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.

Diversity of British Isles Coracles:

It's often said that the great diversity of small craft is a result of the extremely various uses required of boats and the extremely various environments in which they are used (along with differences in access to raw materials). I think this misses one important factor: the individuality of humanity.

In Coracles of the World, Peter Badges describes how each of the numerous types of coracle in the British Isles are native to an individual river, or even a stretch on a river, with a different type sometimes being used upstream or downstream. But surely, some of these stretches of river have very nearly the same conditions, be they in Scotland, England, Wales or Ireland, and many locales have access to the same or similar materials.

The uses to which coracles were traditionally put were also pretty consistent and of limited diversity: viz, mainly fishing with nets; angling; and the transportation of humans and cargo. This isn't to imply that angling and net-handling impose the same design requirements. But boats that are used in similar ways on similar rivers would function equally well if they were of similar designs.

I think it probable that much of the diversity in boat design is due to the impulse of individualism in so many craftsman. This impulse is often a creative or innovative one -- a desire to attempt some improvement in functionality, appearance, or ease of construction. Sometimes, though, it is probably due to a simple desire to do things differently from one's parent, employer, or neighbor; to be able to say "This is my idea/my design."

Even if the attempt at a functional improvement does not actually produce one -- even if the change just to be different makes the boat more difficult to construct or use -- the builder might continue building his boats in that manner, simply because it is his own way. And if he has a son or an apprentice or half-a-dozen customers who get accustomed to his boats, the new style might become entrenched in a small, parochial geographic zone, which the British Isles have in such abundance.

Before the days of radio and television, there were those who claimed to be able to identify the home of any Britisher to within 40 miles or so based strictly upon his speech. (I think Henry Higgins claimed as much.) No one would argue that a Cornwall dialect is objectively superior to a Fife one. (Okay, they probably do. But the argument won't hold up in court.) Coracles I think, are like that: some of the differences are simply differences, not advantages.

So let's look at some photos. The intent isn't to identify each coracle type with a specific locale: that is the point of much of Badge's book. Our objective is only to illustrate the diversity, perhaps as evidence of how the creative impulse -- along with practical issues such as river configuration, available materials, and the requirements of different uses -- produced it within the seemingly simple concept of the coracle (surely among the simplest boat types in existence) in such a limited geographic range. I've left Badge's original captions in place in the images themselves; my comments appear below them. 

The coracle of popular conception: perfectly round. (Click any image to enlarge.)

A very pleasing oval in plan view.

Sides roughly straight and parallel, one end rounded, the other mostly rounded with a slight point to it.

Pear-shaped. It starts out egg-shaped, then it's drawn in at the waist to attach the thwart.

One end dead flat; the other rounded; sides straight and parallel. This and the previous image illustrate an odd, but fairly common, characteristic of coracles: when one end is blunter than the other, it's usually the bow.

Looking now at sectional shape: some coracles have substantial tumblehome -- i.e., the bilges bulge out, and the craft narrows as it rises to the gunwales. The botttom is flat.

Another flat-bottomed coracle, but this one has no tumblehome. Its straight sides flare out.

Looking now at construction methods: this coracle has a gunwale composed of woven withies and "frames" of slender branches, doubled across the bottom.

The gunwale of this coracle is sawn lumber. The frames are nicely machined splints, fastened at every intersection with screws. The transverse and diagonal frames overlay the longitudinal ones.

The frames are narrow, riven splints. The transverse and longitudinal frames are woven over/under/over one another. Although woven-splint construction is common, this one happens to be a particularly complex example.

A very different construction method: the entire boat is woven like a basket.

A most unusual example of splint construction. The normal right-angled orientation of splints is discarded in favor of changing angles and complex curves. Note how a splint runs just below the gunwale around most of the boat, then curves down sharply to support the thwart.

The standard method of portaging a coracle: the user places a strap that passes through holes in the thwart around the shoulders. A less common method is to carry to boat inverted over one's head, with the thwart resting on one shoulder. 

