The Trinidadian Pirogue

Let's discuss one final boat from Doulgas C. Pyle's Clean, Sweet Wind: Sailing with the Last Boatmakers of the Caribbean before it goes back to the small but stellar Rockport Public Library. It's the pirogue of Trinidad, the southernmost of the Antilles.


All images from Pyle. Click to enlarge.

 Looking, as she does, quite like a big modern outboard skiff, it's still fair to say that the pirogue has clear indigenous roots, for she is indeed yet another extended dugout -- extended in the sense that she has dugout base, to which strakes are added. She is not, however, also expanded, as in the gommier, canot, or Granadian sailing canoe discussed recently -- that is, the pirogue's dugout base is not forced apart in the middle to widen it.

Pyle discusses the construction method at length, which I'll telescope here. The dugout base, which really forms only the boat's keel, is sharp and deep on the outside (see lines drawings below), and hollowed inside. To it are added a long, straight stem and a broad, nearly vertical transom -- wider since the introduction of outboard engines, to provide greater buoyancy aft. The lowest, or garboard, strake is first nailed to the stem, then to the top of the keel, and finally to the transom. But it's not a typical edge-to-edge or lapped joint between the plank and the keel. Rather, the outboard surface of the garboard rests  horizontally atop the keel and is through-nailed to it with galvanized nails. Subsequent strakes are lapped without bevels, and fastened with clenched nails. 

When Pyle observed the process in 1975, there was only one builder on Trinidad, named Taitt, and his methods (which is not to say his workmanship) were so refined that joggled half-frames were cut to patterns before being trimmed for installation. What is impressive is that no patterns or plans were used for any of the steps prior to cutting the frames, so the work that was all done by eye had admirable accuracy and consistency. The boat is finished with the installation of stringers, thwarts, wales, and a small foredeck.

To quote Pyle:

The lines of a Taitt pirogue seem to confirm its hybrid ancestry. The waterlines forward showed much greater hollow than I found in any small craft [in the Caribbean] other than the dugout gommiers and their derivatives, the yoles. Use of the shell as a keel points to a dugout origin here. The odd thing was that raising strakes should be lapped instead of fastened on edge as was done elsewhere with dugouts.

One of Pyle's informants suggested that the pirogue "was of Amerindian origin, that raising strakes had been a development connected to the diminishing availability of large tree trunks for dugout canoes. He surmised that the notion of lapping had been learned from the Royal Navy, whose launches and tenders were always clinker-built."

Although Pyle took the lines himself, and they are presumably accurate, these were from an outboard-powered boat, while the strangely low and long sailplan was based on a sketch from a native informant and seems less reliable. No sailing pirogues were in existence in 1975, engines having completely taken over.

Sailing Canoes of Granada

Still further south from the gommiers of Dominica and Martinique and the canot of St. Lucia is another expanded and extended dugout, the sailing canoe of Granada. When Douglas C. Pyle visited the island in 1975, "a handful" were still in use. It would be a surprise, though a pleasant one, if any still exist 35 years later.

The Granada sailing canoe had something in the looks of a whaleboat.
(This and all other images from Pyle, Clean Sweet Wind. Click any image to enlarge.)

The dugout origins are just discernible in the small hollowed keel, to which three wide strakes have been added, followed by rough, widely-spaced frames and partial frames.

The waterlines and buttocks are very nice, but the sections look scary. The sailplan looks fairly powerful for such an unstable hull, but it's wisely kept low.

Pyle writes in Clean Sweet Wind:

The lines show very clearly that no effort was made to give the hull any shape other than that assumed by a hollowed log wedged slightly open at midsection. They were propelled by sailing and rowing simultaneously, a practical mix in the flat water and fluky breezes that prevail in the lee of all high islands such as Granada.

In spite of Pyle's criticism of their unsophisticated lines, he says the canoes were "versatile...capable also of operating in the open sea," and he describes a regatta in nearby Carriacou where the boats seemed to perform adequately, though hampered by their blue denim sails.

In any case, I find the buttocks, waterlines, and sheer profile pleasing. The sections, however, are another matter. Where the bottom of the canot was just slightly flattened, and the gommier almost perfectly round amidships, the Granada canoe's bottom is nearly a rounded V. Lightly laden, this boat would have little initial stability, though I think she would firm up when heeled down onto her wide flared sides.

The Canot of St. Lucia

An interesting contrast to the gommiers of Dominica and Martinique is the closely-related canot of St. Lucia -- the next large island south in the chain of the Windward Islands. In Clean, Sweet Wind: Sailing with the Last Boatmakers of the Caribbean, Douglas C. Pyle writes of his first encounter with this boat while aboard a modern Western-style sailboat:

We were nearing midchannel when something in the animated monotony of the waves caught my attention -- a flash that was not a whitecap, a motion not part of the heaving sea. A few minutes later, there was another visual disturbance, this time from a different quarter altogether. As the disturbances became more frequent, they also drew closer, slowly revealing themselves as human figures clad in yellow oilskins and topped by straw hats with fantastic high peaks. The figures seems (sic) to skim the surface of the water at high speed, darting this way and that like disembodied spirits.

When the full reality was finally disclosed, the figures were seated by threes, one behind another in a canoe so narrow and so low in the water as to be invisible at a very short distance. The figure in the stern was steering with the outboard motor; the one in the middle was bailing. In the bow, lifted completely clear of the water by the thrust of the motor, the third figure peered forward and gestured from time to time, sending the whole rig swerving this way and that.



(Drawing by Pyle)


Like the gommier, the canot is primarily a fishing boat that, at the time of the Pyle's observation, was well in the process of conversion from sail to outboard power. The basics of the two types are certainly similar: an expanded and extended dugout with a single strake added to increase freeboard. But as Pyle notes, the canot is "easily distinguishable from the gommier by the striking extension of the dugout forward into a sort of cutwater." Some of the examples of gommiers in the previous post showed a small extension, but nothing like the imposing "ram bow" of the canot.

As Pyle also notes, the canot's midsection is quite a bit flatter, with a slack, but perceptible bilge, as opposed to the almost perfectly round sections of the gommier. In addition, he notes the length-to-beam ratio is much longer in the canot; and "there is less freeboard in the bow, and the waterlines show less hollow and are less streamlined."

In the late 1990s, the Gli Gli Project built a big (35') Carib canoe with the intention of sailing it from its home in Dominica to South America. The project's rather sketchy website doesn't tell the complete story, though, and it may be that the voyage was not completed. It's not clear from the photos on the site if the canoe was more like the gommiers of Dominica or the canots of St. Lucia.