Vatican boat model exhibit, Part 3

This is the final post about a current exhibit of boat models and canoe paddles at the Vatican Museums. Previous posts about this exhibit cover the other models representing boats from outside the Western tradition, and one full-size canoe from the Solomon Islands. As noted in the previous posts, exhibit signage was sparse. We reproduce the English text of the exhibit cards in quotation marks. Our own comments appear in parentheses. As always, click any image to enlarge.

"Tahiti: Catamaran" (The two hulls are essentially the same but with their ends reversed. The boat should perform the same in either direction when it shunts.)

"Aotearoa New Zealand: Maori boat" (A monohull war canoe. See our earlier post on boats like this.)

"Papua New Guinea: Three hull catamaran" (beautiful double crab-claw rig)

(Same model as above, showing the hull configuration.)

"Papua New Guinea: Boat with outrigger" (The main hull is a dugout with high washstrakes stitched in place)

"Solomon (Islands): Canoe with bird shaped bow" (Somewhat similar to the full-size canoe that serves as the exhibit's centerpiece.)

"Fiji: Sailing boat" (Twin-hull canoe with oceanic lateen sail)

(Same model as previous. The port hull is much smaller and shorter than the starboard, but it is nonetheless a true hull, not an outrigger float.)

"Chile; Alakaluf Canoe" (This looks much like the Yamana/Yaghan canoe we've written about previously.)

"Alaska: Canoe" (Adney called this a "kayak-form canoe.")

"Chile: Yaghan (Yamana) canoe" (Images created by Europeans show greatly different forms of Yaghan or Yamana canoes. See the Alakaluf canoe two images above.)

"Canada: Canoe" (...and a rather fanciful one at that! We're not aware of any bark canoes built with full decks and a round cockpit coaming. The modeler seems to be combining aspects of the open bark canoe with the skin-on-frame kayaks of Alaska.)

"Brazil: Caraja river boat" (The cargo of what appears to represent a dugout canoe is probably tortoises or sea turtles. At the right is a pregnant woman; at the left, a baby.)

background: "Canada: Canoe"
foreground: "Alaska: Bark canoe"

"Bolivia: Mosetenes raft" (A double-hull raft. Perhaps it is built to be separated, so that it can be used as two smaller craft.)

"Peru - Bolivia: Ayamara boat"(A reed boat of the type used on Lake Titicaca.)

background: "Rocky Mountains: Canoe"
foreground: "USA: Canoe"
(Both are birchbark types.)

background: "Madagascar: Dugout canoe"
middle-right: "Madagascar: Dugout canoe"
left: "...West Coast" (presumably Africa; we failed to capture the full label text)
front-right: "Madagascar: Dugout canoe"

"Mozambique: Raft" (We'd call this a coracle, not a raft, since it relies on the enclosure of space for buoyancy. The model is made from a single piece of bent bark. If the full-size boat is built the same way, it must be quite small, or else it requires an enormously wide tree.)

"Africa - East Coast: Sailing boat with outrigger" (The main hull is extraordinarily narrow and highly rockered. This must be a thrilling boat to sail.)

background: "Congo: Canoe with rower" (a paddler, in fact)
foreground: "Congo: Canoe"

background: "Nigeria: Boat with two rowers" (paddlers)
middle: "Nigeria: Boat with passengers"
front: "Nigeria: Boat with passengers"
(All three represent dugouts with an aft platform carved as an integral part of the hull for the stern paddler/helmsman. Locating the paddle force so far aft of the submerged part of the hull lends a great deal of power for turning and correcting strokes, making these boats highly maneuverable.) 

"Nigeria: Yoruba boats: H.E. Mons, Carlo Maria Viganò" (These were the only models in the exhibit credited to whom we assume was the donor or lender.)

A nice selection of canoe paddles were exhibited at the end of each of the spiral levels of the hall, unfortunately with no exhibit cards or other identification. (This photo by Cate Monroe)

A closer look at the paddles on the middle level.

(All images by the blogger except as noted.)

The Chilean Dalca

Some months ago we looked at the three-piece bark canoes of the Yahgan and Alacaluf people of southern Chile. Prior to European contact, these boats were prevalent all across the Strait of Magellan and several hundred miles up the west coast of Chile, to about the Taitao Peninsula. For another 200 miles or so north of that point, the common pre-conquest boat was the dalca.

In terms of design and even construction, the dalca was quite similar to its southern bark-built cousin, consisting of three planks. A "keel" plank, wide amidships and tapered equally toward the ends to points, was bent to impart a great deal of rocker, particularly toward the ends, so that the bottom curved up to form stem- and sternposts, after a fashion. Side planks were sewn on, with their ends curving inward sharply so that their ends met the outboard edges of the endposts. The sides leaned slightly outward at the top.

I believe the indigenous people of the Chilean coast had no metals pre-conquest, and hence no saws. The boards, therefore, must have been gotten out by splitting with wedges.

Reports differ on the caulking material used to seal the seams, with mentions of various materials including crushed herbs and clay or mud, a tree- or other plant-based resin, and moss. Likewise, the material for the stitches was variously reported as being of bark fibers, baleen, split cane or some unnamed cordage.  There are mentions of floor timbers and thwarts. Other than the fact that the thwarts were narrow and structural, apparently not intended as comfortable seats, I've come across no other descriptions of these members, nor their numbers in the boats that existed at the time of European contact.