Paddling differences: Two handed. Note also the bowl-shaped sections and the lattice-like structure supporting the thwart. The support structure also kept a sein net confined in the stern and prevented it from sneaking into the bow portion and interfering with the boater's feet.  

Another two-handed paddler. Compare the rough, irregular appearance of this coracle with the geometric purity of the previous one.

One-handed paddling was apparently more common historically. The man at right rests the upper part of the paddle's shaft in the crook of his elbow. The woman appears to be sculling with the paddle grasped well below the end grip, with the loom levering against the gunwale.

A large, two-person coracle for angling. (Note the "guide's" one-handed paddle grip. Most coracle angling was done in one-man boats, where a one-handed grip on the paddle allowed the rod to be managed with the other. But the one-handed method took hold as the norm in some coracle types, and was used even when two hands were available.) Net fishing was also done in both one- and two-man coracles. 

All images are from Coracles of the World by Peter Badges.

The Donegal Paddling Curragh

The Donegal paddling curragh -- also known as the Owey Island, and Rosses paddling curragh -- is one of the odder indigenous boat survivals in western Europe. 

Donegal, of course, is a county in the west of Ireland. Owey Island is off its northwest coast, and The Rosses a district toward the southwest. Rossmen and Owey Islanders compete for the distinction as the originators of the type. 

Launching a Donegal paddling curragh built by Andy McGonagle for Peter Badge, 1992 (click any image to enlarge)

At first glimpse, the Donegal paddling curragh appears to be a tiny example of curragh, per se -- that is, a heavy type of skin-on-frame, "boat-shaped" boat formerly in common alongshore use in Ireland and popularized in modern times by Tim Severin's reproduction of one for his Brendan Voyage. 

But as Peter Badge observes in Coracles of the World, the boat is only partly a curragh in the above sense, and partly a coracle. (The issue is complicated by the Irish often calling coracles currachs, as in the Boyne currach, which is clearly a coracle.) Its size -- about 8' LOA -- puts it in the realm of the coracle, as does the fact that it can be, and sometimes is, carried on the back of one man (although its size and apparent weight would make that a far more difficult task than carrying, for example, a Boyne currach or one of the coracles of the River Severn in England and Wales). The last quality that makes it more coracle-like than curragh-like is that it is normally propelled by a single paddler kneeling in the bows with a single T-grip paddle, as shown in the image below.

Paddling Donegal paddling curraghs over the bow.

On the other hand, oars pivoting on single tholepins and a sitting thwart -- features of "true" curraghs -- were added to the design around the middle of the twentieth century, although even boats so fitted continued to be paddled as well. It is, perhaps, fruitless to argue whether the Donegal curragh is a curragh or a coracle. It bears characteristics of both: it is what it is.

Until the nineteenth century, the framework was basket-like, made of woven withies like the Boyne currach, but by the 1930, sawn oak laths were used. In the next photo, the frames appear to be fairly heavy (one suspects they were steam-bent). The frames are neatly mortised and wedged into the gunwales around both sides. 

Donegal paddling curragh, set up for rowing. Note kneeling "pad" of hay in the bow, toe brace behind the pad, sawn frames and stringers moritsed into gunwales, and pieced gunwale construction.

The framing of the transom is not clear from the photo, but the tops of either stringers or vertical transom frames are to be seen mortised into the member that runs across the top of the transom. This itself is probably mortised into the gunwales, which extend a very short distance aft of that transverse member.

The forward structure of the gunwales is unusual. The main gunwales appear to end where the sides begin to curve inward. A little aft of that point, curving sections of gunwale overlap the forward ends of the straight sections and make most of the rest of the curve toward the stem. Another gunwale component overlaps the second piece on both sides, forming a kind of breasthook that ties the sides together.

Donegal paddling curraghs were originally covered with hides, but more recently with two layers of canvas or other stout fabric, with a layer of brown paper in between, and waterproofed with tar or pitch. 

Quoting James Hornel, Badges gives typical dimensions as follows: LOA: 8'4" (504cm); beam: 3'7" (109cm); depth 1'8" (51cm).

