Book review: Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast

Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast: Their Design, Construction, Rigging and Fisheries

by Ken Preston

2019

328 pages

Vietnam Women’s Publishing House, Ha Noi

ISBN 978-604-56-7858-9 

When Ken Preston served in the US Army in Vietnam, he saw little of the country’s vernacular boats. But decades after the US withdrawal and the end of the war, he travelled back to Vietnam for pleasure and was fascinated by the variety of boats he saw and their methods of construction. Starting in 2005, he returned year after year, spending weeks at a time traveling the country on a small motorcycle, taking thousands of photos of boats and boatyards, and talking to boatbuilders and fishermen. His book, Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast, is the result, and a fine one it is.

The book is organized unconventionally but with an undeniable logic. The very brief first chapter, “Wooden Boats and Nautical Culture in Vietnam, Past and Present”, is more like a second Introduction, barely mentioning thousands of years of boat history prior to the middle of the 20^th century. From that time forward, though, it describes how the local fleet was documented by French colonial observers and, later, by the US government, and how it changed rapidly to leave behind much of its traditional roots and adopt larger, more Western-like designs and diesel engine power.

The book really hits its stride in Chapter 2, “Vietnamese Wooden Boat Designs,” which describes the basic structure of traditional wooden fishing boats, some of which are still in use, and contrasts it to the structure of newer, larger “modern fishing vessels” (MFVs). The latter, although constructed plank-on-frame by methods not dissimilar to Western methods, are still different enough in design from Western vessels to be of interest. The chapter also discusses how traditional and modern methods are sometimes combined, and shows how even fairly large boats are built in temporary and ad-hoc shipyards with a minimum of tools and infrastructure. The building sequences for both types of vessels are described and illustrated in good detail.              

A boatbuilder fitting the port side planks of a traditional fishing boat. The fully-assembled side will later be lifted and attached to the already-framed bottom, visible in the background.

Chapter 3, “Seagoing Baskets,” looks at small fishing boats where part or all of the hull is formed of split bamboo basketwork. Some readers may be familiar with Vietnam’s iconic round basket boats that may be paddled, rowed or – surprisingly often – powered with small outboard or even inboard engines (see previous post on round basket boats). Less well known are small canoe-shaped basket boats with light bamboo gunwales (see previous post for more on these narrow basket boats) and larger, oval-hulled basket boats built with heavy rectangular frameworks of full-round bamboos around their top perimeter, many with cabins, also of basketwork (see previous post on round basket boats of Tonkin Bay). Then there are even larger, heavier open boats, almost indiscernible from plank-built boats due to the substantial strakes that sheath their topsides (see cover image at top).

These large, round basket boats have inboard engines. Boats like this are used both for beach fishing and as dinghies for larger fishing boats. 

Chapter 4, “Boat Building techniques” takes the reader step-by-step through the main procedures of wooden hull construction, with excellent detail on tools and tool-use techniques. Chapter 5, “Modern Fishing Gear on the Vietnamese Coast”, describes the many methods of fishing practiced, including drift nets, seines, lift- or dip-nets (called “push aheads” due to their mounting on the bow of boats), longlines, squid gear, and more. Preston describes which boat types employ which types of gear and the basics of their use.

Comprising just shy of half the book’s page count, “A Trip Up the Coast: From Phu Quoc Island to Mong Cai” is the final chapter. It is a valuable “moment-in-time” record of boat building facilities and fishing boat use in dozens of major and minor fishing ports. Because Preston visited some of the ports numerous times over the course of years, he has sometimes documented the pace of change and shown how quickly Vietnam is developing in some areas.

Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast is a lovely, coffee-table size volume, produced entirely in color, and wisely formatted in landscape mode, which is by far the better choice for presenting photos of boats and ships. Preston’s photos are lively and colorful, and most do an excellent job illustrating the matter at hand. For the few that don’t come up to that standard, anyone familiar with photographing industrial workplaces will acknowledge that ideal composition and lighting can be elusive, and Preston has done a fine job working in challenging conditions. One must admire his dedication to the project and the opportunities he made for himself to hang around boatyards and gam with builders and fishermen. He has produced a valuable body of ethnographic data that captures fishing and boatbuilding practices as they were during the early 21^st century and will never be again.

Given its value to vernacular boat students and enthusiasts, it is unfortunate that Classic Wooden Fishing Boats of the Vietnamese Coast is so difficult to obtain. It was published only in Vietnam and never properly distributed in the West. One hopes a Western publisher will pick it up someday or that it will be made available by other means.

