Book review: Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast

Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast: Their Design, Construction, Rigging and Fisheries

by Ken Preston

2019

328 pages

Vietnam Women’s Publishing House, Ha Noi

ISBN 978-604-56-7858-9 

When Ken Preston served in the US Army in Vietnam, he saw little of the country’s vernacular boats. But decades after the US withdrawal and the end of the war, he travelled back to Vietnam for pleasure and was fascinated by the variety of boats he saw and their methods of construction. Starting in 2005, he returned year after year, spending weeks at a time traveling the country on a small motorcycle, taking thousands of photos of boats and boatyards, and talking to boatbuilders and fishermen. His book, Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast, is the result, and a fine one it is.

The book is organized unconventionally but with an undeniable logic. The very brief first chapter, “Wooden Boats and Nautical Culture in Vietnam, Past and Present”, is more like a second Introduction, barely mentioning thousands of years of boat history prior to the middle of the 20^th century. From that time forward, though, it describes how the local fleet was documented by French colonial observers and, later, by the US government, and how it changed rapidly to leave behind much of its traditional roots and adopt larger, more Western-like designs and diesel engine power.

The book really hits its stride in Chapter 2, “Vietnamese Wooden Boat Designs,” which describes the basic structure of traditional wooden fishing boats, some of which are still in use, and contrasts it to the structure of newer, larger “modern fishing vessels” (MFVs). The latter, although constructed plank-on-frame by methods not dissimilar to Western methods, are still different enough in design from Western vessels to be of interest. The chapter also discusses how traditional and modern methods are sometimes combined, and shows how even fairly large boats are built in temporary and ad-hoc shipyards with a minimum of tools and infrastructure. The building sequences for both types of vessels are described and illustrated in good detail.              

A boatbuilder fitting the port side planks of a traditional fishing boat. The fully-assembled side will later be lifted and attached to the already-framed bottom, visible in the background.

Chapter 3, “Seagoing Baskets,” looks at small fishing boats where part or all of the hull is formed of split bamboo basketwork. Some readers may be familiar with Vietnam’s iconic round basket boats that may be paddled, rowed or – surprisingly often – powered with small outboard or even inboard engines (see previous post on round basket boats). Less well known are small canoe-shaped basket boats with light bamboo gunwales (see previous post for more on these narrow basket boats) and larger, oval-hulled basket boats built with heavy rectangular frameworks of full-round bamboos around their top perimeter, many with cabins, also of basketwork (see previous post on round basket boats of Tonkin Bay). Then there are even larger, heavier open boats, almost indiscernible from plank-built boats due to the substantial strakes that sheath their topsides (see cover image at top).

These large, round basket boats have inboard engines. Boats like this are used both for beach fishing and as dinghies for larger fishing boats. 

Chapter 4, “Boat Building techniques” takes the reader step-by-step through the main procedures of wooden hull construction, with excellent detail on tools and tool-use techniques. Chapter 5, “Modern Fishing Gear on the Vietnamese Coast”, describes the many methods of fishing practiced, including drift nets, seines, lift- or dip-nets (called “push aheads” due to their mounting on the bow of boats), longlines, squid gear, and more. Preston describes which boat types employ which types of gear and the basics of their use.

Comprising just shy of half the book’s page count, “A Trip Up the Coast: From Phu Quoc Island to Mong Cai” is the final chapter. It is a valuable “moment-in-time” record of boat building facilities and fishing boat use in dozens of major and minor fishing ports. Because Preston visited some of the ports numerous times over the course of years, he has sometimes documented the pace of change and shown how quickly Vietnam is developing in some areas.

Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast is a lovely, coffee-table size volume, produced entirely in color, and wisely formatted in landscape mode, which is by far the better choice for presenting photos of boats and ships. Preston’s photos are lively and colorful, and most do an excellent job illustrating the matter at hand. For the few that don’t come up to that standard, anyone familiar with photographing industrial workplaces will acknowledge that ideal composition and lighting can be elusive, and Preston has done a fine job working in challenging conditions. One must admire his dedication to the project and the opportunities he made for himself to hang around boatyards and gam with builders and fishermen. He has produced a valuable body of ethnographic data that captures fishing and boatbuilding practices as they were during the early 21^st century and will never be again.

