“In walking you are bounded by every sea and river, and in a common sailing-boat you are bounded by every shallow and shore; whereas, a canoe can be paddled or sailed, or hauled, or carried over land or
water”.

Quoted from “Thousand miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on rivers and lakes of Europe“, MacGregor, 1866.

The use of sailing canoes dates back to ancient Polynesia, when they were used to explore the Pacific Ocean. The technology was popularized in the western world in the 1860s, when Scottisch John MacGregor built sailing canoes and travelled all over Europe.

There’s quite some amateurs building sailing canoes these days: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4. Picture: Outrigger Sailing Canoes.

A Floating Grain Mill on the Hwei River in China (19th/20th century). Source. Previously: “Boat mills: water powered, floating factories“.

“Taraibune (tub boats) were once found along the Echigo coast of the Sea of Japan and on Sado Island. Now they are used only in six small fishing villages on Sado Island. They have survived to the present because of their low cost and durability.”

“Tub boats are made of local sugi (Japanese cedar) and madake (timber bamboo). The woodwork in a tub boat is not at all beyond the skills of an experienced carpenter, but the braiding of the hoops is now an extremely rare skill.”

“Japanese tub boats are used for nearshore fishing and seaweed collecting. A key tool of the taraibune angler is the glass-bottomed box which is floated alongside the boat. This enables him (or more frequently, her) to clearly see the bottom in shallow water to identify likely prey or harvest. A variety of long-handled tools is trailed behind the boat — to collect the fish, shellfish, or vegetation at hand. Tub boats are propelled facing forward with a paddle, though in one village the men use outboard motors.”

“In spite of their ancient appearance, they date from only the middle of the 19th century. Prior to that, dugouts and plank-built boats were used to collect the rich shallow-water sea life around the southern tip of Sado Island, but in 1802 an earthquake changed the area’s topography, opening up a multitude of narrow fissures in the rocks along the shore into which it was impractical or dangerous to take long, narrow boats. Derived directly from the barrels in which miso is brewed, tub boats proved to be adept at navigating these narrow waterways. Indeed, they can be easily spun in their own length.”

More at Douglas Brooks Boatbuilder & Indigenous boats. Previously: The woorden work boats of Indochina.

“The wooden work boats of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (French Indochina) have a long and fascinating history of sail and trade in South East Asia and beyond. Today, the sails are nearly all gone but the boats and their builders survived by adapting the traditional sailboat hulls for motoring. Our goal is to document the building, design and uses of as many traditional and unique wooden work boats of Southeast Asia as possible before the master craftsmen who build them are gone.”

Great pictures at Boats and Rice. Via Duckworks Magazine. Previously: The Junk Blue Book. More boats.

“Barge haulers on the Volga“, a late 19th century painting by Ilja Repin.

“The Dugout Canoe Project (.pdf) began as an experiment to use traditional Native American technologies. Archaeologists are reliant on just a few ethnohistoric sources that mention how Native Americans made dugout canoes using stone tools and fire. Numerous contemporary examples of dugouts exist, particularly Plimouth Plantation’s Wampanoag Indian Program, made by burning and scraping out logs. However, to the best of our knowledge, no one has attempted to fell a tree using only stone tools and fire. We wanted to see if we could cut down a live tree using these technologies, something that may not have been done in this area for several hundred years.”

“Dugout canoes are probably the first type of boat ever made. People from all over the world made dugouts. They were widely used in North America before the arrival of Europeans. Dugout canoes were made by Native Americans across North and South America for transportation and to hunt fish with a spear, bow and arrows, or with hooks made from antler or bones. In Eastern North America, dugout canoes were typically made from a single log of chestnut or pine. Carefully controlled fires were used to hollow out these logs. The fires were extinguished at intervals to scrape out the burned wood with wood, shell or stone tools, giving the canoes a flat bottom with straight sides.”

Courtesy of the Fruitlands Museum. More posts on primitive technology.

“The Junk Blue Book of 1962 is a detailed catalog of the indigenous boats of what was then South Vietnam, during a period when most such vessels were still powered by sail. It was a manual put together by the US Dept. of Defense early in the involvement in the war in Vietnam. It was used as a guide to identify coastwise marine traffic involved in smuggling supplies and personnel south into the Republic of Vietnam from then North Vietnam. Although its production was driven by perceived military necessity it is a unique chronicle of the indigenous fishing and cargo craft of the mid and southern Vietnamese coasts.”