 

Poujade's and Piétri's books on traditional Vietnamese boats: free dowloads

Blocks and pulleys onVietnamese sailboats. From Sailboats of Indochina (Voiliers d'Indochine) by J. B. Piétri. 

Thanks to a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous, I'm delighted to present two more works on the boats of Vietnam for free download: Sailboats of Indochina by J. B. Piétri, and Bateaux en Indochine by Jean Poujade. They join a page of other free downloads of books on Chinese and Southeast Asian watercraft.

Piétri was a fisheries officer for the French colonial government in Indochina, and he evidently travelled the coast intensively and documented everything he saw. His work, presented in English translation, is an encyclopaedic survey of boat types by geographic area, with detailed descriptions and fine illustrations of construction methods, fittings such as rigging details, achors, and rudders, and how each boat type is used. The French edition of 1949 (Voiliers d'Indochine) was translated by Stephanie Dumont and published by the Vietnam Wooden Boat Foundation, Port Townsend, Washington, in 2006. I have attempted unsuccessfully to contact the VWBF and the translator for permission to make the book available. I welcome the parties to contact me to discuss the matter. I will respect copyright requests by its current owner.

Poujade's shorter work, presented in the original French, consists of brief essays on a small selection of boat types, accompanied by pleasing drawings in pencil. Poujade was an officer in the maritime law department of the French colonial navy in the Far East.

A small Vietnamese fishing boat. From Bateaux en Indochine by Jean Poujade.

REVISION 12 FEBRUARY, 2024: Some readers are finding problems with the maritime terminology in the English translation of Petrie's Sailboats of Indochina (Voiliers d'Indochine) posted here. A translation that some find superior is avalable at reasonable cost on Lulu.com as an e-book and in paperback.

REVISION, 28 Nov. 2023: The French original of Piétri's work, Voiliers d'Indochine, is also available on this blog's download page.

Boats of Vietnam and China's East Coast - free book downloads

Vietnamese "three plank canoe" (i.e., sampan) of stitched construction, used in shallow and rocky tributaries of the Mekong River. From Audemard, Les Jonques Chinoises, vol. 10, plate 42.

Now available for download are two more volumes of the series Les Jonques Chinoises, by L. Audemard:

Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 9: Côtes Est (east coasts), 1970. 

Les Jonques Chinoises, Vol. 10: Indochine (Indochina [i.e., Vietnam]), 1971

Both are in French and full of wonderful illustrations showing the vast range of traditional watercraft types of these regions. For non-French speakers, Google Translate makes it easy enough to make sense of the text concerning any boat that piques your curiosity. 

The volumes were published by the Museum Voor Land en Volkenkunde and Miritiem Museum "Prins Hendrik", which have given us permission to post them here. Scans were made available to us by an enthusiast who wishes to remain anonymous. Several other volumes in this series are available on the same page; all are free downloads.

A fisherman's raft from the island of Amoy, built of 5-6 bamboo stems about 2m long, tied with cords of bamboo fiber. From Audemard, Les Jonques Chinoises, vol. 9, plate 78.

Traditional Fishing Schooner Launched in Northern Vietnam

After Ken Preston saw my previous post about Vietnamese basket boats, which included one of his photos from his website Boats and Rice, he contacted me about another interesting and beautiful Vietnamese boat he was privileged to sail on recently.

Newly launched traditional fishing boat, Quang Yen, Vietnam. Photo: Ken Preston. Rights reserved/used by permission. (Click to enlarge.)

This type of sailing fishing boat from northern Vietnam went out of use some decades ago with the proliferation of engines. Ken hesitates to call this boat a "replica," because it was built authentic to tradition in every respect by an 11th-generation boatbuilder who worked on them many years ago (and who continues to do business building more contemporary wooden fishing boats). It simply IS one of the type, albeit separated by many years from the rest. 



The video shows the boat getting under way and looking quite lovely sailing up- and down-wind. The video was shot by one of Mr. Chan's sons; Ken edited it and added the explanatory text.

The (apparently unnamed) boat was built in the boatyard of Mr. Le Duc Chan of Quang Yen, a short distance upstream of Halong Bay. It was commissioned by Dr. Nguyen Viet, an archaeologist with an interest in Vietnam's maritime heritage. Dr. Viet caused the construction of the boat to be scrupulously recorded in still images and video, with the assistance of a naval architect who also documented the boat and its construction for legal purposes.