Given its value to vernacular boat students and enthusiasts, it is unfortunate that Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast is so difficult to obtain. It was published only in Vietnam and never properly distributed in the West. One hopes a Western publisher will pick it up someday or that it will be made available by other means.

 

Basket Boats on the Gulf of Tonkin

We've written before about woven or basket boats in Vietnam (see, for example, this post highlighting a canoe-form craft, and this one about coracles), but the one in the image below, from James Hornell's Water Transport: Origins and Early Evolution, so struck us by its graceful form that we thought it was worth sharing.

Woven boat of the Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam. From Hornell, Water Transport. (click to enlarge)

The boat is common on the Gulf of Tonkin. We'll quote Hornell's comments in almost their entirety:

This is a light, graceful craft made of inch-wide strips of split bamboo, closely woven into stiff matting, a material of great strength, resiliency and resistance to strain. 

In plan it is of an elongated ovate form, the wider end being the stern. Both extremities are spoon-shaped like the fore end of a Norwegian praam [sic] and are rounded in horizontal outline. A gentle sheer toward each end carries stem and stern above the level of the midships gunwale, the stem rising the higher. The bent-up sides of the bamboo body are embraced around their margin by several broad bands of split bamboo on each side and bound together into a stout cylinder with rattan strips to form a stout, continuous gunwale. Four or five strong bamboos stretch from gunwale to gunwale to prevent spreading; they are secured partly by lashing and partly by pegging into the gunwales. Along each side above the gunwales and over the ends of the cross beam, a slender bamboo pole is lashed to form a top rail. 

On the floor two long bamboos, spaced some distance apart, serve as inner stringers. One of the thwart beams, usually the second from the stern, is supported below by two short stanchions fixed at the lower ends into a stout bamboo bar, fitted athwart the bottom. Before launching, the interstices in the matting forming the skin of the hull are daubed with a caulking mixture of cow dung and coconut oil [citation omitted], periodically renewed. Strips of split bamboo matting are fitted over the floor to serve as dunnage and so keep cargo and passengers dry against moderate leaking. 

Although very light and easily carried by one man, they are able to carry several passengers together with a quantity of baggage. 

The dimensions of one measured by Nishimura [citation omitted] were as follows: length, 12 feet 7 inches; width, 5 feet; depth, 26 inches: usually they run smaller -- about 6 feet by 4 feet, by about 10 inches deep. 

Nishimura states that this type of craft is very common in Tongking, where almost all families living near rivers and streams keep one or two.

A couple observations on the above:

1. It seems unlikely that the caulking mixture was applied only to the "interstices in the matting." It is almost certainly spread over the entire outer surface of the hull. Road tar and roofing tar have largely replaced cow dung and coconut oil for waterproofing.

2. The purpose of the top rail is not explained. They may serve as the top elements of girders that stiffen the boat longitudinally, with the thwarts or cross-beams serving to create a vertical gap between them and the gunwales. But read on.

The image below, from Ken Preston's Boats & Rice blog, shows what appears to be the same kind of boat in current use on Halong (or Ha Long) Bay, near Hai Phong on the Gulf of Tonkin. This boat has a more elaborate and substantial framework around the perimeter than the light top rails in Hornell's image, but the curve of the bow (?) rising above the transverse end-piece of the perimeter framework seems to identify the boat as the same basic type. Along with strengthening the structure further, the fore-and-aft elements of the rectangular perimeter frame serve to anchor the tholepins. This might have been another unexplained purpose of the top rails in Hornell's image.

Woven boat, Halong Bay, from Boats & Rice

More Old Quffa Photos

In response to our recent post on the Mesopotamian quffa, Harvey Golden sent us these scans of old stereoscope photos in his possession. (Harvey is the founder of the Lincoln Street Kayak and Canoe Museum in Portland, Oregon, and author of Kayaks of Alaska and Kayaks of Greenland, which we'll be reviewing soon.) We present them with thanks and brief comments.

A lone quffa boatman passes a row of riverside homes. Date and location unknown; Baghdad is a guess. (Click images to enlarge.)

Two men were required to work on a quffa, one inside and one outside, to pass the stitches through to bind the coils of basketry together. Note the multiplicity of very light frames, arranged radially throughout the interior. The stitches that hold the coils of rushes together appear to enclose the frames as well. 

