The Malays have generally the credit of being expert boat-builders, but the local conditions are not such as to favour the construction of a good type of boat. “Small displacement, hollow lines, V-shaped sections, shallow draught and lack of beam” result in want of stability and weatherliness. But it is among them that the ancient process of dug-out building still survives and flourishes, preserving all the primitive and ingenious methods of hollowing the tree trunk, of forcing its sides outwards, and in many cases building them up with added planks, so that from the dug-out a regular boat is formed, with increased though limited carrying power, increased though still hardly sufficient stability.
To ensure this last very necessary quality many devices and contrivances are resorted to.
In some cases (just as Ulysses is described as doing by Homer, Od. v. 256) the boatman fastens bundles of reeds or of bamboos all along the sides of his boat. These being very buoyant not only act as a defence against the wash of the waves, but are sufficient to keep the boat afloat in any sea.
But the most characteristic device is the outrigger, a piece of floating wood sharpened at both ends, which is fixed parallel to the longer axis of the boat, at a distance of two or three beams, by two or more poles laid at right angles to it. This, while not interfering materially with the speed of the boat, acts as a counterpoise to any pressure on it which would tend, owing to its lack of stability, to upset it, and makes it possible for the long narrow dug-out to face even the open sea. It is remarkable that this invention, which must have been seen by the Egyptians and Phoenicians in very early times, was not introduced by them into the Mediterranean. Possibly this was owing to the lack of large timber suitable for dug-outs, and the consequent evolution by them of boat from raft, with sufficient beam to rely upon for stability.
On the other hand in the boats of India the influence of Egyptian and Arab types of build is apparent, and the dinghy of the Hugli is cited as being in form strangely like the ancient Egyptian model still preserved in the Ghizeh museum. Coming westward the dominant type of build is that of the Arab dhow, the boat class of which has all the characteristics of the larger vessel developed from it, plenty of beam, overhanging stem and transom stern. The planking of the shell over the wooden frame has a double thickness which conduces to dryness and durability in the craft.
On the Nile it is interesting to find the naggar preserving, in its construction out of blocks of acacia wood pinned together, the old-world fashion of building described by Herodotus. The gaiassa and dahabiah are too large to be classed as boats, but they and their smaller sisters follow the Arab type in build and rig.
It is noteworthy that nothing apparently of the ancient Egyptian or classical methods of build survives in the Mediterranean, while the records of the development of boat-building in the middle ages are meagre and confusing. The best illustrations of ancient methods of construction, and of ancient seamanship, are to be found, if anywhere, in the East, that conservative storehouse of types and fashions, to which they were either communicated, or from which they were borrowed, by Egyptians or Phoenicians, from whom they were afterwards copied by Greeks and Romans.
In the Mediterranean the chief characteristics of the types belonging to it are “carvel-build, high bow, round stern and deep rudder hung on stern post outside the vessel.”
In the eastern basin the long-bowed wide-sterned caique of the Bosporus is perhaps the type of boat best known, but both Greek and Italian waters abound with an unnumbered variety of boats of “beautiful lines and great carrying power.” In the Adriatic, the Venetian gondola, and the light craft generally, are of the type developed from the raft, flat-bottomed, and capable of navigating shallow waters with minimum of draught and maximum of load.
In the western basin the majority of the smaller vessels are of the sharp-sterned build. Upon the boats of the felucca class, long vessels with easy lines and low free-board, suitable for rowing as well as sailing, the influence of the long galley of the middle ages was apparent. In Genoese waters at the beginning of the 19th century there were single-decked rowing vessels, which preserved the name of galley, and were said to be the descendants of the Liburnians that defeated the many-banked vessels of Antonius at Actium. But the introduction of steam vessels has already relegated into obscurity these memorials of the past.