The Fishing and Coastal Craft of Ceylon

Sailing a Sinhalese Outrigger Logboat

“…I asked Mohamed Husain, on whose logboat we sailed, about heavy‐weather management. He confirmed Hornell's report that fishermen describe the wind‐force in terms of the number of men sent onto the outrigger (Hornell, 1943: 42), but otherwise offered little more than saying that when the monsoon set in he would sail straight for the shore. However, his crew were heard to describe—in Sinhala—seeing a kind of ‘whirlwind’ approaching one day when they were in the company of other boats; they all lowered their sails as they would otherwise have capsized.…”

“…My experience leads me to suggest that the terminology adopted for Kapitän's account should be modified. First, the term ‘conventional bow’ is virtually meaningless (Hornell, 1943: 40–1; Kapitän, 2009: 80, 119). As one changes from tack to tack there is no sense that one might be sailing backwards.…”

“…In his description of the method of raising sail, Kapitän (2009: 80) follows Hornell (1943: 41): the top ends of the mast and the sprit are pushed into loops at the upper corners of the sail and the sail is raised ‘by the united efforts of the crew’. While some such method must be employed in the case of the sprit‐rigged hädi‐oru , which Kapitän's photographic record shows putting out to sea from Moratuwa Modera before raising sail (2009: 82, 93), this is not quite what I observed of the issaň‐oru just north of Negombo.…”

Models as Evidence for Sewn‐boat Traditions

“…). These boats, used for beach seining, were designed to be carried up the beach using a transverse bar, a feature which is present on the models (Hornell, : 46; Kentley and Gunaratne, : 35–48; Kentley, : 167; Kapitän et al ., : 146–162). They also all contain a series of crossbeams, which would have helped to maintain the structure of the vessel, but the quantity of these, as well as the number of planks, overall size, and proportions vary among the models.…”

“…Oru have been discussed and ethnographically recorded in multiple publications, mainly since the mid 20th century (for example Hornell, 1943;Vitharaṇ a, 1992;Kapitän et al, 2009;Grainge, 2012). Interestingly, the models largely pre-date these studies with the majority ranging from the mid 19th to the early 20th century.…”