A boat is a
watercraft of a large range of types and sizes, but generally smaller than a
ship, which is distinguished by its larger size, shape, cargo or passenger capacity, or its ability to carry boats.
Small boats are typically found on inland waterways such as
rivers and
lakes, or in protected coastal areas. However, some boats, such as the
whaleboat, were intended for use in an offshore environment. In modern
naval
A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...
terms, a boat is a vessel small enough to be carried aboard a ship.
Boats vary in proportion and construction methods with their intended purpose, available materials, or local traditions.
Canoes have been used since prehistoric times and remain in use throughout the world for transportation, fishing, and sport.
Fishing boats vary widely in style partly to match local conditions.
Pleasure craft used in
recreational boating include ski boats,
pontoon boats, and
sailboats.
House boats may be used for vacationing or long-term residence.
Lighters are used to convey cargo to and from large ships unable to get close to shore.
Lifeboats have rescue and safety functions.
Boats can be propelled by manpower (e.g.
rowboats and
paddle boats), wind (e.g.
sailboats), and
inboard
An inboard motor is a marine propulsion system for boats. As opposed to an outboard motor where an engine is mounted outside the hull of the craft, an ''inboard motor'' is an engine enclosed within the hull of the boat, usually connected to a ...
/
outboard motors (including
gasoline,
diesel, and
electric).
History
After ''
Homo erectus
''Homo erectus'' (; meaning "upright man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Several human species, such as '' H. heidelbergensis'' and '' H. antecessor' ...
'' possibly used
watercraft more than a million years ago to cross
strait
A strait is an oceanic landform connecting two seas or two other large areas of water. The surface water generally flows at the same elevation on both sides and through the strait in either direction. Most commonly, it is a narrow ocean channe ...
s between landmasses,
boats have served as transportation far into
pre-historic times.
Circumstantial evidence, such as the
early settlement of Australia over 40,000 years ago, findings in
Crete dated 130,000 years ago
and in
Flores
Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast (but excluding the Solor Archipelago to the east of Flores), the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and th ...
dated to 900,000 years ago, suggest that boats have been used since pre-historic times. The earliest boats are thought to have been
dugouts
Dugout may refer to:
* Dugout (shelter), an underground shelter
* Dugout (boat), a logboat
* Dugout (smoking), a marijuana container
Sports
* In bat-and-ball sports, a dugout is one of two areas where players of the home or opposing teams sit whe ...
,
[
] and the oldest boats found by archaeological excavation date from around 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. The oldest recovered boat in the world, the
Pesse canoe, found in the
Netherlands, is a dugout made from the hollowed tree trunk of a ''
Pinus sylvestris'' that was constructed somewhere between 8200 and 7600 BC. This
canoe is exhibited in the
Drents Museum in Assen, Netherlands.
Other very old dugout boats have also been recovered.
[
] Rafts have operated for at least 8,000 years. A 7,000-year-old seagoing
reed boat has been found at
site H3 in
Kuwait.
Boats were used between 4000 and 3000 BC in
Sumer
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...
, where a 4000-year old boat has been excavated at
Uruk,
[ ancient Egypt,] and in the Indian Ocean.
Boats played an important role in the commerce between the Indus Valley civilization
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900&n ...
and Mesopotamia. Evidence of varying models of boats has also been discovered at various Indus Valley archaeological sites.[ ]Uru
Uru or URU may refer to:
Language
* Uru dialect of Central Kilimanjaro, a Bantu language of Tanzania
* Uru language, the extinct language of the Uros, an Amerindian people
* Uru of Ch'imu, an extinct language of the Uros, an Amerindian people
...
craft originate in Beypore, a village in south Calicut, Kerala, in southwestern India. This type of mammoth wooden ship was constructed solely of teak, with a transport capacity of 400 tonnes. The ancient Arabs and Greeks used such boats as trading vessels.
