PBS - Woodwright's Shop: Woodwright Wit

From the Woodwright’s Quill

The Boatbuilders

"The manner of makinge their boates in Virginia is verye wonderfull."
Thomas Hariot, 1588

For thousands of years, Indians harvested the bounty of the Chesapeake, making their boats from trees felled along its shores. Their tools were seashells and fire; their method, "somtymes burninge and sometymes scrapinge." When the English came to the bay, many ridiculed the native's bevel- ended "canowes," some even resorting to doggerel:

"… The Indians call this Watry Waggon Canoo, a Vessel none can brag on;
Cut from a Popular-tree or Pine
And fashion'd like a Trough for Swine."

At the same time though, they could not fail to notice that one of these "hogg troughs" paddled by three Indians could easily outdistance eight hard-rowing colonists.

Soon the Englishmen with their steel bitted axes and adzes began to copy the Indian canoes. The dugout log boat perfectly matched the skills of untrained Englishmen with the materials of the Chesapeake; trees so big that "three men with arms extended" could not reach around them. Occasionally, they widened the canoes into punts, first softening the sides by filling the boat with water and then dropping in red hot rocks until the water boiled. This added some stability, but only an experienced waterman would care to fire his musket broadside from a log canoe.

No More Big Trees
As the number of colonists increased, however, the forests correspondingly decreased. By the late eighteenth century, the huge trees of the early days became increasingly scarce. Those that remained were often far from the waterside and troublesome to move. Legend has it that a slave named Aaron was the man who solved this problem. At his home on Lamb's creek in York County, Virginia, he took two logs, hewed them square with an axe and placed them side by side. With a piece of charcoal, he traced the lines of the boat on the top and sides. Then, he separated the logs and shaped them with an adze.

From time to time as the logs took shape, he reassembled the halves to gauge the evolving grace and symmetry of the craft by eye. No model or plan guided his work, it was strictly "winchum- squinchum".

A Watertight Case
When Aaron had sculpted the timbers to three-inch thick half-shells, he then had to fit them together in a perfectly watertight seam. Although time and a sharp blade could work the fit, Aaron may have known the old shipwright's trick of "kerfing-in". Starting at one end of the seam between the temporarily rope-bound timbers, he would have run his handsaw down the joint again and again. Each pass of the saw would take an equal portion from each side of each tight place in the joint. When the saw teeth cut both sides for the whole length, the timbers were a perfect fit. To join the halves, Aaron resorted to another ancient technique, the free tenon. Into the faces of the seams he cut a series of inch wide, three-inch long, four-inch deep mortices. Each mortice was matched to another in the opposite half. Into each mortice in one of the halves, he set eight-inch long oak tenons. He then forced the two halves together with twisted ropes and locked the tenons into place by driving locust pegs into holes bored through tenon and hull. Once in the water, the swelling timbers, restrained by the long grain of the oak tenons, forced the seams as tight as a Scottish oyster.

Later Aaron built a canoe from three logs, and then from five. Soon scores of the swift, graceful sailing craft were coursing the bay. Some were as long as 50 feet and built from as many as seven logs. Although the keel log could be made from a straight tree, the outer "wing logs" had to come from appropriately curved trees, often found only after days of searching. The absence of internal ribbing made these undecked craft well suited to handling fish and oysters. Their incredible speed brought the catch to market far ahead of conventional sailboats.

One of these sailboats, the "Buck Kelly", became a favorite on the bay because of its unique history. The man who bought this nine foot wide, fifty foot long, five log "cunner" found her very fast - but too tricky to handle for a workboat. In 1880 he hauled it to his boatyard, sawed it in half down its length and added an extra two-foot wide log in the middle. Watermen wondered and waved at the now eleven foot wide "Buck Kelly" when she passed.

Thirty years later, this boat was lost in a fire, but dozens of her sister craft are preserved, still working the bay. Everyone loves a beautiful sailboat, but a boat with a story is irresistible.