The book is in the public domain and can be found on scribd. A pdf-version is available on a dedicated site. Via Indigenous boats. See also: the wooden work boats of Indochina.

“Boat mills: water powered, floating factories” at Low-tech Magazine. Some extra images below:

Above: Boat mill, Encyclopédie Diderot, 1751

Above: boat mill, Fausto Veranzio, 1617

Above: boat mill, Fausto Veranzio, 1617

Above: miniature of a boat mill

Above: german ship mill, 1840

One of the last authentic boat mills in France, around 1914

Above: the last ship mill on the Rhône in Lyon, France, 1894

Above: ship mill on the Tisza, Hungary (from the postcard collection of Ton Meesters)

Above: reconstruction of a ship mill in repair (1990s). Photo: Karel Broes.

More at Low-tech Magazine.

Three wonderful collections from the Library of Congress, showing obsolete technologies.

1. The World’s Transportation Commission Photograph Collection contains nearly nine hundred images by American photographer William Henry Jackson. In addition to railroads, elephants, camels, horses, sleds and sleighs, sedan chairs, rickshaws, and other types of transportation, Jackson photographed city views, street and harbor scenes, landscapes, local inhabitants, and Commission members as they travelled through North Africa, Asia, Australia, and Oceania.

Below: Boatmen towing sailboat against the wind up the Pieho to Peking.

Workmen repairing railroad track:

A camel train on the desert:

Chinese gunboat:

2. The Photochrom Print Collection has almost 6,000 views of Europe and the Middle East and 500 views of North America.
Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created
by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit
Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like
photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches. 

Below: the knights’ hall, Mont St Michel, France:

The beach, Scheveningen, Holland:

Street in the old town, I, Biskra, Algeria:

3. The Tissandier Collection contains approximately 975 items documenting the early history of aeronautics with
an emphasis on balloon flight in France and other European countries.
Subjects include general and technical images of balloons, airships,
and flying machines; portraits of famous balloonists; views of numerous
ascensions, accidents, and world’s fairs; cartoons featuring balloon
themes; pictorial and textual broadsides; and colorful ephemera and
poster advertisements. There are also several hundred illustrations
clipped from books and newspapers. The pictures, created by many
different artists, span the years 1773 to 1910, with the bulk dating
1780-1890.

Via trialsanderrors and Tecnología Obsoleta (who highlights New York pictures).

“An improvement made by Mr. P. K. Dederick, of Albany, N.Y., was a horse-hoisting machine that very materially reduced the labor of the horse in hoisting. Previous to this, the horse walked forward to hoist a full bucket, and was obliged to back to lower the empty bucket into the hold of the vessel. With most horses, this latter was harder work than hoisting the loaded bucket, while the Dederick machine increased the speed of unloading but little, it reduced the labor of the horse about one-half.”

Quoted from: “Coal handling machinery“, C.W.Hunt Company, 1893.

“In the late 90s/early 2000s my interest was in developing boats that can sail directly into the wind. To some, this seems impossible, and they find it hard to accept that it is possible to overcome the wind using the force of the wind itself. This technology has further implications also, it can allow a boat, or a buoy, to remain stationary in the water, unsecured, no matter how hard the wind blows without using any fuel. Having revived the project recently (2008) I am doing further research.”

I cannot help but admire the simplicity of the design. Find all information here.

This engraving, published in 1798, shows the gigantic St. Malo raft, designed in 1791 during the French Revolution. The engraving informs us that this extraordinary structure was 600 feet long by 300 broad, mounts 500 pieces of cannon, 36 and 48-pounders, and is to convey 15,000 troops for the invasion of England. In the midst is a bomb-proof, metal-sheathed citadel.

The St. Malo raft was supposed to be propelled by means of 4 large paddle wheels powered by 4 windmills. Whenever the wind apparatus should be unavailable, the paddle-wheels could be worked by horsepower. Squadrons of cavalry are seen proceeding at full gallop, passing across the surface, having entered the great floating affair by a set of draw-bridges at one end, which can evidently be lifted up when the process of embarkation is completed. They are deploying round and passing into an arched entrance to quarters provided for them in the basement of the central fortress or citadel. Note the second raft in the distance.