Whereas most coracles are inland craft, the Donegal curragh was and is used in both inland and nearshore coastal waters. Common uses formerly included, according to Badge, "fishing (particularly for Pollock), cutting seaweed, transporting animals to and from the mainland and shopping!, but that their current use was as inland ferries and for pleasure trips." They would travel as much as two miles offshore in conditions reportedly up to Force 8, but this seems like an exaggeration for such a small, paddle-propelled boat.

The paddler kneeled on a bundle of hay or straw, and braced his toes against a short cross-member fastened in the bottom especially for that purpose. (This can be seen in the third photo.) The recommended posture was a bolt-upright kneeling one -- not sitting back on one's haunches -- with the knees spread apart but with no other contact with the boat's interior. In contrast to typical coracle paddling technique, which is straight over the bow, the Donegal curragh boatman paddled over one side, then switched sides as soon as the boat began to veer in the opposite direction.

Content and photos from Coracles of the World, by Peter Badge.

"The Boyne Currach" -- A Review

The Boyne Currach: From beneath the shadows of Newgrange, by Claidhgh (I understand it's pronounced "Clive") O' Gibne has received quite positive reviews. (Here's one, by Wade Tarzia.) I'm disappointed that I can't add to them. I find the book gravely flawed and seriously wanting.

The Boyne is a river in County Meath, Ireland, running generally toward the east and entering the Irish Sea north of Dublin. The river's common fishing boat was the currach, a small, nearly round leather-on-frame craft that in most of the British Isles is known as a coracle. (O' Gibne addresses the naming controversy.) The large landowners along the Boyne used to jealously guard their exclusive rights to fish the river, maintaining their own small fleets of currachs and hiring men to fish for salmon with seine nets. As O' Gibne tells it, in spite of privately-employed wardens and monitoring by the local police, poaching by private currach owners was widespread (but we'll make no puns -- none! -- about poached fish).

The Boyne Currach describes this local history. It also delves into the history and mythology of skin-on-frame craft in general; the history and folkways of the Boyne Valley; the ancient history of the Celts and Ireland; and the history of modern currach preservation efforts. There's a chapter (just one) on how to build a Boyne currach; another about the Boyne Currach Centre, which O' Gibne founded and maintains to perpetuate the craft of the craft; and a section about the Newgrange Currach Project, referring to an entirely different form of currach (the more familiar boat-shaped type, somewhat similar to Tim Severin's Brendan) which O' Gibne had under construction at the time of the book's publication.

Boyne currachs, 1848
(All images from The Boyne Currach. Click any image to enlarge)

This great variety of material is, in my opinion, one of the flaws of The Boyne Currach: it attempts too much in its 164 pages and loses coherence along the way. I would have liked more detail on the boatbuilding methods for both the types discussed. O' Gibne's description of the building process for the coracle-style currach is confusing and perfunctory (especially concerning leather tanning), and he merely glosses the construction of the larger boat-shaped vessel. There are, however, enough excellent photographs and (perhaps) enough usable illustrations so that one could build a coracle-style currach by referring to them and perhaps gleaning sufficient tidbits from the text to supplement them.

In this 1910 photo of a Boyne currach, the gentleman in the bowler hat is J.P. Holland, inventor of the first practical submarine. 

In addition to its historical photos and illustrations, The Boyne Currach contains sketches by O' Gibne. These, though, are often mere decorations, and even among those that attempt to be informative, many are full of distracting, nouveau-Celtic imagery and other New-Agey psychedelia and therefore lacking in clarity.

Purportedly showing to how twist willow rods to make the rope that supports the seat in a currach.

When it comes to the history of currach folk on the Boyne, O' Gibne is indiscriminate, mixing history and anecdotes about fishing and poaching with irrelevancies about milking cows and riding bicycles. These decades-old bits of gossip may be of interest to local residents who recognize their neighbors' great-grandparents in them, but they're of little value to readers whose primary interest is the boats themselves.

