Balangay

A Balangay, or barangay is a type of lashed-lug boat built by joining planks edge-to-edge using pins, dowels, and fiber lashings. They are found throughout the Philippines and were used largely as trading ships up until the colonial era. The oldest known balangay are the Butuan boats, which have been carbon-dated to 320 AD and were recovered from several sites in Butuan, Agusan del Norte.

Balangay were the first wooden watercraft excavated in Southeast Asia. Balangay are celebrated annually in the Balanghai Festival of Butuan City.

Names

''Balangay'' was one of the first native words the Europeans learned in the Philippines. The Venetian chronicler Antonio Pigafetta, who was with Ferdinand Magellan when setting foot in the Philippines in 1521 called the native boats ''balangai'' or ''balanghai''. This word appears as either ''balangay'' or ''barangay'', with the same meaning, in all the major languages of the Philippines. Early colonial Spanish dictionaries make it clear that ''balangay'' and ''barangay'' were originally pronounced "ba-la-ngay" and "ba-ra-ngay", but due to centuries of Spanish influence, the modern ''barangay'' is pronounced "ba-rang-gay" in modern Filipino (, instead of precolonial ). Pigafetta's alternate spelling with an H, ''balanghai'', later gave rise to the historically-incorrect neologism ''balanghay'' in the 1970s (with a new, slightly different pronunciation which Pigafetta did not intend).

The term was also used by the Tagalog people, Tagalog people to refer to the smallest discrete political units, which came to be the term used for native villages under the Spanish colonial period. The name of the boat was usually Hispanicized in Spanish and American records as ''barangayan'' (plural: ''barangayanes'') to distinguish them from the political unit.

Among the Ibanag people of Northern Luzon, balangay were known as ''barangay'', a term sometimes extended to the crew. Large vessels were called biray or biwong.

In the Visayas and Mindanao, there are multiple names for balangay-type boats, including baloto (not to be confused with the '' balutu''), baroto, biray, lapid, tilimbao (or tinimbao). Cargo-carrying versions of balangay with high sides and no outriggers (which necessitated the use of long oars instead of paddles) were also known as bidok, birok, or biroko (also spelled ''biroco'') in the Visayas. The karakoa, a large Visayan warship, was also a type of balangay.

History

"Balangay" is a general term and thus applies to several different types of traditional boats in various ethnic groups in the Philippines. In common usage, it refers primarily to the balangay of the Visayas and Mindanao islands, which were primarily inter-island trading ships, cargo transports, and warships. Large balangay (especially warships), including the Butuan boats, are commonly equipped with large double-outriggers which support paddling and fighting platforms, in which case, they can be generically referred to as ''paraw'' or ''tilimbao'' (also ''tinimbao'', from , "outrigger"). Balangay warships, along with the larger karakoa, were regularly used for raiding (''mangayaw'') by Visayan warriors. It is believed that they may have been the "''Pi-sho-ye''" raiders described as regularly attacking Chinese settlements in the coast of Fujian in the 12th century AD.

In Tagalog people, Tagalog regions, the balangay or barangay has the same functions as in the southern islands but differ in that it is constructed through the sewn-plank technique, rather than through dowels.

In the province of Cagayan in Northern Luzon, the balangay of the Ibanag people were predominantly used within the Cagayan River system, but were also sometimes used as coastal trade ships, reaching as far as the Ilocos Region. They were mainly used as cargo and fishing ships and differed from other balangay in being much smaller with a shallower draft.

Marina Sutil

During the 18th to 19th centuries, balangay were also often used as warships for defending coastal villages from Moro and Dutch raiders during the Moro Wars, in conjunction with watchtowers (''castillo'', ''baluarte'', or ''bantáy'') and other fortifications. The raiders were regularly attacking coastal settlements in Spanish-controlled areas and carrying off inhabitants to be sold as slaves in markets as far as Batavia and the Sultanate of Gowa. Defense fleets of balangay and ''vinta'' (known as the ''Marina Sutil'', "Light Navy" or "Defense Navy") were first organized under Governor-General José Basco y Vargas in 1778. They were lightly armed but fast, which made them ideal for responding quickly to raider sightings and attacks.

Notable leaders of these defense squadrons include ''Don'' Pedro Estevan, a ''principalía'' of Tabaco, Albay