Hornell, Hasslöf and Boatbuilding Sequences

Abstract

Hornell's publications on ‘native watercraft’ form a unique ‘library’ dealing with boatbuilding and boat use. His quest for the origins of water transport, on the other hand, was unsuccessful. In a clarification of the issues involved, Hasslöf criticized Hornell's use of the term ‘carvel’ and proposed ‘shell‐first’ and ‘skeleton‐first’ as best able to characterize boatbuilding traditions. Those terms subsequently gave way to ‘plank‐first’ and ‘frame‐first’. Certain north‐west European vessels, each built in both those sequences, were identified by Hasslöf as a link between ‘plank‐first’ and ‘frame‐first’. Such a transition would have been facilitated by the use of ‘framing‐first’, a building sequence used in north‐west Europe and in the eastern Mediterranean from the early 1st millennia AD.

Key words:

• Boats
• origins
• carvel
• shell
• skeleton
• building sequences

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to David Rooney, Curator of Time, Travel and Navigation at the Science Museum, London, who searched through that museum's archives and sent me copies of Hornell‐related material relevant to this paper.

Notes

1. An obituary in Man (Harrison, 1949) gives a useful account of Hornell's career. No comprehensive list of Hornell's water transport publications can be traced: a bibliography of his ‘scientific publications’ (Anon, 1938), published by Cambridge University Press, is incomplete; and the 25 papers quoted in Hornell's Water Transport (1946: 292–3) are dated 1919 to 1943. Between 1943 and 1948, Hornell is known to have published further articles in: Mariner's Mirror, Antiquity, Man (RAI) and J. RAI, J. of Polynesian Society, Ethnos, Folk‐liv, Sudan Notes & Records, J. Linnean Soc and Ethnologia Cranmorensis. Articles published in other journals remain to be identified.

2. James Hornell's and Olof Hasslöf's technical terms have been used in this paper when quoting their words or when describing their views. Where such terms are no longer generally used, the present‐day equivalents have been added in italics. Examples are: ‘dugout canoe/logboat’; ‘shell sequence/plank‐first’ and ‘skeleton sequence/frame‐first’.