Along the Riviera and the Spanish coast a type of boat is noticeable which is peculiar for the inward curve of both stem and stern from a keel which has considerable camber, enabling them to be beached in a heavy surf.
On the Douro, in Portugal, it is said that the boats which may be seen laden with casks of wine, trailing behind them an enormously long steering paddle, are of Phoenician ancestry, and that the curious signs, which many of them have painted on the cross board over the cabin, are of Semitic origin though now undecipherable.
Coming to the northern waters, as with men, so with boats, we meet with a totally different type. Instead of the smooth exterior of the carvel-build, we have the more rugged form of clinker-built craft with great beam, and raking sterns and stems, and a wide flare forward. In the most northern waters the strakes of the sea-going boats are wide and of considerable thickness, of oak or fir, often compacted with wooden trenails, strong and fit to do battle with the rough seas and rough usage which they have to endure.
In most of these the origin of form and character is to be sought for in the old Viking vessels or long keeles of the 5th century A.D., with curved and elevated stem and stern posts, and without decks or, at the most, half decked.
In the Baltic and the North Sea most of the fishing boats follow this type, with, however, considerable variety in details. It is noticeable that here also, as in other parts of the world, and at other times, the pressing demand for speed and carrying power has increased the size in almost all classes of boats till they pass into the category of ships. At the same time the carvel-build is becoming more common, while, in the struggle for life, steam and motor power are threatening to obliterate the old types of rowing and sailing boats altogether.
Next to the Norse skiff and its descendants, perhaps the oldest type of boat in northern waters is to be found in Holland, where the conditions of navigation have hardly altered for centuries. It is to the Dutch that we chiefly owe the original of our pleasure craft, but, though we have developed these enormously, the Dutch boats have remained pretty much the same. The clinker-build and the wide rounded bow are now very much of the same character as they are represented in the old pictures of the 17th and 18th centuries.
The development of boat-building in the British Isles during the 19th century has been unceasing and would need a treatise to itself to do it justice. The expansion of the fishing industry and the pressure of competition have stimulated constant improvement in the craft engaged, and here also are observable the same tendencies to substitute carvel, though it is more expensive, for clinker build, and to increase the length and size of the boats, and the gradual supersession of sail and oar by steam power. Under these influences we hear of the fifie and the skaffie classes, old favourites in northern waters, being superseded by the more modern Zulu, which is supposed to unite the good qualities of both; and these in turn running to such a size as to take them outside the category of boats. But even in the case of smaller boats the Zulu model is widely followed, so that they have actually been imported to the Irish coast for the use of the crofter fishermen in the congested districts.
For the Shetland sexern and the broad boats of the Orkneys, and the nabbies of the west coast of Scotland, the curious will do well to refer to H. Warington Smyth’s most excellent account.
On the eastern coast of England the influence of the Dutch type of build is manifest in many of the flat-bottomed and mostly round-ended craft, such as the Yorkshire Billyboy, and partly in the coble, which latter is interesting as built for launching off beaches against heavy seas, and as containing relics of Norse influence, though in the main of Dutch origin.
The life-boats of the eastern coast are in themselves an admirable class of boat, with fine lines, great length, and shallow draught, wonderful in their daring work in foul weather and heavy seas, in which as a rule their services are required. Here, however, as in the fishing boats, the size is increasing, and steam is appropriating to itself the provinces of the sail and the oar.