Vietnamese Coracles

"Coracle fishing boats at Mui Ne Bay, Vietnam" by Ray Zhoul
(Click any image to enlarge.)

Vietnam is the only land where coracles remain in widespread use and continue to serve a significant economic function. They are ubiquitous along the coast in the central part of the country, where they serve in the roles normally filled by inflatables and hard-shell dinghies in other parts of the world. They are also to be found in country's northern and southern portions. 

In Coracles of the World, Peter Badge states that coracles are carried aboard almost all larger fishing boats, where they are used as tenders and for handling nets. They are also used for net fishing in their own right as much as a mile offshore. In flooded-field agriculture, they are used to gather vegetables and spray fumigants. In some flood-prone areas, almost every home has a coracle for emergency evacuation, and no doubt they are also used for all sorts of casual transportation. 

Small coracle in use in flooded-field agriculture.
Source: Badge/Coracles of the World

The Vietnamese coracle is a true basket boat. Construction begins by erecting a round gunwale of split bamboo on top of short posts driven into the ground, so that the gunwale is supported at its ultimate height above the bottom. Woven matting is then placed over the gunwale, pressed down to the ground, and literally kicked into its desired shape. On larger versions, frames are inserted, but many smaller coracles have no frames at all. An inwale is then sprung into place so that the matting and frames are held between the inwale and the gunwale. The wales are then tied together -- originally with rattan, now usually with nylon cord. Wire was sometimes used during the transition from rattan to nylon.

The weave of the mat changes at the turn of the bilge, which allows it to be formed into a bowl shape without folding or puckering. Source: Badge/Coracles of the World.

The matting is made by the coracle maker from 1-inch strips of bamboo which he himself produces. The mat is woven as a piece for each boat, with a distinct mix of weaving patterns that allows it to be pressed into a bowl shape without puckering.

Bowl-shape coracle with two right-angled sets of three parallel frames. Source: Badge/Coracles of the World

Where frames are used, they are usually placed parallel and at right angles to one another, not radially. Frames are tied at intersections and they are not interwoven: one parallel set is laid at right angles over the other. On larger coracles, a pair of radial frames may be inserted at right angles to one another, above and at a 45-degree angle to the first set of parallel-and-right-angle frames to provide diagonal bracing. These bracing frames are tied to the lower level of frames at the intersections. A circumferential riser frame may be tied about halfway between the gunwales and the bottom to support a sitting thwart.

Coracle with parallel and radial frames, riser and sitting thwart. Source: Badge/Coracles of the World

The exterior is waterproofed by spreading on a layer of ox dung, followed by resin from the "raie" tree, according to Badge. I can find no references to this tree online, and I invite readers with knowledge of the subject to provide further information in the comments.

Sizes range from 1.2 to 3 meters in diameter, with depths from about 50cm to a maximum of about 72cm. Almost all are perfectly round, but a few oval ones have been reported, one measuring 3 X 4.5 meters.

Vietnamese coracle with flat bottom and straight sides. Source: The Junk Blue Book of 1962.

The cross-sectional shape varies somewhat. Some coracles are shaped like a shallow bowl with sloped sides. Others have nearly flat bottoms and vertical sides.

A single paddle is the most common means of propulsion, with paddling done kneeling or standing or, more rarely, sitting. Paddles may have a T-grip or no end grip. They tend to be long (Badge reports a paddle 1.83 meters on a boat 1.5 meters in diameter), so that they can be used for paddling while standing and as punt poles. 

Paddling technique varies greatly: some use a figure-8 scull to draw the boat forward; some use a J-stroke off to one side; still others use a "scooping" technique, lifting the blade out of the water and pulling it straight back. Sometimes, the paddle is tied to the gunwale and pivoted back and forth in a forward sculling motion. If there are two paddlers, they will sit or kneel on opposite sides of the boat and use a regular canoe-style paddling stroke. 

The use of lugsails has been reported, but this was apparently never very popular and appears to be extremely rare, possibly extinct. Less rare is the installation of inboard engines, of which, unfortunately, I can find no details. 

Another method of propulsion involves rocking the boat forward and back, creating a stern wave upon which the coracle slides forward. As unlikely as this sounds, it apparently works well enough so that it is a practical means of propulsion. (Examples can be seen briefly in this video that mainly shows the equivalent of coracle break-dancing.)

