For open and exposed waters, like the large lakes which dot many of our inland States, or the Long Island Sound on our coast, the following plans of the American boy's house-boat will have to be altered, but the alterations will be all in the hull. If you make the hull three feet deep it will have the effect of lowering the cabin, while the head-room inside will remain the same. Such a craft can carry a good-sized sail, and weather any gale you are liable to encounter, even on the Sound, during the summer months.
Since the passing away of the glorious old flat-boat days, idle people in England have introduced the
House-Boat as a Fashionable Fad
which has spread to this country, and the boys now have a new source of fun, as a result of this English fad.
There are still some nooks and corners left in every State in the Union which the greedy pot-hunter and the devouring saw-mill have as yet left undisturbed, and at such places the boy boatmen may "wind their horns," as their ancestors did of old, and have almost as good a time. But first of all they must have a boat, and for convenience the American boy's house-boat will probably be found to excel either a broad-horn or a flat-boat model, it being a link between the two.
The simplest possible house-boat is a Crusoe raft,[A] with a cabin near the stern and a sand-box for a camp-fire at the bow. A good time can be had aboard even this primitive craft. The next step in evolution is the long open scow, with a cabin formed by stretching canvas over hoops that reach from side to side of the boat (see [Fig. 218]).
Fig. 218.—A primitive house-boat.
Every boy knows how to build