Is it a rowboat, a skiff, a dinghy, a dory? There are a number of different names for small rowing boats, so I had to check to find out what this was rightly called. It appears to be a dory.
Strictly speaking, the only true defining characteristic of the dory is that it is planked up with wide boards, “It should be well understood, that it is the dory’s special mode of construction, not its hull shape, that sets it, and its related sub-types apart from other boats”.
More generally speaking, the dory can be defined as a small boat which has:
- a flat bottom, with the bottom planks fastened lengthwise (bow to stern).
- a hull shape defined by the natural curve of a sawn plank (never steam bent).
- planks overlapping the stem at the front of the boat and an outer ‘false’ stem covering the hood ends of the planks.
- (with some exceptions) a fairly narrow transom often referred to as the ‘tombstone’ due to its unique shape.
Despite their simplicity of design, dories are well known for their seaworthiness and rowing ease. Because of their narrow bottoms, they do not exhibit much initial stability and have often been called ‘tippy’. They exhibit high ultimate stability, however, tipping to a point and then stiffening up significantly and resisting further rolling tendencies. Dories by design are quite voluminous and can carry a heavy load for their size and will continue to retain their great ultimate stability even when heavily loaded.
In 1876, Danish immigrant and fisherman Alfred Johnson sailed a custom twenty foot Cape Ann Dory from Gloucester, Massachusetts to Liverpool in 66 days, proving the design built for fishing the rough Atlantic Ocean could handle nearly any weather.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
Good Morning Gloucester 