Coracles on a Vietnamese fishing junk, probably late 1950s or early 1960s. Source: The Junk Blue Book of 1962.

The continued popularity of the coracle in Vietnam is attributed in part to the government's promotion of the fishing industry, in which the coracle plays a prominent, practical role. No doubt, the country's relative poverty is a factor in its people preferring a boat that can be inexpensively produced on a craft basis from natural, native materials. And, no doubt, the coracle's surprising practicality, along with its entrenched cultural acceptability, are important influences as well.

Primary sources: 

• Coracles of the World, Peter Badge
• The Junk Blue Book of 1962

The Mesopotamian Quffa or Kuphar

Round boats are a fascination, and the quffa, a basket-built boat from Iraq, is among the most fascinating because of its well-documented antiquity, its common use well into the 20th century, and its sometimes very large -- occasionally immense -- size.

A quffa in Baghdad in 1914 (Source: Wikipedia) Click any image to enlarge.

Known also as a kuphar and by various alternate spellings, the quffa was described in the 5th century BCE by Herodotus, who stated that they were built in Armenia for one-way trading trips on the Euphrates. In his account, they were round, built of willow frames and covered with leather. The insides were protected by straw. They carried wooden casks of wine from Armenia to Babylon, along with at least one donkey and two paddlers. One paddler would pull from the front; the other would push from the rear. Upon reaching its destination, the boat was disassembled and the leather cover folded up, to be carried by the donkey on the road trip back home -- the Euphrates being too swift for a return voyage.

Herodotus claimed that the largest quffas could carry 5,000 talents, which is thought to be about 125 tons. This seems a probable exaggeration, although there are sufficiently contemporary and sufficiently realistic local images of unquestionably large quffas, like this one, showing four oarsmen (not paddlers) rowing with a cargo of cut stone.

Assyrian quffa with a cargo of building stone. Note the fishermen astride inflated hide floats to the left and right. (Source: Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World) 

Alternate methods of construction were present in antiquity, including the method that remained common into modern times. As quoted by Peter Badge in Coracles of the World, James Hornell described it in "The Coracles of the Tigris and the Euphrates" (1938) as:

"...perfectly circular in plan, nearly flat bottomed, and with convexly curved sides that tumble-home to join the stout cylindrical gunwale bounding the mouth, which is several inches less in diameter than the width at mid height. In construction a quffa is just a huge lidless basket, strengthened within by innumerable ribs radiating from around the centre of the floor. The type of basketry employed is ... coiled basketry."

To continue the description of the basketry, Badge goes on to quote Dionysius A. Aguis:

"It consists of a spiral of reeds bundled and woven together...The reeds are woven together with a palm fibre rope and the basket is reinforced by an inner structure. Normally two quffa-builders are needed, one of the inside, and the other for the outside, as one passes the cord through the wall of the basket while the other tightens the cord...."

What's not explained in either of these quotes is the quffa's waterproofing. The exterior of the basket was covered with a layer of bitumen, of which there are high-grade deposits in Mesopotamia.

There is a cuneiform tablet from Babylon, dating to around 1750 BCE and discovered in the 1940s, but not translated until a few years ago, that describes a world-inundating flood in a clear precursor to the story of Noah. In this version, the god Enki cues a man name Atrahasis to the coming disaster and suggests he build a quffa to save himself. The tablet describes the boat in great detail, including its construction of reeds bound by ropes, its interior wood framing, its waterproof covering of bitumen to the thickness of a finger, and its size: a (literally) incredible 220 feet (67M) in diameter and 20 feet (6M) high with upper and lower levels.

The translator of the tablet, Irving Finkel of the British Museum, acknowledges that such a craft was physically impossible and doubtless the product of some mythologizing exaggeration. But he was so convinced of the basic soundness of the idea of a quffa large enough to serve as a model for the myth -- one capable of supporting a family and livestock for a period -- that he built a scaled-down version, which was launched in 2014. It too had two levels, with a deck house on the upper one and the lower one suitable for "lots of well-behaved animals."

