Thoughts on ancient boats

Just remembered I created this blog a bit back and it seems a handy place to jot down odd thoughts on the construction and usage of boats.

One challenge for Britain is the contrast between the reputed use of large skin boats and that of the heavyweight sewn boats in the Bronze Age and maybe earlier and later.

No question that a large skin boat such as a currach or an umiak can be extremely sea-kindly and appears relatively easy to build given available materials. However it may be that such a vessel longer than about thirty feet develops real challenges in terms of stiffness that have to be countered by increasing the strength and rigidity of the gunwales and stringers almost exponentionally.

A small skin covered coracle or currach such as the Boyne can derive stiffness from the shrinking of a rawhide onto its frame, not something than can happening with a tanned, leather, skin covering.