The boat is of a type that would have been owned (and lived on?) by a family and used for commercial fishing. Dr. Viet's version is true to the original, lacking modern accommodations belowdecks. It is 34.6' LOD, 27.3' at the waterline, with a maximum beam of 11.7', a board-up draft of just 18", and a daggerboard-down draft of 5.4'. It is junk-schooner rigged, and according to Ken's lengthy, colorful blog post, it can be easily handled by a crew of two: one at the helm and mainsheet, another at the foresail. Ken describes its sailing behavior as extremely well-mannered, getting under way, answering the helm, coming about, dropping sail, and docking reliably and with a total lack of fuss.

Ken's article about the boat will appear in the May issue of WoodenBoat magazine. He also has a book about Vietnamese fishing boats, with some 500 photos plus text, coming out soon from Women's Publishing House of Ho Chi Minh City. An English-language edition will appear this summer, to be followed by a Vietnamese translation. Neither appears on the publisher's website at the time of this writing.

Basket Boats on the Gulf of Tonkin

We've written before about woven or basket boats in Vietnam (see, for example, this post highlighting a canoe-form craft, and this one about coracles), but the one in the image below, from James Hornell's Water Transport: Origins and Early Evolution, so struck us by its graceful form that we thought it was worth sharing.

Woven boat of the Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam. From Hornell, Water Transport. (click to enlarge)

The boat is common on the Gulf of Tonkin. We'll quote Hornell's comments in almost their entirety:

This is a light, graceful craft made of inch-wide strips of split bamboo, closely woven into stiff matting, a material of great strength, resiliency and resistance to strain. 

In plan it is of an elongated ovate form, the wider end being the stern. Both extremities are spoon-shaped like the fore end of a Norwegian praam [sic] and are rounded in horizontal outline. A gentle sheer toward each end carries stem and stern above the level of the midships gunwale, the stem rising the higher. The bent-up sides of the bamboo body are embraced around their margin by several broad bands of split bamboo on each side and bound together into a stout cylinder with rattan strips to form a stout, continuous gunwale. Four or five strong bamboos stretch from gunwale to gunwale to prevent spreading; they are secured partly by lashing and partly by pegging into the gunwales. Along each side above the gunwales and over the ends of the cross beam, a slender bamboo pole is lashed to form a top rail. 

On the floor two long bamboos, spaced some distance apart, serve as inner stringers. One of the thwart beams, usually the second from the stern, is supported below by two short stanchions fixed at the lower ends into a stout bamboo bar, fitted athwart the bottom. Before launching, the interstices in the matting forming the skin of the hull are daubed with a caulking mixture of cow dung and coconut oil [citation omitted], periodically renewed. Strips of split bamboo matting are fitted over the floor to serve as dunnage and so keep cargo and passengers dry against moderate leaking. 

Although very light and easily carried by one man, they are able to carry several passengers together with a quantity of baggage. 

The dimensions of one measured by Nishimura [citation omitted] were as follows: length, 12 feet 7 inches; width, 5 feet; depth, 26 inches: usually they run smaller -- about 6 feet by 4 feet, by about 10 inches deep. 

Nishimura states that this type of craft is very common in Tongking, where almost all families living near rivers and streams keep one or two.

A couple observations on the above:

1. It seems unlikely that the caulking mixture was applied only to the "interstices in the matting." It is almost certainly spread over the entire outer surface of the hull. Road tar and roofing tar have largely replaced cow dung and coconut oil for waterproofing.

2. The purpose of the top rail is not explained. They may serve as the top elements of girders that stiffen the boat longitudinally, with the thwarts or cross-beams serving to create a vertical gap between them and the gunwales. But read on.

The image below, from Ken Preston's Boats & Rice blog, shows what appears to be the same kind of boat in current use on Halong (or Ha Long) Bay, near Hai Phong on the Gulf of Tonkin. This boat has a more elaborate and substantial framework around the perimeter than the light top rails in Hornell's image, but the curve of the bow (?) rising above the transverse end-piece of the perimeter framework seems to identify the boat as the same basic type. Along with strengthening the structure further, the fore-and-aft elements of the rectangular perimeter frame serve to anchor the tholepins. This might have been another unexplained purpose of the top rails in Hornell's image.

Woven boat, Halong Bay, from Boats & Rice

Vietnamese Coracles

"Coracle fishing boats at Mui Ne Bay, Vietnam" by Ray Zhoul
(Click any image to enlarge.)

Vietnam is the only land where coracles remain in widespread use and continue to serve a significant economic function. They are ubiquitous along the coast in the central part of the country, where they serve in the roles normally filled by inflatables and hard-shell dinghies in other parts of the world. They are also to be found in country's northern and southern portions. 

