Coracle

History

Designed for use in swiftly flowing streams, the coracle has been in use on the British Isles for millennia, having been noted by Julius Caesar in his invasion of Britain in the mid first century BC, and used in his military campaigns in Spain. Remains interpreted as a possible coracle were found in an Early Bronze Age grave at Barns Farm near Dalgety Bay, and others have been described, from Corbridge and from near North Ferriby.

Where coracle fishing is performed by two coraclers the net is stretched across the river between the two coracles. The coraclers will paddle one handed, dragging the net in the other, and draw the net downstream. When a fish is caught, each hauls up an end of the net until the two boats are brought to touch, and the fish is then secured, using a priest (or knocker – a small block of wood) to stun the fish.

A new tax was introduced in 1863 on the commercial capture of migratory fish in Wales; this led to a decline in the number of coracles. During the 1930s, the government decided to begin revoking the licences of commercial fisher families on the death of the main licensees. It took some years for this plan to be completed but eventually led to a more significant decline in the number of craft.

In the 1920s and 30s James Hornell visited hundreds of rivers in the British Isles to talk with remaining coracle makers and users. He documented the tradition in his book British Coracles and the Curraghs of Ireland (The Society for Nautical Research, 1938) containing drawings, diagrams and construction details gleaned from regular makers.

Current status

Coracles are now seen regularly only in tourist areas of West Wales, and irregularly in Shropshire on the River Severn. A public house in Sundorne, Shrewsbury called "The Coracle" has a pub sign featuring a man using a coracle on a river. The Welsh rivers Teifi and Tywi are the most common places to find coracles in Wales. On the Teifi they are most frequently seen between Cenarth, and Cilgerran and the village of Llechryd.

In 1974, a Welsh coracle piloted by Bernard Thomas (c. 1923–2014) of Llechryd crossed the English Channel to France in 13+1⁄2 hours. The journey was undertaken to support a claim that Bull Boats of the Mandan Indians of North Dakota in the US could have been copied from coracles introduced by Prince Madog in the 12th century.

For many years until 1979, Shrewsbury coracle maker Fred Davies achieved some notability amongst football fans; he would sit in his coracle during Shrewsbury Town FC home matches at Gay Meadow, and retrieve stray balls from the River Severn. Although Davies died in 1994, his story is still associated with the club.

Safety

The design of the coracle makes it an unstable craft. Because it sits "on" the water, rather than "in" it, the vessel can easily be carried by currents and the wind. The Coracle Society has published guidelines for safely using coracles.

Similar craft

The oldest instructions yet found for construction of a coracle are contained in precise directions on a four-thousand-year-old cuneiform tablet supposedly dictated by the Mesopotamian god Enki to Atra-Hasis on how to build a round "ark". The tablet is about 2,250 years older than previously discovered accounts of flood myths, none of which contain such details. These instructions depict a vessel that is today known as a quffa (قفة), or Iraqi coracle.

Many scholars believe that the basket that baby Moses was cast adrift in on the Nile (in Exodus 2:3) was in fact a coracle or quffa, based on the similarity of that passage to Neo-Assyrian legends depicting infants cast adrift on rivers in quffas.

The Irish curach (also currach or curragh) is a similar, but larger, vessel still in use today. Curachs were also used in the west of Scotland:

The curach or boat of leather and wicker may seem to moderns a very unsafe vehicle, to trust to tempestuous seas, yet our forefathers fearlessly committed themselves in these slight vehicles to the mercy of the most violent weather. They were once much in use in the Western Isles of Scotland, and are still found in Wales. The framework [in Gaelic] is called crannghail, a word now used in Uist to signify a frail boat.

— Dwelly's [Scottish] Gaelic Dictionary

The currachs in the River Spey were particularly similar to Welsh coracles. Other related craft include:

• India – parisal
• Iraq – quffa or kuphar
• Native American societies – bull boat
• Tibet – ku-dru and kowas
• Vietnam – thúng chai or thuyền thúng

Indian coracle

Indian coracles (Tamil: பரிசல் parisal; Kannada: ಹರಗೋಲು, ತೆಪ್ಪ, aragōlu, tep, 'crab') are commonly found on the rivers Kaveri and Tungabhadra in Southern India. Coracles are light, bowl-shaped boats with a frame of woven grasses, reeds or saplings covered with hides. Indian coracles are considered to have been in existence since prehistoric times, and are a major tourist attraction at the Hogenakkal falls on the Kaveri river. Although these boats were originally designed for general transport, they have recently been used mostly for giving tourists rides.

Types

The coracles found in the Hogenakkal are of two types, which differ mainly in size. The smaller ones are about 6.2 feet (1.9 metres) in diameter, and are used primarily for fishing. The larger ones, which measure up to 8.4 feet (2.6 metres) in diameter, are used for tourists.

Design

Indian coracles are either saucer or bowl shaped and circular, with the greatest diameter across the mouth. The circular coracles in Iraq are very similar, but they have convexly curved sides, and thus the mouth is not the widest part. Indian coracles are on average about 7.3 feet (2.24 metres) in diameter, but can still hold eight people at a time. Other kinds of coracles usually can only hold one person. Indian coracles, and coracles in general, are made of bamboo and take about a day to build, given all the necessary materials. The bottoms of the boats are covered in hides, sometimes with sheets of plastic, or sometimes the bottom is tarred in order to make them waterproof. In modern times, a sheet of LDPE plastic is often embedded between two layers of bamboo. Coracles are steered and propelled using a single paddle from the front of the boat in the direction of travel, making them unique.

Construction

The boats are made primarily from bamboo. The first step in construction is a basic framework woven from bamboo sticks. Then the bottom is further reinforced with the addition of more bamboo sticks, making the boat's base sturdy. Once the bottom is structurally sound, the lowest points of the sides are defined by a circumferential band of three flat strips of bamboo woven into the existing lattice. The sides of the boat are then made with 20 to 30 adjacent strips of bamboo. Finally this framework is again strengthened by lightweight bamboo, making sure that the sides are not heavier than the base.

The boats had earlier been waterproofed by using hides of animals, but these days plastic sheets are used for this purpose as they are cheaper as well as easily available. The waterproofing is further enhanced by a layer of tar, a feature which is common in most contemporary coracles.

Local names

• Parisal, sometimes spelt parical – Tamil
• Teppa or harigolu – Kannada
• Putti in Telugu
• Kutta vanchi in Malayalam

Iraqi coracle

Iraqi coracles, called quffa or kuphar (Arabic: قفة), have been used as ferries, lighters, fishing vessels, and water taxis on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers since at least the 9th century BC. They share details with the myriad types of coracle used across Eurasia. Modern quffas can be up to 18 feet (5.5 m) in diameter and carry four to five tons. Modern quffas are of similar size and construction as their ancient counterparts, with both being made from woven bundles of reeds or basketry waterproofed with bitumen.

Vietnamese coracle

The Vietnamese battle coracle, called thúng chai or thuyền thúng, dated back to the 10th century, is traditionally believed to have been created by a general named Tran Ung Long to be used in battles. However, thuyen thung were probably strongly developed during the French colonial period when the colonialists imposed high taxes on seafaring, local fishermen built coracles to avoid the regulations on boats.

Pelota

The pelota of South and Central America was a hide vessel similar to a coracle, but it often lacked an internal wooden framework, relying entirely on the stiffness of the hide to stay afloat. Thus it could be carried about on horseback and deployed when there was a river to cross.