Boat porn goldmine found
This Irishman has been doing a fair bit of research on Irish watercraft of late, catching up on the seafaring history of my grandparents' homeland, Cork and Waterford in particular. I must say that the historic boat thing in Ireland and Britain seems to be way beyond anything we have here. In my internet browsing, I've come across a couple of great sites connected with what is becoming a strong movement in Ireland to record, restore and recreate historic sailing craft.
The "Traditional Boats of Ireland Project" is apparently a govermentally endorsed project to document as much of Ireland's maritime heritage as possible. It operates in conjunction with universities and the government cultural department, which since independence has sought to restore the Irish language and culture that had eroded (or had been intentionally stamped out, depending upon how Republican you are) over the centuries of colonial rule. They have produced the great book, "Traditional Boats of Ireland" (available from WB Store and well worth the price... it's a huge high quality coffee table book full of academic, but very readable, articles on every type of historic Irish watercraft, of which there are many.) Besides academic research, they are also setting up museums, traditional boatbuilding vocational programs and recreating extinct working watercraft. One of these, I believe, is Meitheal Mara ("Work of the Sea"), which is a wooden boat buildling vocational program. http://www.meithealmara.ie/
The "Traditional Boats of Ireland Project's" website is a keeper for sure. There are many pages of photos and lines drawings and construction plans for a lot of really interesting (and buildable!) boats of all sizes. The photography and presentation is of the highest quality. Some designs even have computerized 3D features so you can move the computer generated pictures of the particular vessels around to view them from any angle. They provide a combination of contemporary photos as well as historical pictures. http://tradboats.ie/project/index.php
Another site that is related to the "Traditional Boats... Project" is the "Kinsale Hooker Project." This project is in the process of recreating the presently extinct Kinsale Hooker, a fishing craft of approximately 40' on deck. Their Facebook page has drawn a lot of contributions from the Irish, British, French and Scandahoovian traditional boat communities. There are picture series of pilot boats, fishing boats and so on, as well as a lot of coverage of the popular traditional boat racing circuit that is taking off like great guns over there. (Click on the single pictures in the Facebook page and lots of other thumbnails come up.) They also provide complete plans for the representative Kinsale Hooker they are building, which were derived from historical research and a single highly detailed model in the National Museum.
http://www.facebook.com/KinsaleHookerProject
Also, another good place to waste some time is the website of the Galway Hooker Association. http://www.galwayhookerassociation.ie/ You'll probably have to click on the "Irish/English" drop down translater in the upper left quadrant of the page, just above the table of contents. I heard Irish spoken at home when I was growing up, but, sadly, it was spoken by the "grown-ups" when they didn't want the kids knowing what they were saying, so I never learned it. Reading it is almost as hard as learning to speak it, since certain letters, when placed before or after vowels (I can't remember which) aren't "sounded" at all, but are actually used as accent marks! (Irish is the oldest written literature in Western Europe, but its modern spelling and pronounciation system was standardized only as recently as 1948.)
The Galway Hookers are really interesting craft. There are four basic types based on size, the bad mor ("bawd more") 35' and up, the leath bhád ("la bawth") 35' to about 28', the gleoiteog ("glou-chug") around 28' to 24', and the pucan ("poo-con"), below 24', which often carries a lateen main rather than a gaff main. These are really interesting boats and, from all indications, very seaworthy with high pointing ability and a good turn of speed. They are now actively raced in Ireland. Be careful, if you watch these YouTube videos, you're going to want one! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJFRN...ayer_embedded#! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYZOI74IPh0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eOuOQrRsRo
As for the hookers, Chapelle discussed a "Boston Hooker" in "Ameican Small Sailing Craft," commenting accurately that the type was brought over intact by Irish fishermen and boatbuilders starting with the Great Famine emigration in around 1850, mainly to Boston, but also in limited numbers on SF Bay and that the type was pretty much extinct in the US by the turn of the last century. He compared the lines taken off in the 1930's (IIRC) of what was likely a hulk without a sail plan. He writes that the Boston Hooker evolved to reduce tumblehome, straighten the curve of the bow and fine the entry, decrease the rake in the sternpost, and to include a laced mainsail foot. Chapelle's research apparently did not include actually studying the Irish Hookers in their native habitat, but rather he relied solely on lines taken in the late 1800's and published by Dixon Kemp (pictured above). (These were the only published lines extant at that time, as the boats were built "by eye.") Indeed, the differences Chaplle notes do exist between the Kemp specimen and Chapelle's Boston version, but what Chapelle overlooked was that the evolution he notes was not unique to Boston Hookers, but to Galway Hookers in general. In Ireland, there are hookers built in the late 1800's, restored and still sailing, and hookers built in the natural course of workboat evolution up to about WWII, as well as many replicas. Looking at these, it is easy to see that Kemp's specimen was likely built some time well before the lines were published, as they depict an early version, but the Boston specimen Chapelle compared them to was likely built in the early 1900's and was really not all that different from what was being built in Galway at the same time. As the boats were all built "by eye," there is also a considerable variation in detail from boat to boat and builder to builder. Moreover, perhaps because the rig wasn't available, Chapelle's depiction of the rig on his Boston Hooker is decidedly "unhookerlike." Characteristic to the hooker is that the angle of the gaff is parallel to the angle of the headstay. Not so on Chapelle's Boston Hooker. There are, AFAIK, only two extant photos of a Boston Hooker, these from the Fisheries Commission Reports upon which Chapelle relied heavily in much of his research. Only one of these pictures shows the sails set, and it is apparent that this old photo does show a rig similar to what Chapelle published, but it is also apparent that the boat is old and decrepit and that the rig may well have been cobbed together from "spare parts." The high peaked gaff is, in good measure, what gives the hooker its remarkable windward ability. It make no sense to conclude that Irish fishermen and boatbuilders, who continued to emigrate to the Boston area throughout the lifespan of the Boston Hooker would not bring with them from the Old Country newly evolved details with them over the same span, nor that they would abandon the high peaked gaff for one that lacked the windward drive of the Irish original. So, although I hold Chapelle in awe, on this point, for my money, the Irish and the "Boston" hookers are really one and the same type of boat and since we now have much more reliable historical data and exemplars of the Galway Hookers, I'd expect they'd be the measure if one were to build one.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Peerie Maa
