In Fishing in Many
Waters, James Hornell describes the practice of bonito fishing in the
Maldives, including a description of the boats used. Although he doesn’t name
the boat type, it can be termed a dhoni.
(Somewhat like dhow, dhoni is a generic term that doesn’t
indicate a single type of boat. According to Wikipedia, it means
simply “small boat” in Tamil and related languages, while thoni is the equivalent term in Malayalam. We’ve written previously
about the very different yathra
dhoni of Sri Lanka.)
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| A bonito dhoni of the Maldives (click any image to enlarge) |
Probably no longer in use, the Maldivian bonito boats that
Hornell observed were “built (especially) for the fishery, long, beamy,
graceful craft, fine of line and shallow draft as befits vessels that have
their home in coral-infested lagoons of little depth.” He further describes
them as stoutly built, mostly open boats with short decks fore and aft and six
or seven transverse bulkheads. The aft deck, from which the fishing was
conducted, was “shaped like the extended wings of a butterfly” and extended
over the sides of the hull. Hornell noted the distinctive “snakelike” stemhead,
which rose high above the gunwales, curving gently aft and then slightly
forward near the very top “not unlike that of an old Viking ship which, indeed,
the boat as a whole closely resembles.” (This latter is an exaggeration. While the
stemhead does indeed call to mind a Viking ship, the differences between the two types of craft are far more dramatic
and substantial than the purely superficial similarity between them. Hornell, infinitely more than I, understood this well.)
The two compartments fore and aft of the mast each had four
to six plugged holes in the bottom, which, when the plugs are removed, allowed them
to serve as livewells for bait. These livewells were managed in a curious
manner, described below.
A single mast was held in a tabernacle and could be dropped
into a crutch aft. The mast supported a tall, narrow squaresail of woven
matting and a boomless gaff mainsail of cotton. Although the drawing shows no
shrouds, it appears that the squaresail’s halyard may have served as a
combination backstay/shroud. The drawing seems to show a light spar extending
upward and forward from the base of the mast, but Hornell did not explain its
use. (Perhaps it served as a kind of whisker pole for the squaresail?)
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| This model of a traditional Maldivian dhoni shows the transverse bulkheads and butterly-shaped aft deck of the bonito boat, but not its S-curved stemhead, recurved sternpost, or two-sail rig. (Photo: Badr Naseem. Source.) |
Although somewhat similar dhonis, with transverse bulkheads
and the aft platform extending over the sides, remain in use in the Maldives,
none of the recent photos we’ve found show the old style bonito boat’s
distinctive double-curved stemhead, recurved sternpost, or mixed
squaresail/gaff rig. Lateen rigs are the norm in existing boats (or at least,
those that are not motorized), and the stemheads curve sharply aft, with no hint
of reverse curve.
Before bonito could be caught, the same boats were used to
catch baitfish. A square net was fastened to long poles and lowered to the
bottom of a lagoon. Ground bait (bait for the baitfish) was dropped over the
net. When the baitfish came to feed, the net was raised. Presumably this was
repeated many times before sufficient bait for a bonito fishing trip could be accumulated.
The live bait was kept in a huge basket in the lagoon until it was time to go
fishing in earnest.
The baitfish were then transferred into the dhoni’s
livewells and the plugs were removed. According to Hornell:
“(T)he holes being unplugged, continuous streams of water spout inwards. This inrush would speedily swamp the boat were it not that two men are set to work to keep pace by bailing, with the inrush. By means of perforations at suitable and varying heights in the intervening bulkhead the inflowing water is conducted to the after compartment where the two bailers are located. In this way the water in the wells is constantly renewed and thereby maintained in a fit condition to keep alive the stock of little fishes for use as bait.”
In addition to two bailers, the crew consisted of several anglers
with fishing poles, a helmsman, four “splashers,” and three or four boys to
tend the squaresail. The poles were about six feet long with a line of about
six feet fixed fast to the end. Barbless hooks of bright steel at the end of
the lines were shaped to resemble baitfish.
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| Bonito fishing in process. Note the heavy splashing around the aft deck. |
Upon approaching a shoal of bonito, one of the bailers would
stop bailing and begin throwing baitfish into the water while the splashers
would use long-handled scoops to vigorously splash water all around the boat.
Per Hornell:
“This is a measure of economy; the bonito have to be gulled into the belief that a large shoal of small fish are about and without the splashing the amount of live bait thrown out would be insufficient to carry through the deception successfully.”
But successful the ruse was. The anglers, crowded upon the
stern platform, would drop their unbaited, lure-like hooks in the water and
yank bonito from it directly into the hold. The barbless hooks could be
disengaged merely by slacking the tension on the line for the briefest moment
before they were returned to the water with scarcely a pause.
In an active shoal, a man might average one catch per minute,
and a boat might catch a full load of 600 to 1,000 fish in two or three hours.
The boat owner received 21 percent of the catch as his share, the rest being
apportioned amongst the crew. That which was not eaten fresh was cured for
later use or for trade by a combination of boiling, smoking, and sun-drying.
Sources:
Except where otherwise noted, information and images are from:
James Hornell, Fishing in Many Waters, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1950
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