Plastiki

It's not often that something remotely related to indigenous boats appears on CNN. But combine a ton of money, a good publicist, and a topic that's suitably wacky, and it shouldn't be surprising. The deal is: a young Mr. DeRothschild, of banking family fame, is building and plans to sail a catamaran made from recycled pop bottles from California to Australia. Lovely. I do have to give him credit for a clever name for the boat, however: Kon Tiki, meet Plastiki.

Benson's Dhows

American marine artist John Prentiss Benson (1865-1947), younger brother of the renowned American Impressionist painter Frank Benson, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, lived later in Kittery, Maine, and perhaps naturally spent most of his creative efforts documenting the boats and ships of his home waters and, by extension, the western tradition. A lovely new book from Baker Marine Publications, John Prentiss Benson: American Marine Artist, includes more than one hundred color plates of the artist's work, and I recommend a look to anyone with a general interest in marine art in general, or the western boat/ship tradition.

Untitled -- Lateen Rigged Dhows (ca. 1940), oil on board, John Prentiss Benson

For our purposes, the book includes just one painting of an "indigenous" boat, which I'm reproducing here with permission of co-author and Benson descendant Nick Baker. Although the non-western subject matter isn't typical Benson, the style is very much so: beautifully rendered water and sky in a somewhat Impressionistic style, combined with convincingly rendered boats in a superbly well-balanced composition.

I expect this book will introduce the not-so-very-well-known artist to a larger audience. He deserves it. For more on the artist and his work, see the authors' website.

Comments Posted

I'd like to steer your attention to interesting comments recently posted by readers:

• Regarding the enormous size of dugout canoes observed by early European explorers to Brazil, take a look at Paul Lima's comment at the bottom of this post. Also see his website, The Endangered Coast.
• A link to material on contemporary Brazilian dugouts was provided by reader Silvio Titanic Neruda , which can be found attached to my very first blog post, here. I was unable to open the link in the comment, but Silvio has provided me with some of the materials (and kindly translated some of the content from Portuguese), and I'll be posting this great input soon.

Many thanks to both contributors!

Readers, please feel free to get in touch with all kinds of content related to boats from outside the Western plank-on-frame tradition -- I'm only too glad to put it in front of other readers. That includes just about anything on traditional boat types from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, plus canoes, kayaks, and rafts from anywhere.