In Coracles of the World, Peter Badge states that coracles are carried aboard almost all larger fishing boats, where they are used as tenders and for handling nets. They are also used for net fishing in their own right as much as a mile offshore. In flooded-field agriculture, they are used to gather vegetables and spray fumigants. In some flood-prone areas, almost every home has a coracle for emergency evacuation, and no doubt they are also used for all sorts of casual transportation. 

Small coracle in use in flooded-field agriculture.
Source: Badge/Coracles of the World

The Vietnamese coracle is a true basket boat. Construction begins by erecting a round gunwale of split bamboo on top of short posts driven into the ground, so that the gunwale is supported at its ultimate height above the bottom. Woven matting is then placed over the gunwale, pressed down to the ground, and literally kicked into its desired shape. On larger versions, frames are inserted, but many smaller coracles have no frames at all. An inwale is then sprung into place so that the matting and frames are held between the inwale and the gunwale. The wales are then tied together -- originally with rattan, now usually with nylon cord. Wire was sometimes used during the transition from rattan to nylon.

The weave of the mat changes at the turn of the bilge, which allows it to be formed into a bowl shape without folding or puckering. Source: Badge/Coracles of the World.

The matting is made by the coracle maker from 1-inch strips of bamboo which he himself produces. The mat is woven as a piece for each boat, with a distinct mix of weaving patterns that allows it to be pressed into a bowl shape without puckering.

Bowl-shape coracle with two right-angled sets of three parallel frames. Source: Badge/Coracles of the World

Where frames are used, they are usually placed parallel and at right angles to one another, not radially. Frames are tied at intersections and they are not interwoven: one parallel set is laid at right angles over the other. On larger coracles, a pair of radial frames may be inserted at right angles to one another, above and at a 45-degree angle to the first set of parallel-and-right-angle frames to provide diagonal bracing. These bracing frames are tied to the lower level of frames at the intersections. A circumferential riser frame may be tied about halfway between the gunwales and the bottom to support a sitting thwart.

Coracle with parallel and radial frames, riser and sitting thwart. Source: Badge/Coracles of the World

The exterior is waterproofed by spreading on a layer of ox dung, followed by resin from the "raie" tree, according to Badge. I can find no references to this tree online, and I invite readers with knowledge of the subject to provide further information in the comments.

Sizes range from 1.2 to 3 meters in diameter, with depths from about 50cm to a maximum of about 72cm. Almost all are perfectly round, but a few oval ones have been reported, one measuring 3 X 4.5 meters.

Vietnamese coracle with flat bottom and straight sides. Source: The Junk Blue Book of 1962.

The cross-sectional shape varies somewhat. Some coracles are shaped like a shallow bowl with sloped sides. Others have nearly flat bottoms and vertical sides.

A single paddle is the most common means of propulsion, with paddling done kneeling or standing or, more rarely, sitting. Paddles may have a T-grip or no end grip. They tend to be long (Badge reports a paddle 1.83 meters on a boat 1.5 meters in diameter), so that they can be used for paddling while standing and as punt poles. 

Paddling technique varies greatly: some use a figure-8 scull to draw the boat forward; some use a J-stroke off to one side; still others use a "scooping" technique, lifting the blade out of the water and pulling it straight back. Sometimes, the paddle is tied to the gunwale and pivoted back and forth in a forward sculling motion. If there are two paddlers, they will sit or kneel on opposite sides of the boat and use a regular canoe-style paddling stroke. 

The use of lugsails has been reported, but this was apparently never very popular and appears to be extremely rare, possibly extinct. Less rare is the installation of inboard engines, of which, unfortunately, I can find no details. 

Another method of propulsion involves rocking the boat forward and back, creating a stern wave upon which the coracle slides forward. As unlikely as this sounds, it apparently works well enough so that it is a practical means of propulsion. (Examples can be seen briefly in this video that mainly shows the equivalent of coracle break-dancing.)

Coracles on a Vietnamese fishing junk, probably late 1950s or early 1960s. Source: The Junk Blue Book of 1962.

The continued popularity of the coracle in Vietnam is attributed in part to the government's promotion of the fishing industry, in which the coracle plays a prominent, practical role. No doubt, the country's relative poverty is a factor in its people preferring a boat that can be inexpensively produced on a craft basis from natural, native materials. And, no doubt, the coracle's surprising practicality, along with its entrenched cultural acceptability, are important influences as well.

