 |
Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms |
|
|
|
Click on image to download a 37k detail
"Father wanted to name his boat after me, but I was too shy. So he named it The Raven instead. I wish that I'd let him call it the Lizzie G. ..."
For more than 100 years, the tubby, utilitarian woodboat was a familiar sight up and down the Saint John River. In those years before serviceable roads and a railway were constructed, the river was the only means of transporting bulk commodities. As a result the woodboats, like the river barges of Europe, England and America, served as a combination railway boxcar and truck - hauling anything and everything. Their cargoes ranged from farm produce, hay and cattle to the ever present slabwood, pulp wood, coal, firewood and lumber. Often they were so heavily laden with wood that their decks were awash with only the sails and wood cargo showing above the water.
The woodboat design, originated with the New England “dogbody” of pre-revolution days, and the Loyalists, coming north after the American Revolution modified the design to suit local conditions. In time it evolved into a form unique to the Saint John River: A broad flat hull with high cargo capacity; Bilge keels to keep the boat upright on the Bay of Fundy mud at low tide; a simple, two-masted, fore and aft rig with two gaff sails that was easy to handle with a small crew.
The last surviving examples of the woodboat sailed the river until well into the 1930's. In the early 1970's, a two-thirds scale replica, Brunswick Lion, was built at New Brunswick's King's Landing Historical Settlement. This model shows The Raven, heading down river in 1898, laden with a full load of slabwood for the lime kilns at Indiantown (Saint John, N.B.).
As our 96 year old neighbor said before she died: "I can remember standing with my sister on the hill by the house. We’d wait, watching upriver for father's boat to come round the Point so we could go running down to the shore to meet him." For more on The Raven and her Captain click here.
Previous Sailing Ship Next Sailing Ship
Go to Gallery Indexes: The Navy Page * In A Light Bulb * The Yachtsman's Page * Sailing Ships * Motor Ships
Return to Scale Reproductions Home Index