BOATS OF NOAH’S TIME

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9648, 1 May 1917, Page 2

BOATS OF NOAH’S TIME

QUEER CRAFT OH TIGRIS THE “VENICE OF THE EAST.” Before the world knew that steel boats would float, x-ho Arab naval architect built with wood, and has continued to build on the same lines smee the days of Noah (wrote Mr Edmund Candler, British Press representative in Mesopotamia, recently). But ae Irak has no forests, wood, even to punting poles, has to be imported. , Experience has taught the Arab that Burma teak cannot be beaten for staying power, and that ho may put that into keels, stern-posts and pretty carved fore strakes and prows. It is so expensive after being freighted in 48feet logs 3000 miles from Burma pei steamer that the price will not perma of boats being built entirely of Burma teak. Mysore teak is the right stub for masts, thwarts, and slippers for mosts. For the shell wo have Malabar teak, and quite good enough, with care. It is not cheap—nothing is in Mesopotamia. The ribs are coaxed out of the branches of teak from Calicut, m Malabar. Each rib is a naturally bent branch of a tree, cut just where it bends at the right angle, seasoned by immersion in water for months, ana in oil for weeks—seasoned till it will bear, without trussing, strains that would stagger boats of steel. All Arab boats are undeckea structures, with three great thwarts oi round timber to keep them open, .as it were no struts to hold the ribs together and block up cargo space, and yet with beautiful curves depending on nature to provide ribs, which welcome squeezing and rebound to the position of roadv for the next squeeze just as soon as the pressure eases. A RUDDER. A WEEK.

Having assembled our timbers and put some punting poles, a yard, and helm on the pile, with a garnishing of nobby little bits tor rowlocks and rigging blocks, we go back to Malabar for coconut fibre rope for rigging, and buy a .big and little sail at Koweit (Persian Gulf) on the return journey. Any old rotten timber will do for a- rudder, as it is bound to get broken at least once a week in a peasoup riv-er. which hides its shallows till one finds them with a hump. All that, remains to he done is to visit the local ship chandler and buy those little things needed to start real boat building. He will have, cotton wool for caulking seams; none of your oakum which needs tar to keep out the wet and falls out when Mr Sun melts'the tar. as he would do 300 days in the Tear. _ Standardisation of nailheads gives us a pretty effect, and enables the local dealer to charge one price for so many thousand nails (the ra-ice of the longest) and defy any buyer—even an Arab —to combat the bill in spite of all his counting of nailheads. Naturally, all these nails come from Germany, as even Birmingham insists upon putting small heads on small nails and big heads only on big ones, .which is not what the Arab wants.A FAST SAILER.

When a ohia has a hut for the crew built on the stern. steps a mast from 60ft to 80ft in length. and is given a huge white sail, she becomes a saffara (Arabic saffar —to' travel* and voyages up-river to Baghdad on the Tigris or Naseri (near Ahwaz) on tee Jtvarun. From November to March this prevalent wind is frequently southerly, (and with sail spread the saffara makes very good running—reaching Amaru (167 miles -up river) in from four to seven days. The word “ballam” means a canoe, and there are ballams of over a 100ton burden anh down the gamut to the trihv croft (three-quarters of a ton) which causes Bussorah to be described as “The Venice of the Bast The large ballams are flat-bottomed, rectangular boxes with pointed and decked-over ends. Many are 'made beautiful with a coat of vivid green paint from stem to stern, pictures of birds, beasts and fishes, flowers and quaint scrolls in white. Just suon birds and beasts as the nursery artist produces—-those lovely birds with five** toed legs growing out of their stomachs and chests, and beasts with four legs in "company column’’ from neck to curlv tail. ■ , , ' , The ‘ < mashoof ,, is dear to the heart of that enemy to all men, the Marsh Arab. Built of, coarse planks, about llin wide, upon an extraordinary frame or innumerable short straight ribs it is a hollow wedge which looks as if it must capsize, but that it seldom does. With peak and stem elevated to a height equal to a third or the boat’s length, heavily coated outside with bitumen, and propelled by paddles, it pushes its way through the reed mazes of the great marshes, and its wedge-shape is ideal for such work. As no one trusts the Marsh Arab, and those not born in mashoofs cannot keep them from capsizing its value for transport is nil, but its quaint black shape and often quite pretty crow of black-robed women decorate the local pea-soup scenery. THE BASKET BOAT. And —penultimate—the guff ah. A round basket, 4ft deep and from 4ft to 9ft in diameter, made of palm frond ribs held together by juniper wattles, and the whole heavily coated with bitumen, and propelled by short, flat paddle it gyrates across rivers and up and down them in a marvellous way. The passengers crouch at the bottom of the basket with wondering eyes peeping over its edge. And well may they have cause to wonder, for the craft spins round so quickly, and is depressed on the paddler’s side, when he is busy, or elevated on that and depressed on the other side when his paddles clear the water, with so curious an up-and-down-and-round-and-giddy motion that each minute out of the voyage has sixty thrills. The novice wonders which point of the compass, which passing craft, the sky or the river, bottom, i s going to hit him first, while the handler of the short paddle discharges a thin stream of Tigris water upon his head. Guffahs are employed as ferries, as tenders to saffaras. and even as hum-Txiat-s to carry eggs, fruit, and vegetables. Fowls love them, and veil with joy from shore to shore. One has seen sheep In them, and once a donkey—so trussed up that he couldn’t wag his ear, much less a hoof. At last there are great rafts of reeds ann mats, those building materials beloved by our Royal Engineers. It is marvellous how they ever make their week-long voyages without being destroyed by fire, for Arabs keep smok-

ing, all over them, and the, fires are kept burning on a sheet of corrugated iron or two kerosene oil tins opened up and hammered flat. But the uses •o which they are put by the Army are even more marvellous. We have hospitals, barracks, offices, stables, carpenters’ sheds, farriers’ forges, stone depots, dockyard sheds, officers’ quarters laundries, roofs to our steel barges, houseboats, shops, magazines, an R.Ji/. mess, and ether places too numerous to mention, ail with reed walls and mat roofs—and very nico, too.