Primary sources: 

• Coracles of the World, Peter Badge
• The Junk Blue Book of 1962

Sampan Dwellers of Tam Giang Lagoon, Vietnam

A sampan from the Hue area, probably much like those discussed here. Source: Junk Blue Book*. (Click any image to enlarge)

The romanticization of traditional lifestyles is an insidious form of prejudice, one that leads to assumptions no less false and potentially no less damaging than racial prejudice. There's an assumption of something pure and right in traditional folkways that is lost when such ways are abandoned for modern/Western ways. It's little different from the old "noble savage" meme, which we've largely rejected in name, but which remains a strong theme in Western culture in the form of romanticizing supposedly more "peaceful" lifestyles that are "more in tune with the natural world," (in spite of the constant states of warfare that have been observed in many tribal cultures; in spite of smallpox, frequent childbirth deaths, illiteracy, et al, as being quite natural), and uncritically accepting, idealizing, ancient-and/or-Eastern "wisdom" that is often unwise in the sense that it is unsupported by science and often demonstrably untrue and harmful.

I acknowledge myself among such offenders – after all, Indigenous Boats is my blog, created and written because of my fascination with and appreciation for the boats and boating-related activities and peoples of non-Western – and especially, preindustrial (or should I say nonindustrial?) – cultures. I certainly can't shake the notion that there's something attractive about traditional, preindustrial folkways – in spite of the fact that, when given the chance, most preindustrial people eagerly adopt many, if not most, of the ways and material benefits of Western/industrial culture.

Hue area sampan (type HUBC-1a in the Junk Blue Book)

So the sampan dwellers of Tam Giang Lagoon, in central coastal Vietnam, are a good object lesson about the relative attractions, to those directly affected by the choice, of a natural, traditional, or "primitive" lifestyle versus a modern, commercially-based one.

Tam Giang Lagoon (Source: DaCosta and Turner*)

Tam Giang Lagoon, near the city of Hue, is the largest lagoon in Southeast Asia – about 70 km long, fed by a number of rivers, and with two narrow openings to the South China Sea. Historically, it was home to highly productive fisheries of many species, and as recently as 1985, some 100,000 individuals lived there year-round on about 10,000 sampans, one family per boat. If I have correctly identified in the Junk Blue Book* the type of boat in use there in the early 1960s, these boats were rigged with lugsails, ranged in length from 22 to 46 feet, in beam from 4.3 to 6.5 feet, and typically had a laden draft of just 1.6 feet. Today, almost all are powered by inboard engines.

A van of sampans in Tam Giang Lagoon (DaCosta and Turner)

Sampan dwellers were mobile fishers, relying on hook-and-rod and dip-net gear for a mainly subsistence living, with surplus catch being sold, usually direct to the consumer, in local markets around the lagoon. Groups of thirty to fifty sampans, their families often related, would travel together to fish different areas of the lagoon and gather near one another in floating communities called vans.

This was hardly the idyllic life that it might appear. Although the origins of the sampan dwellers are disputed, it seems clear that they were refugees from other parts of Vietnam, who took to the water because there was no farmland available in the region. DaCosta and Turner* describe them as "marginalized," and state that "The sampan dwellers tend to have low incomes, are landless, lack accessibility to government services such as health and formal education, and have poor living conditions." Furthermore, "They are scorned by land-living…society in general, who consider them…poor and uneducated. In turn, the sampan dwellers consider themselves isolated…." The sampan life even had serious spiritual drawbacks, because "Being landless…means, among other things, that families cannot bury their dead in permanent burial grounds, considered essential in Vietnamese society to ensure a successful after-life." Although I speculate, this philosophical weakness of their lifestyle might have had a negative psychological impact on sampan dwellers continually worried about life after death.

Prior to and during the Second Indochina War (i.e., "the" Vietnam War, to Americans), land-dwellers around the lagoon began staking claims in the lagoon by constructing fixed-gear fishing installations such as fish traps, weirs, and corrals and permanent dip-nets. Although these installations had no legal sanction, they proliferated, excluding the legally- and socially-impotent sampan dwellers from areas of the lagoon. Following the war, these permanent installations expanded rapidly, with aquaculture facilities added to the mix.

Eventually, privately-owned fixed-gear facilities covered such large areas of the lagoon that open fishery areas became severely restricted. The density of aquaculture operations also had negative effects on water quality and on the natural flow of water through the lagoon, further reducing the wild catch (and causing health and productivity problems for aquaculturists as well).