These formidable appliances for the invasion of England were never constructed, of course. The idea originated as propaganda to convince the more gullible section of the French public that the notion of the invasion was to be taken seriously. The English, on the other hand, used these posters to arouse British patriotism and to raise awareness against possible French invasion.

Napoleon Bonaparte wrote to Tayllerand, his Minister for Foreign Affairs, in 1797:

“The government must destroy the English monarchy, or expect itself to be destroyed by these intriguing and enterprising islanders. The present moment offers a capital opportunity. Let us concentrate all efforts on the Navy, and annihilate England. That done, Europe is at our feet.”

A contemporary publication, entitled “Recherche sur l’Usage des Radeaux pour une Descente”, deals fully with this chimerical means of transport, and gives elaborate statistics to prove the absurdity of the plan, which was not, of course, ever seriously intended by those in authority:

“One of them would require thirty fir trees in length, 900 in breadth and eight in height, in all 216,000 trees; each a foot square, each containing sixty cubic feet, each foot weighing from fifty-two to fifty-five pounds, would make 3120 to 3300 feet, or three horse loads; and the whole would require 618,000 horses or 108,000 carriages and as many carters to bring them from the forest to the sea. The total weight of one raft would be 44,500 tons.”

The foreseen invasion never happened. Napoleon abandoned the plan because he realised he could not cross the Channel as long as the powerful Royal Navy was patrolling it. Admiral Jervis of England proved right when he said:

“I do not say that the French cannot come – I only say they cannot come by sea.”

Napoleon also seriously considered using a fleet of troop carrying balloons as part of his proposed invasion force. But, his air service chief said the proposed aerial invasion would fail because of the winds. A tunnel was also considered.

Napoleon kept the idea of the invasion alive, but then planned to hit England indirectly, by conquering Egypt, where English trade interests were high. In May of the same year, Napoleon set sail for Alexandria.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Sources:

• “Two Napoleon Relics“, a booklet published in 1895
• “Napoleon and the invasion of England, Vol.1″, a book from 1908.
• “Napoleon’s planned invasion of the United Kingdom“, Wikipedia.
• “Anti-Napoleon caricature and propaganda in England 1798-1803“, Bogdan Andrei Bernevig.

Related:

• Guido Vigevano’s wind car: 14th century war vehicle
• Wind powered factories: history and future of industrial windmills
• A steam powered submarine: the Ictíneo II

Click on the illustration below to see the plan in high resolution. Source: “Mémoires et compte rendu des traveaux de la société des ingénieurs civils, Vol.12, 1859“.

“The horse-powered ferryboat, though patented in 1819, can trace its origin of design back to the time of the Romans. The Roman ox boat was an early war vessel propelled by a team of oxen. During the 1700’s, boats propelled by horses could be found on various rivers and canals of Europe. By the early 1800’s, horse powered boats could be found on Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. By the 1820’s, this mode of transportation had spread to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Great Lakes, and to several other rivers and lakes in the Northeast. This type of vessel was generally utilized for journeys of only a few miles.”

Found at Shipwreckworld. Previously: Trolleyboats.

This unconventional sailing boat, named the SailRocket, reached a record speed of 47.35 knots (87.6 km/h or 54.43 mph), on average over a distance of 500 meters. During another run, the boat reached a speed of 52 knots before lifting off
for a spectacular in-the-air wipeout (also caught on video). More below.

Last month, the French catamaran l’Hydroptère (pictured below) reached a
record speed of 50.08 knots (92.7 km/h or 57.60 mph), on average over a distance of
500 meters, which makes it the fastest wind powered boat to date.

In December 2008, l’Hydroptère shortly reached 61 knots (112 km/h or 69.60 mph), but then it flipped and got turtled (picture below).

Related :

• Sailing at the touch of a button : wind-powered, computer-controlled.
• Kiteboating : the sailing ship, reinvented
• Cargo ships, then and now : which one is fastest?
• Ocean liners : from London to New York in 3 days and 12 hours.
• The Kalakala : the art of slow travel.
• Hull speed : watercraft contain a speed barrier that is dependent
  on the length of the ship and on the shape of the bow.
• Human and wind-powered speed records.
• The Ictíneo : a steam powered submarine.
• The Aeromodeller II : camping in the clouds.
• The Hennepin Crawler : macho pedal power.
• Wind powered tricycles: sail assisted trikes