Replica Babylonian "deluge ark," built under the direction of Irving Finkel. (Source: DailyMail.com)

Finkel's 35-ton quffa leaked badly -- due, he said, to using the low-grade bitumen available in Kerala, India, where the boat was built, rather than the higher-quality stuff from Iraq -- but was stable and otherwise successful. Finkel concludes that such a craft might have actually been used and could have provided the basis for the deluge myth. A report about the project appears here. 

Quffas remained in wide use on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and especially around Baghdad, in the first half of the 20th century as water taxis, as carriers of produce and building materials, and as lighters. Various sources reported common sizes to be 4.5 ft to 10 ft. in diameter at the opening, with depths of 2.5 ft to 4 ft. The smallest was 3'8" at the opening, and the largest 16'5" with a maximum diameter of 18'. (Because of the quffa's tumblehome, maximum diameters were regularly greater than the more easily-measured opening.) A large passenger quffa could carry 20 people. 

"Two Arabs in a Quffa," Arthur Trevor Haddon.
Source: Victoria & Albert Museum

In his definition of "coracle," Peter Badge includes the ability to be carried by one man as one of the essential qualities of the type. Only the smallest quffas fit this description, so if one accepts Badge's definition, most quffas can't be considered a type of coracle. If one needs to place them in a category outside of themselves, "round basket boat" works, while "coracle-like craft" serves as a fair description.

Quffa use declined with the building of bridges and roads in Iraq and the proliferation of motor vehicles and launches. I believe they no longer serve an economic function, and do not know if any are being built for recreational purposes or even for the sake of historic preservation.

Main Sources: 

• Badge, Peter, Coracles of the World
• "Is this the REAL Noah's Ark? Scaled-down replica based on 4000-year-old Babylonian tablet's instructions is rebuilt by hand" DailyMail.com

Kerala Coracle

"Coracle" from the Indian state of Kerala. Image by Joe Niemczura. (Click to enlarge.)

We received this photo over a year ago from Joe Niemczura, RN,MS. Of it, he says:

"I'm travelling in India and came across this scene in Kerala Backwaters.
It shows the construction pretty clearly. 
Evidently, you can take a group outing on these (!) in Kerala if you like."

We don't know the native name of this craft, but it's obviously a "coracle" in the broad sense of a round (or roundish) basketwork boat small and light enough to be carried. Here's what else we can tell from the photo:

• The base structure is an openwork basket made of light laths, forming a very appealing hexagonal weave. 
• Lighter material (withies, wicker or similar) are woven under-over-under around the tops of the laths in at least 28 courses, binding them together and forcing the ends up into a shallow bowl shape.
• Six frames are bent into the inside of the bowl. The frames are roughly rectangular in section, and they are laid in three sets of parallel pairs at equal angles to one another. Each frame is laid either under-over-under-over the others or the reverse.
• A wood inwale is bent around the inside of the basket's upper edge. It appears to be roughly the same weight as the frames. It's unclear if the inwale is installed before or after the frames are in place. It's possible that the frames are forced into place after the inwale is lashed in, to tighten and stress the basket and its covering.
• The cover is of unknown material. It is pulled over the top of the inwale and just barely across its inside edge.
• The cover and the inwale appear to be lashed together to the circumferentially-woven withies at the top of the basket, but it's possible that the inwale is lashed in before the cover is stretched over it. 
• The paddle has no end-grip. As with many other coracles, propulsion is from the "front" -- i.e., the boat is drawn directly toward the paddle. 

Thanks to Mr. Niemczura for this intriguing image.

Basket Boats Worlds and Ages Apart

Woven or "basket" boats are among the less common and lesser-known types of indigenous boats. (I believe I've mentioned them only once since I began blogging more than two and a half years ago.) But woven boats have certain advantages over dugouts, skin-covered frame-built boats, bark boats, rafts and floats, which makes their apparent scarcity surprising.

Woven boats go back a long time. The Mesopotamians certainly had reed rafts and floats but, according to Paul Johnstone, "The availability of bitumen enabled the boat-builders of the Tigris and Euphrates to overcome one of the chief defects of the reed craft, the short-lived nature of its buoyancy." It seems likely that reed rafts were initially coated with bitumen as a preservative, but eventually it probably became clear that "a reed framework covered with bitumen produced a combination of a flexible shape and a smooth featureless exterior without lashings, sewing, planks, or cross-beam ends."