The lagoon's fixed fishing facilities and aquaculture pounds are largely tended with small sampans propelled through the shallow waters with a pole. (Source: Truong Van Tuyen, et al) 

After a typhoon in 1985 killed 600 around the lagoon – including many sampan dwellers – the Vietnamese government embarked on a program to resettle sampan dwellers to the land. The goals of the program were not only to reduce their vulnerability to natural disasters, but also to integrate them into the larger society and raise their standard of living. Entirely new villages were established solely for former sampan dwellers. Land was allocated to families, and partial funding provided for the construction of permanent homes.

These policies were far from ideal in their implementation. The land allocated was often marginal for agriculture, and the provision of credit for home construction was often inadequate and subject to political favoritism.

Nonetheless, some 90 percent of sampan dwellers came ashore, enticed by the chance to become landowners. Former sampan dwellers began establishing their own fixed-gear fishing and aquaculture facilities, farming terrestrially, and engaging in a variety of other land-based enterprises, while some of them also maintained their sampans for mobile fishing during the season when their time was not taken up by land-based agriculture. The former sampan dwellers were encouraged to join social and economic organizations and, as landed citizens, attained political and social parity in these groups and in society at large. They played a role, for example, in negotiated efforts to rationalize the location, size, and spacing of fixed-gear fishing and aquaculture installations. These efforts achieved success in improving flushing and water quality in the lagoon and establishing a fairer allocation of sunken lands both for landed citizens and remaining sampan dwellers.

Although DaCosta and Turner found significant disparities among the former sampan dwellers in the success of their adaptation to land-based living, they are, by almost any objective measure, generally better off than previously. They are now integrated into state educational and healthcare systems, are active in the larger economy, and, especially, are accepted into Vietnamese cultural life. In the words of one former sampan dweller:

"In general, I feel my life is much easier since I have been on land. Life on the boat is isolated. Now I have more friends, and my kids can go to school, and it is much easier for me to make a living… I feel that I have stronger ties with the members of the village than on the boat."

Another former sampan dweller reported that he had, in the authors' words, more "free time…to spend with his friends and neighbours. This allowed him to build stronger ties with other village members and, in turn, to gain information to aid his livelihood development." Those stronger ties included the pooling of resources among former sampan dwellers to finance the construction of individually-owned fixed-gear fishing and aquaculture installations -- something they might have done previously, had not their isolation discouraged such cooperation.

There's something sad in the loss of a traditional way of life – but that sadness seems to be mainly for those not living it. It is true that that loss was forced upon the sampan dwellers by external changes – especially by their exclusion from formerly accessible areas of the lagoon by the growth of privately-owned fixed-gear fishing and aquaculture installations. But to ask that the sampan dwellers be "allowed" to retain their traditional lifestyle unchanged by the modern world is essentially to ask that the modern world stop changing – and this is obviously a vain request. In the case of the sampan dwellers, their lot was made easier by humane government policies designed to incorporate them into the larger society rather than to marginalize them further. And that may be the best outcome to hope for for many traditional societies that will, in the future, be placed under pressure by inevitable changes in the modern societies that surround them.

*Sources

Elsa DaCosta, Sarah Turner, Negotiating changing livelihoods: The sampan dwellers of Tam Giang Lagoon, Viet Nam, Geoforum, 38(1) 190-206 (2007)

Truong Van Turen, Derek Armitage, Melissa Marschke, Livelihoods and co-management in the Tam Giang lagoon, Vietnam, Ocean and Coastal Management, 2010

G. Levasseur, J.M. Lamperin, H. Le Neel, L. Chambaud, The Sampan Dwellers of the Vi Da District (Hue, 1993). Results of a survey preliminary to humanitarian aid intervention, 1994

Junk Blue Book: A Handbook of Junks of South Vietnam, 1962

Recent Photos of Vietnamese Boats

 

Here are 94 fine photos showing contemporary bay and river life in Vietnam and the pervasive use of indigenous boat types there even today. The photos were taken by Capt. Rob Whitehurst a couple months ago, the great majority on the Mekong Delta, and the last few -- showing tall, towering rocks rising dreamlike from the water like an antique Chinese print -- on Halong Bay, close by Haiphong and not far from Hanoi.

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Capt. Whitehurst was our source for the Junk Blue Book of 1962, which we offer as a free download. This a thoroughly detailed catalog of Vietnamese boat types compiled by the U.S. Dept. of Defense during the early days of the "American War" and well worth a look. Thanks to Rob again for these photos.  

