The whaleboats used by the Yankee whalemen for chasing and capturing whales, are splendid examples of this. These boats are light, strong, stable, seaworthy and very fast and in these respects are probably the most perfect type of small craft ever designed. They are thirty feet in length and six feet wide, barely two feet in depth amidships and yet are capable of breasting the heaviest waves of midocean, withstanding the most terrific gales and weathering the most severe storms of any seas. Pulled by five oars they attain the speed of a motor boat; they are light enough to be pulled upon a beach or easily hoisted to a ship’s davits. They sail rapidly, are easily handled and hold together when towed at express-train speed by a harpooned whale.
Moreover, their construction is so simple that even when smashed or “stove” by a whale they can be repaired easily by a carpenter and best of all they are very cheap, a new whaleboat costing complete only one hundred and twenty-five dollars. In these boats shipwrecked whalers have made some marvelous voyages and several instances are on record of men navigating the stormiest parts of the ocean for six thousand miles in these boats in perfect safety.
Somewhat similar to the whaleboats in shape are the surfboats used on the coasts of many sea-girt localities, notably on the Atlantic seaboard of our Middle States, and while not as speedy, light or staunch as the whaleboats, they ride the roaring surf and towering waves as buoyantly as seabirds and are ideal boats for use where there are heavy seas.
Lifeboats, such as those used on steamships and by the coast guard, are really modified whaleboats and surfboats, combining the good points of both and with slight alterations in proportions and construction to enable them to carry large loads with safety.
They are not as easily handled or as speedy as the whaleboats, but they are far more roomy; they are almost non-capsizable, are unsinkable and are built both of metal and of wood. The are rather heavy, however, and expensive.
For one who wishes a perfectly safe, roomy, strong boat capable of withstanding almost any weather and with good sailing qualities it is hard to find anything better than a standard lifeboat.
At Block Island, off the tip of Long Island, there is a peculiar sort of boat used by the native fishermen, which is known as the Block Island boat. In some ways this craft resembles a whaleboat and in some ways it reminds one of a surfboat, while in many of its characters it is much like a lifeboat and yet it is totally different from all. They are wonderfully staunch and seaworthy, they have great carrying capacity and sail very well. Formerly a great many were used as small cruising yachts, but of late years they have almost disappeared.
Somewhat similar to the whaleboats are the big seine boats used by the New England fishermen for pulling the great, heavy seines when catching mackerel, herring, menhaden, etc. They are very stable boats with immense carrying capacity, are easily handled and are seaworthy, but have no advantages over the whaleboats except in point of size. They do not sail as well nor are they are as seaworthy as the whaleboats.
All of the above are round-bottomed boats of the double-ended type in which both bow and stern are sharp. One would therefore assume that this style was the most seaworthy, especially as the spongers of the Mediterranean, the pilot boats of many islands and the typical fishing-boats of the European countries are also double-ended. Such, however, is not necessarily the case for the fishermen, pilots and other inhabitants of other countries use round-bottomed boats with broad sterns and some even use flat-bottomed boats and brave as heavy weather, as hard storms and as tumultuous seas as their fellows in the round-bottomed, double-ended craft.
Probably no men in the world ply their trade in rougher seas and in stormier weather than the Gloucester fishermen who fish for halibut and cod on the banks of Newfoundland and on George’s Banks. The boats used by these hardy fishermen are known as dories and are flat-bottomed, high-sided, odd-looking craft which one would never imagine were seaworthy, yet in them the Gloucester fishermen ride out terrific storms and mountainous waves; they haul halibut weighing hundreds of pounds over the boats’ sides without capsizing, and they sail or row them safely through winter storms in midocean when laden with fish until the gunwales are almost level with the water. Dories used by the fishermen are not beautiful nor graceful boats, but they are wonderfully well adapted to their use, and many builders have adopted so-called dory models for pleasure craft, both for motor boats and sailboats. As a rule, however, there is little resemblance between these “improved” dories and those of the banks, and the stability and other qualities of the real dories are usually lost in altering the lines for the sake of appearances.