The historians Herodotus, Pliny the Elder and Strabo
Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could see ...
record the use of boats for commerce, travel, and military purposes.[
]
Types
Boats can be categorized by their means of propulsion. These divide into:
# Unpowered. This involves drifting with the tide or a river current.
# Powered by the crew-members on board, using oars, paddles or a punting pole or quant.
# Powered by sail
A sail is a tensile structure—which is made from fabric or other membrane materials—that uses wind power to propel sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and even sail-powered land vehicles. Sails may ...
.
# Towedeither by humans or animals from a river or canal bank (or in very shallow water, by walking on the sea or river bed) or by another vessel.
# Powered by machinery
A machine is a physical system using power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to natural biological macromolecule ...
, such as internal combustion engines, steam engines or by batteries and an electric motor.
Any one vessel may use more than one of these methods at different times on in combination.
A number of large vessels are usually referred to as boats. Submarine
A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
s are a prime example. Other types of large vessels which are traditionally called boats include Great Lakes freighters, riverboats, and ferryboats. Though large enough to carry their own boats and heavy cargoes, these vessels are designed for operation on inland or protected coastal waters.
Terminology
The hull
Hull may refer to:
Structures
* Chassis, of an armored fighting vehicle
* Fuselage, of an aircraft
* Hull (botany), the outer covering of seeds
* Hull (watercraft), the body or frame of a ship
* Submarine hull
Mathematics
* Affine hull, in affi ...
is the main, and in some cases only, structural component of a boat. It provides both capacity and buoyancy. The keel is a boat's "backbone", a lengthwise structural member to which the perpendicular frames are fixed. On some boats a deck covers the hull, in part or whole. While a ship often has several decks, a boat is unlikely to have more than one. Above the deck are often lifelines connected to stanchions, bulwark
Bulwark primarily refers to:
* Bulwark (nautical), a nautical term for the extension of a ship's side above the level of a weather deck
* Bastion, a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification
The Bulwark primarily refe ...
s perhaps topped by gunnels, or some combination of the two. A cabin
Cabin may refer to:
Buildings
* Beach cabin, a small wooden hut on a beach
* Log cabin, a house built from logs
* Cottage, a small house
* Chalet, a wooden mountain house with a sloping roof
* Cabin, small free-standing structures that serve as in ...
may protrude above the deck forward, aft, along the centerline, or covering much of the length of the boat. Vertical structures dividing the internal spaces are known as bulkheads.
The forward end of a boat is called the bow, the aft end the stern
The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Ori ...
. Facing forward the right side is referred to as starboard
Port and starboard are nautical terms for watercraft and aircraft, referring respectively to the left and right sides of the vessel, when aboard and facing the bow (front).
Vessels with bilateral symmetry have left and right halves which are ...
and the left side as port.
Building materials
Until the mid-19th century most boats were made of natural materials, primarily wood, although reed, bark and animal skins were also used. Early boats include the bound-reed style of boat seen in Ancient Egypt, the birch bark canoe, the animal hide-covered kayak
A kayak is a small, narrow watercraft which is typically propelled by means of a double-bladed paddle. The word kayak originates from the Greenlandic word ''qajaq'' ().
The traditional kayak has a covered deck and one or more cockpits, each se ...
and coracle and the dugout canoe made from a single log.
By the mid-19th century, many boats had been built with iron or steel frames but still planked in wood. In 1855 ferro-cement boat construction was patented by the French, who coined the name "ferciment". This is a system by which a steel or iron wire framework is built in the shape of a boat's hull and covered over with cement. Reinforced with bulkheads and other internal structure it is strong but heavy, easily repaired, and, if sealed properly, will not leak or corrode.
As the forests of Britain and Europe continued to be over-harvested to supply the keels of larger wooden boats, and the Bessemer process ( patented in 1855) cheapened the cost of steel, steel ships and boats began to be more common. By the 1930s boats built entirely of steel from frames to plating were seen replacing wooden boats in many industrial uses and fishing fleets. Private recreational boats of steel remain uncommon. In 1895 WH Mullins produced steel boats of galvanized iron and by 1930 became the world's largest producer of pleasure boats.
Mullins also offered boats in aluminum from 1895 through 1899 and once again in the 1920s, but it wasn't until the mid-20th century that aluminium gained widespread popularity. Though much more expensive than steel, aluminum alloys exist that do not corrode in salt water, allowing a similar load carrying capacity to steel at much less weight.