Junk Blue Book Site is Back Up

Dear Readers: The Junk Blue Book website, announced in the previous post, promptly went down due to technical ineptitude on the part of yours truly. It's now back online, so please take a look if you'd like a free download of this valuable resource on the junks of southern Vietnam, circa early 1960s. My apologies for the inconvienience.

Junk Blue Book of 1962

Here's a special treat for my readers: we have made the Junk Blue Book of 1962 available for free download here. This isn't the download link itself, but it'll take you to the page where you can get the download. No registration required, no fees -- all you need is a fair amount of patience: at more than 80 MB, it'll take a good half hour or so to download at broadband speeds. (If you're on dial-up, don't even bother.)

But before you go feast your eyes, let me tell you what it is and how this came to be.

In the early 1960s, Colonel Marion Dalby of the U.S. Marines was assigned to survey the coastal craft of South Vietnam. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces needed a kind of "spotters guide," to distinguish presumably friendly local craft from those "visiting" from North Vietnam for the purpose of infiltration and smuggling. A sailor who obviously had a strong appreciation for the culture in which he was working, Dalby took to his assignment with gusto. He collected far more information than was needed for the purposes of mere identification, and created instead a comprehensive description the junks of the country, including their construction, their use, and even ethnographic information. The work was printed in 1962 under the title Junk Blue Book by the U.S. government in a dual English-Vietnamese edition. The press run was very limited.

Capt. Robert Whitehurst, whose photos of Vietnamese junks appear in the previous post, served in Vietnam in the early 1970s, and it seems that he too contracted a jones for junks while he was there. Long after returning to the States, he had to look long and hard to find a copy of the Junk Blue Book. Appreciating both its rarity and its importance, he wanted to make it available to others. After cleaning up a complete set of scans of the book, sharpening images and otherwise improving them, he contacted me and we soon came to an agreement for Indigenous Boats to place the document online for free download.

To that end, Indigenous Boats has created a new static website, The Junk Blue Book of 1962, with a download link for the book itself. I am greatly appreciative of Capt. Whitehurst for making the document available, and we both hope you enjoy it.

Vietnamese Boats, Early 1970s

Rob Whitehurst is a tug driver in Louisiana. When serving in Viet Nam from 1970-72, he had the opportunity to observe and photograph hundreds of native boats of all types, on rivers, canals, on the Mekong Delta, and in Saigon Harbor. Here are a few that I particularly like, along with Rob's own captions. (Click any image to enlarge.) 

Fishing near the Kinh Cho Gao, the Rice Market Canal

River packet boat running downstream off of My Tho (Indig.Boats comment: this is very similar to certain Cambodian passenger boats of the present day)

Sculling and Rowing a small river sampan on the Vai Co River

A Hoa Hao Buddhist minaret. There were over 800 of these in the Mekong Delta in 1975. Most are gone today.

Market at Binh Phuc-Nhut Village on Kinh Cho Gao canal.

A girl named Phuong at 14, never smiled more than this, but cheerful and intelligent, always accompanying her mother on the river at Vinh Long

Net fishing on the Rach Ong Chuong, An Giang Province

Waterborne tea-shop, with smiles. (Indig.Boats comment: This one is my favorite.)

For more (there are 199 in all, though not all are boat shots), see Rob's Facebook album. Many thanks for permission to reuse these wonderful photos here. Please note that permission for further reuse is not granted or implied.

Great Source of Info for Indochinese Boats

This morning's blog post about Vietnamese woven boats was largely based on an article by Ken Preston in the current issue of WoodenBoat magazine. I forgot to mention Preston's wonderful website, The Wooden Working Boats of Indochina, a.k.a. BoatsAndRice.com. Here  you'll find not only more about woven boats, but also information about indigenous fishing and working vessels (both traditional and modern), motorized rafts (!), and lots more, organized both by boat type and by region. The site covers Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and is full of great photos and clear explanations. Plan to spend a bit of time here.

Basket Boats Worlds and Ages Apart

Woven or "basket" boats are among the less common and lesser-known types of indigenous boats. (I believe I've mentioned them only once since I began blogging more than two and a half years ago.) But woven boats have certain advantages over dugouts, skin-covered frame-built boats, bark boats, rafts and floats, which makes their apparent scarcity surprising.

Woven boats go back a long time. The Mesopotamians certainly had reed rafts and floats but, according to Paul Johnstone, "The availability of bitumen enabled the boat-builders of the Tigris and Euphrates to overcome one of the chief defects of the reed craft, the short-lived nature of its buoyancy." It seems likely that reed rafts were initially coated with bitumen as a preservative, but eventually it probably became clear that "a reed framework covered with bitumen produced a combination of a flexible shape and a smooth featureless exterior without lashings, sewing, planks, or cross-beam ends."