Silver boat model from Ur depicting a bitumen-covered woven boat. (Source: The Sea-Craft of Prehistory, Paul Johnstone)

Boats of this sort were still in use in Iraq as late of 1835. For the coating, the bitumen was heated over a fire, mixed with sand and earth, and applied with a roller.

Thousands of miles away and thousands of years later, similar construction methods are still in use. "Woven Boats of Vietnam," an article by Ken Preston in the current issue of WoodenBoat, describes woven boats of two general types: one small and canoe-like; the other larger and shaped somewhat like the surfboats of India's west coast that I've described previously.

The WoodenBoat article describes the building procedure of the smaller type:

1. The woven fabric is made of bamboo. Long lengths of bamboo are split into narrow strips with a machete, cut to length with a bow saw, then woven by hand on the bias in a simple basket-weave to create a flat piece of matting as wide and long as needed.

2. Stakes are pounded into the ground to define the boat's outline in plan view.

3. Bamboo is split in half lengthwise for gunwales. Half-round lengths are lashed to the inside of the stakes at the height desired, with the flat edge facing inward. This defines the sheer. (Very few boats start at, and are shaped by, the gunwales. The North American birchbark canoe is one example.)

4. The matting is rolled out over the gunwales. Then builder then steps atop the matting and forces it down between the gunwales until it attains a U-shape in cross-section.

5. The remaining half-round sections of long bamboo are lashed inside the hull to form inwales, sandwiching the upper edge of the matting between the two half-round wales.

6. The upper edge of the matting is trimmed flush with the wales, then thwarts and breasthooks are added.

7. The matting is covered with road tar to make it waterproof.

A canoe-style Vietnamese woven boat under construction. The woven matting has been shaped between the gunwales and clamped in place with inwales. The builder is using a bow-drill to bore fastening holes for thwarts. Note the stakes outboard of the gunwales, used to set the outline and height of the gunwales. (Source for this and next photo: "Woven Boats of Vietnam", Ken Preston, in WoodenBoat)

While the canoe-like boat described above has no backbone members and very little stiff wooden structure, the larger, surf-boat types have stem- and stern-posts that are lashed in place. (There appear to be no keels or keelsons to which the stem and sternposts attach.) Boats of this type may be from 17' to 20', and some of the largest ones have diesel engines, although all rely on oars to an extent. Even larger engined versions, from 24' to 30', have wooden upper strakes on top of their woven hulls, and these surely add a great deal of additional stiffness. Although not described in the article, one must assume that some rigid structure serves as an engine bed and keeps the engine aligned with the sternpost through which the shaft presumably passes.

Larger Vietnamese woven boat with wooden upper strakes and endposts. The crew (forward) and their womenfolk (aft) are spinning the boat to "walk" it up the beach.

The sternpost on these boats is hollowed to accept a post for a rudder that can be raised for surf landings. Both stem and sternpost have stout hooks carved on their outboard surfaces that are used to bring the boat up the beach in an interesting manner.

Once the boat lands through the surf, the crew takes a long pole and places it horizontally beneath the hook at the stern. With one or more men at each end of the pole, they lift that end of the boat and pivot it around a point somewhat forward of the boat's midpoint, until the stern is facing up the beach. This moves the boat about 4 feet up the beach. They then move the lifting pole to the bow and repeat the process, switching ends as many times as needed to move the boat beyond the reach of the waves. The process is reversed to launch the boat.

And the advantages  of woven boats? Aside from those cited in the Johnstone quotes above, they would appear to include: i) lighter weight compared to reed floats and dugouts; ii) ease of construction compared to dugouts; and iii) more readily available material in some locations (far less material needed than for floats). Depending upon the application, their flexibility may be either an advantage or a disadvantage compared to dugouts.

With all these advantages, why was the woven boat not more widely distributed? Perhaps it was because suitable waterproofing material was not available in many places. Certainly, natural bitumen is not be be found as readily as reeds, logs, or bark.

On the other hand, not all woven or basket boats rely on bitumen as a sealer. Other Vietnamese woven boats apparently use a dung-based mixture to cover the basketwork, and the Irish coracle was originally a kind of loosely-woven basket covered with skins (as was the Sioux bull boat). It seems possible that other skinboats might have begun their evolution as baskets before attaining the more substantial frameworks that we recognize as the distinguishing feature that separates "skinboats" from woven ones.