One of the earliest reports cited a length of 30-40 feet and a beam of 3 feet, which seems far too narrow. Even if three feet is taken as the width of the bottom and one assumes a width at the gunwale as 5 feet amidships, this would have been rather narrow boat at 30 feet LOA, and an outrageously narrow one at 40 feet LOA. I think it probable that at least one, if not both, of the dimensions in that early report were in error.

Propulsion was originally by paddle. One early observer saw the use of a rudimentary sailing rig, consisting of a single mast and yard to which a leather square sail was lashed. The clews (bottom corners) of the sail were held in the mariners' hands. According to Clinton R. Edwards in Aboriginal Watercraft on the Pacific Coast of South America, this was probably an adoption made soon after first contact; Edwards believes no sails were used pre-contact.

Early Europeans in the area often used dalcas for local travel, even commissioning their construction in large numbers, but making provisions for the use of oars instead of paddles. In some cases, they were disassembled for long portages and reassembled at the end of the carry. This was easily done, given their simple stitched or sewn construction.

Soon after European contact began, the dalca began to displace the bark canoe to its south, probably because access to metal tools made the more durable wooden boat that much more attractive and accessible to the Yahgan and Alacaluf people. Dalcas remained in use into the early 20th century, when they were displaced by small craft of European design.

The photo, of a dalca reconstruction at the the Museum of the Dalca in Chiloe, Chile, differs somewhat from the descriptions in Edwards, and may reflect post-contact modifications of an unknown (to me) date. The bottom board does not narrow to points at the ends, and the strakes or side boards butt against the inboard surface of the bottom board – not against its outboard edges. There is a batten on the outside, and possibly on the inside, of the main construction seam, held in place by the bottom-to-sides lashings. There are no floor timbers or frames, but there are seven thwarts, round and still not used as seats, lashed to the upper surface of the strakes.

(Photo is Creative Commons via Wikipedia. Most information is from Edwards, cited above.)

Random Boats of Chile and Peru

I'm able to respond in part to a recent request for information on boats of Chile, Argentina and Tierra del Fuego, based on my current reading of The Sea-Craft of Prehistory by Paul Johnstone. Nothing in here about Argentina, for which I'm sorry, but here are some stray bits of information that I hope will be useful, and I'll throw in something about Peru to make up for it.


Log rafts have been used all around the world and were probably among the earliest of all boat forms in most cultures. An odd feature is the near-universal use of an odd number of logs: 3, 5, 7 or more, and the common use of longer logs in the middle of the group. It seems as though the earliest boat builders were already envisioning the rudimentary boat shape, with a pointed bow, as shown in this pre-Columbian raft model found near Arica, Chile.

The model appears to be lashed together which, one would assume, replicated the original. Slightly more sophisticated raft construction involves pegging the logs together, sometimes boring a whole straight through all the logs at both ends and forcing poles through the holes to produce a more rigid structure than is possible by mere binding.

Keeping with the raft theme, here is a vessel built of two inflated sealskin pontoons, held together by a light cane framework and platform. Note how the narrow "bow" is formed by drawing the two pontoons together at their forward ends, allowing the aft ends to splay apart. The illustration was made in the early 19th century in Valparaiso, Chile, but similar rafts were observed as early as 1587 on the west coast of South America from 10 to 35 south latitude.

The Yahgan people of Tierra del Fuego were the southernmost population in the world at the time of European contact. They were known as the Canoe Indians, and their bark canoes were attractive and sophisticated -- more so than the bark canoes of Australia, but perhaps not as refined as those of North America. (The bark canoes of the nearby Alacaluf people, living on the Strait of Magellan in Chile, were similar.) These were big canoes, typically 24 to 26 feet, and occasionally more than 30.

Bark for these canoes was stripped from the tree using only sharpened flint tools. The bottom piece was laid on the ground with stones under the bow and stern and left for a few days to impart rocker, then side pieces were sewn on with reed stitching, straw and mud being used as caulking in the seams. Numerous bent frames were inserted, and the top ends were lashed to heavy gunwales, which were heat-bent previous to installation. A light framework was installed about 6" above the bottom and covered over with sticks laid crosswise to serve as decks fore and aft, the center area being left undecked for cargo, access for bailing, or both. Although the description quoted in Johnstone doesn't mention it, several thwarts were also installed. One would assume that these were purely structural and were not used as seats.

These canoes were typically paddled by women. The Yahgans adopted a rudimentary squaresail after European contact, setting up a temporary pole and yard forward and using a section of sealskin, held down in the hands at the lower corners, for downwind work.

Johnstone believed that the reed bundle raft may be as early as, if not earlier than, the log raft -- possibly the earliest of all boat types. In Peru, the caballito ("little horse") is a two-bundle reed float used to this day for shore fishing, although I suspect that tourism is more responsible for its persistence than any real economics of fishing. The paddler typically kneels in the cockpit, aft, and it is said that their surfing capabilities are impressive.

(Final photo public domain by Allard Schmidt, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. All others from Johnstone. Click any photo to enlarge.)