Silver boat model from Ur depicting a bitumen-covered woven boat. (Source: The Sea-Craft of Prehistory, Paul Johnstone)

Boats of this sort were still in use in Iraq as late of 1835. For the coating, the bitumen was heated over a fire, mixed with sand and earth, and applied with a roller.

Thousands of miles away and thousands of years later, similar construction methods are still in use. "Woven Boats of Vietnam," an article by Ken Preston in the current issue of WoodenBoat, describes woven boats of two general types: one small and canoe-like; the other larger and shaped somewhat like the surfboats of India's west coast that I've described previously.

The WoodenBoat article describes the building procedure of the smaller type:

1. The woven fabric is made of bamboo. Long lengths of bamboo are split into narrow strips with a machete, cut to length with a bow saw, then woven by hand on the bias in a simple basket-weave to create a flat piece of matting as wide and long as needed.

2. Stakes are pounded into the ground to define the boat's outline in plan view.

3. Bamboo is split in half lengthwise for gunwales. Half-round lengths are lashed to the inside of the stakes at the height desired, with the flat edge facing inward. This defines the sheer. (Very few boats start at, and are shaped by, the gunwales. The North American birchbark canoe is one example.)

4. The matting is rolled out over the gunwales. Then builder then steps atop the matting and forces it down between the gunwales until it attains a U-shape in cross-section.

5. The remaining half-round sections of long bamboo are lashed inside the hull to form inwales, sandwiching the upper edge of the matting between the two half-round wales.

6. The upper edge of the matting is trimmed flush with the wales, then thwarts and breasthooks are added.

7. The matting is covered with road tar to make it waterproof.

A canoe-style Vietnamese woven boat under construction. The woven matting has been shaped between the gunwales and clamped in place with inwales. The builder is using a bow-drill to bore fastening holes for thwarts. Note the stakes outboard of the gunwales, used to set the outline and height of the gunwales. (Source for this and next photo: "Woven Boats of Vietnam", Ken Preston, in WoodenBoat)

While the canoe-like boat described above has no backbone members and very little stiff wooden structure, the larger, surf-boat types have stem- and stern-posts that are lashed in place. (There appear to be no keels or keelsons to which the stem and sternposts attach.) Boats of this type may be from 17' to 20', and some of the largest ones have diesel engines, although all rely on oars to an extent. Even larger engined versions, from 24' to 30', have wooden upper strakes on top of their woven hulls, and these surely add a great deal of additional stiffness. Although not described in the article, one must assume that some rigid structure serves as an engine bed and keeps the engine aligned with the sternpost through which the shaft presumably passes.

Larger Vietnamese woven boat with wooden upper strakes and endposts. The crew (forward) and their womenfolk (aft) are spinning the boat to "walk" it up the beach.

The sternpost on these boats is hollowed to accept a post for a rudder that can be raised for surf landings. Both stem and sternpost have stout hooks carved on their outboard surfaces that are used to bring the boat up the beach in an interesting manner.

Once the boat lands through the surf, the crew takes a long pole and places it horizontally beneath the hook at the stern. With one or more men at each end of the pole, they lift that end of the boat and pivot it around a point somewhat forward of the boat's midpoint, until the stern is facing up the beach. This moves the boat about 4 feet up the beach. They then move the lifting pole to the bow and repeat the process, switching ends as many times as needed to move the boat beyond the reach of the waves. The process is reversed to launch the boat.

And the advantages  of woven boats? Aside from those cited in the Johnstone quotes above, they would appear to include: i) lighter weight compared to reed floats and dugouts; ii) ease of construction compared to dugouts; and iii) more readily available material in some locations (far less material needed than for floats). Depending upon the application, their flexibility may be either an advantage or a disadvantage compared to dugouts.

With all these advantages, why was the woven boat not more widely distributed? Perhaps it was because suitable waterproofing material was not available in many places. Certainly, natural bitumen is not be be found as readily as reeds, logs, or bark.

On the other hand, not all woven or basket boats rely on bitumen as a sealer. Other Vietnamese woven boats apparently use a dung-based mixture to cover the basketwork, and the Irish coracle was originally a kind of loosely-woven basket covered with skins (as was the Sioux bull boat). It seems possible that other skinboats might have begun their evolution as baskets before attaining the more substantial frameworks that we recognize as the distinguishing feature that separates "skinboats" from woven ones.