replica that was built,is a copy of Nahma,called Endurable 1.Dave's photo could be of either boat.
R

[Paul Scheuer]

Kewl. Thanks Ron. The picture in the Watts article in WB 130 is one of the photos from Barkhausen's book that I was describing above. Barkhausen credits Dr. B. L. Corbett and says it was from 1890, showing the Collingswood fishing fleet. It's all coming back top me now. 1996 was a long time ago for me. I remember being disturbed at the time by the fact that the "replica skiff, Endurable" in the accompanying article, had that large deck forward, booms, "raised oarlocks", stayed masts and that extra long bow sprit (with bob stay). To my eye, they also seemed to have missed the hull shape and plum stems, as well. I guess I'm just not a "replica" type guy. I'm working posting pics. What's the etiquette on posting pictures that have appeared in WB without credit and the same picture (uncropped showing a boy standing on a forward deck that is little more than a breasthook) that had previously appeared with credit in another book ?