Around the mid-1960s, boats made of fiberglass (aka "glassfibre") became popular, especially for recreational boats. Fiberglass is also known as "GRP" (glass-reinforced plastic) in the UK, and "FRP" (for fiber-reinforced plastic) in the US. Fiberglass boats are strong, and do not rust, corrode, or rot. Instead, they are susceptible to structural degradation from sunlight and extremes in temperature over their lifespan. Fiberglass structures can be made stiffer with sandwich panels, where the fiberglass encloses a lightweight core such as balsa or foam.
Cold molding is a modern construction method, using wood as the structural component. In one cold molding process, very thin strips of wood are layered over a form. Each layer is coated with resin, followed by another directionally alternating layer laid on top. Subsequent layers may be stapled or otherwise mechanically fastened to the previous, or weighted or vacuum bagged to provide compression and stabilization until the resin sets. An alternative process uses thin sheets of plywood shaped over a disposable male mold, and coated with epoxy.
Propulsion
The most common means of boat propulsion are as follows:
* Engine
** Inboard motor
** Stern drive (Inboard/outboard)
** Outboard motor
** Paddle wheel
** Water jet ( jetboat, personal water craft)
** Fan (hovercraft
A hovercraft, also known as an air-cushion vehicle or ACV, is an amphibious Craft (vehicle), craft capable of travelling over land, water, mud, ice, and other surfaces.
Hovercraft use blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull ...
, air boat)
* Man ( rowing, paddling, setting pole etc.)
* Wind ( sailing)
Buoyancy
A boat displaces its weight in water, regardless whether it is made of wood, steel, fiberglass, or even concrete. If weight is added to the boat, the volume of the hull drawn below the waterline will increase to keep the balance above and below the surface equal. Boats have a natural or designed level of buoyancy. Exceeding it will cause the boat first to ride lower in the water, second to take on water more readily than when properly loaded, and ultimately, if overloaded by any combination of structure, cargo, and water, sink.
As commercial vessels must be correctly loaded to be safe, and as the sea becomes less buoyant in brackish areas such as the Baltic, the Plimsoll line was introduced to prevent overloading.
European Union classification
Since 1998 all new leisure boats and barges built in Europe between 2.5m and 24m must comply with the EU's Recreational Craft Directive (RCD). The Directive establishes four categories that permit the allowable wind and wave conditions for vessels in each class:
*Class A - the boat may safely navigate any waters.
*Class B - the boat is limited to offshore navigation. (Winds up to Force 8 & waves up to 4 metres)
*Class C - the boat is limited to inshore (coastal) navigation. (Winds up to Force 6 & waves up to 2 metres)
*Class D - the boat is limited to rivers, canals and small lakes. (Winds up to Force 4 & waves up to 0.5 metres)
Europe is the main producer of recreational boats (the second production in the world is located in Poland). European brands are known all over the world - in fact, these are the brands that created RCD and set the standard for shipyards around the world.
See also
* Abora
* Barge
* Cabin cruiser
* Car float
* Dinghy
* Dory
* Flatboat
* Halkett boat
* Inflatable boat
* Launch (boat)
* Log canoe
* Narrowboat
A narrowboat is a particular type of canal boat, built to fit the narrow locks of the United Kingdom. The UK's canal system provided a nationwide transport network during the Industrial Revolution, but with the advent of the railways, commerc ...
* Naval architecture
* Panga (boat)
* Pirogue
* Poveiro
* Rescue craft
* Sampan
A sampan is a relatively flat-bottomed Chinese and Malay wooden boat. Some sampans include a small shelter on board and may be used as a permanent habitation on inland waters. The design closely resembles Western hard chine boats like th ...
* Ship's boat
* Skiff
* Tour boat
* Traditional fishing boats
* Tûranor PlanetSolar
* Yacht
References
External links
* University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections â€
Freshwater and Marine Image Bank
(enter search term "vessels" for images of boats and vessels.)
{{Authority control
Watercraft
Fishing equipment