Most significantly, The Boyne Currach needed an editor. The language is often idiomatic or just plain unclear, the organization disjointed, too many of the how-to explanations are sketchy, and the content frequently drifts off-topic. I find this inexcusable in a book that was peer-reviewed, as its publisher, Four Courts Press, claims all its books are.

I understand that this is harsh, and I take no pleasure in slamming what was a sincere and worthy effort. O' Gibne's research concerning the historical use of the Boyne currach is worthwhile to historians and students of folkways. His dedication to learning traditional currach-building skills and perfecting his own is commendable, and the boats he builds are lovely in the way that simple tools and antique technologies can be. That he has taken his love for the currach and turned it into a vibrant cultural-and-boating organization (The Boyne Currach Centre) is admirable. Thanks to O' Gibne, there are now many boaters campaigning their home-built currachs on the Boyne and elsewhere, and that's just flat-out wonderful.

The Boyne Currach is not entirely lacking in value. As noted, it contains much that will be of use to historians, and its historical photos and illustrations are quite revealing of the currach's construction and use. It is, however, difficult to read and lacking in the clarity and detail that could have made it much more useful to boatbuilders and boat history enthusiasts.

NOTE: I know The Boyne Currach is well-liked by some of my readers. I welcome opposing viewpoints in the Comments.

The Newgrange Currach

Reliable reader Wade Tarzia has added a useful comment to an earlier post about coracles, with a review of the 2012 book, The Boyne Currach by Claidhbh O Gibne. (Please don't ask me to pronounce the author's first name.) The comment worth a read, or you can see Wade's complete review on his blog.

The Boyne currach, a historical type, is being championed by an organization that seems to refer to itself alternately as the Newgrange Currach and the Boyne Currach Heritage Group. They're active in researching the type, building replicas, and campaigning them on the water in surprisingly adventurous and attractive ways, as shown in the slideshow above.

(By the way, in addition to what I would call a currach -- i.e., a "boat-shaped" hide-covered, open-framework boat -- Newgrange Currach is also building what I would call coracles -- i.e., boats that are round in plan -- and apparently calling them currachs too. Not having yet read the book, I'm not clear if there's a technical difference between their round currachs and true coracles, or simply an overlap of terminology.)

They also (naturally) maintain a Facebook page.

The Ancient, and Occasionally Huge, Coracle

It's quite possible that the coracle was the first true boat -- certainly, it was among the earliest, for it is among the quickest and easiest to build with a minimum of very simple tools and with raw materials that are easily gathered in most regions. Round in plan and made from a simple framework of flexible sticks tied together, the smallest, like the bull boat of the Mandan and Lakota Indians, could be covered and made waterproof with a single hide of a large mammal.

The best known coracles are those of the British Isles, where they remained in practical use until well into the 20th century. According to Lionel Casson, "Julius Caesar was the first to report seeing them there, and they are frequently mentioned by later writers. Other areas, too, found them of service, for they have also been reported in the Po Valley, along the north coast of Spain, in the Red Sea, on Lake Maeotis in the Crimea."

Assyrian quffa, with four oarsmen and a load of large building stone. Note the fishermen astride inflated hide floats to the left and right. (From Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World) Click to enlarge image.

But the coracle has an even more ancient pedigree. The quffa, a coracle of the lower Euphrates that, like the British version, was used in the 20th century, is shown on Assyrian reliefs dating as far back as the 9th century BCE. The one pictured above has four oarsmen transporting a large cargo of building stone, so it is certain that smaller, simpler versions must have predated this image by several centuries -- quite possibly by millennia. According to Casson, 20th-century quffas were as much as 13 feet in diameter and 7.5 feet deep - a veritable Hormuzmax Coracle!

Later than the quffa but still ancient was the Egyptian pakton, described by Strabo (64/63 BCE – ca. 24 CE) based on direct observation. Used on the Nile, these were "originally very small craft made of woven branches; they must have been like the coracles of basket work used on the lower Euphrates, and like them must have been liberally pitched over to be made watertight," according to Casson. Later versions, made all of wood, were capable of carrying as much as 13 tons.

A modern British coracle.