Oyster tonging dugout canoe

oyster tonging dugout canoe

WATERCRAFT
Smith, John
USA, NY, Cayuga Lake
Circa 1824
white pine
LOA 27 ft. 1 in.; beam 3 ft. 2 in.

Dugout canoes, hollowed from logs large and small, are among the earliest boats. European settlers adopted several types, and their steel tools made it easier for both Native and Euro-Americans to build them. Throughout North America, native peoples produced characteristic designs: large, deep white-pine dugouts by northeastern cultures like the Pequot and Wampanoag; graceful, shallow, cypress pirogues by the southeast Seminole; and long, highly decorated steam-spread dugout cedar canoes of the northwest.

In size and design, this oystering dugout would be close to the craft that could carry from eight to fifty, used by the Pequots and others on Long Island Sound. It shows how native designs continued long after the period of initial contact, as long as building materials could be found.

Durability and shallow draft kept large dugouts popular among the Connecticut oystermen well into the 1800s. Builders had to travel to the headwaters of the Connecticut and into the Finger Lakes area of New York to find large enough white pine trees. Records say that this dugout was built at Cayuga Lake, New York, by John Smith about 1824. If that information is correct, this craft and the one following are the oldest in Mystic Seaport's entire collection. There is little reason to doubt that these go back that far since the new Erie Canal (completed in 1825) opened vast areas of wilderness to timber harvesting. The big white pine trees needed for these dugouts had become scarce even at the head of the long Connecticut River. According to historian W. P. Stephens, the local builders went up the Hudson to the inland lakes, bringing down a fleet of 20 to 30 canoes every spring.
The only "European" refinements were a small sail, a leeboard, and a long sculling oar over the stern; yet these basic boats served the oyster tongers a good long time. Possibly after their bottoms were worn out from shoveling out oysters, these dugouts were given flat bottoms by nailing short boards athwartships. This long, narrow, cross-planked structure may have given rise to the cross-planked skiff and sharpie designs that seem to have originated in mid-coast Connecticut in the mid-1800s. Increasing scarcity of big trees, convenient access to sawmills, availability of metal fastenings, and a need to go further offshore for oysters all contributed to the dugout's replacement by the sailing sharpie.

CREDIT LINE: Mystic Seaport Watercraft, Maynard Bray, Benjamin A. G. Fuller and Peter Vermilya. Mystic Seaport. 2001.

watercraft
1946.643