A guide to understanding traditional fishing boat designs

Shaped by the sea outside the door

There is no such thing as a British fishing boat. There is a Yorkshire coble, a Cornish lugger, a Colne oyster smack, a Shetland sixareen, and a hundred others, each one a set of answers to a very local set of questions. What kind of shore does the crew launch from? Is the sea a steep, short chop or a long Atlantic swell? Are they chasing herring, mackerel, cod, oysters or salmon? And what timber, sails and rope could be had within a day's cart ride?

Ask those questions and the hull shape practically draws itself. A beach-launched boat needs a shallow draught and a flat run aft so it can sit upright on shingle. A boat working off a rocky lee shore needs a high, flared bow to lift over a breaking sea. A boat that must carry a big catch home under sail alone needs to be stiff, beamy and handy to reef. Nothing was designed for elegance. Elegance arrived later, when the working life had gone out of them.

Two construction methods dominate. Clinker (or lapstrake) building overlaps the plank edges, giving a light, flexible, sea-kindly hull that moves in a seaway. Carvel building sets the planks flush, giving a smooth, stiff hull that is easier to keep tight and better suited to larger craft. Oak for the frames, larch or pine for the planking, copper nails clenched over roves, and a coat of red ochre or tar above and below the waterline — that was the recipe almost everywhere.

The coble: a north-east beach workhorse

The coble belongs to the Northumberland and Yorkshire coast, from Cullercoats down to Filey and Flamborough. Its signature is a deep, flared bow and a bottom that is nearly flat forward — a shape that lets it be hauled up a steep shingle beach and yet punch out through surf. Lengths generally ran from about 18 to 25 feet, clinker-built in larch on oak, with a high, proud stem and a narrow entry.

Cobles were rowed, and rowed well. Four oars, sometimes six, with the crew sitting high and the boat trimmed by ballast. The salmon coble worked its nets close inshore and off sandy beaches, and the same hull was used for crab and lobster potting and for line fishing. Later boats took a small inboard engine, and the shape survived almost unchanged because it worked. If you see one on a slipway today, look at how little of the boat is actually in the water — that shallow grip is the whole point.

The lugger: power from a simple sail plan

Where the coble is about the shore, the lugger is about the wind. The lug sail is a four-sided sail hung from a yard that is hoisted up the mast, and it let small crews handle big, powerful sails without the expense of complex rigging. A dipping lug must be lowered and passed round the mast on each tack — hard work, but it sails well to windward. A standing lug stays on its own side, easier to manage and slightly less efficient.

Cornish luggers worked the pilchard and mackerel fisheries out of Mount's Bay, St Ives and Newlyn, drifting nets by night and running home with the catch. Hastings luggers were launched off the beach and were famous for their fine lines and speed. Luggers ranged from around 25 feet to well over 50, often carvel-built once they grew large, with a long, low profile and a narrow working deck crammed with nets, cork floats and creels. The rig was cheap, repairable at sea and could be shortened in a squall within a minute or two. That is why it lasted.

The smack: fishing that kept the catch alive

"Smack" is a broad term, usually describing a fore-and-aft rigged working boat — a gaff cutter or gaff ketch — with a transom stern and a transom-hung rudder. Brixham trawlers, Lowestoft smacks and the great fleets of the east coast all fall under it, and they are the boats most often preserved and sailed today.

• Well smacks carried seawater tanks amidships so that live cod and turbot could be delivered to London and the big towns. The hull had to be strongly built and carefully divided, which made them slow but valuable.
• Oyster smacks worked the Colne, Blackwater, Swale and Thames estuary, dredging under sail and stowing the catch on deck. Short, beamy and immensely stiff, often with a centreplate to work shallow beds.
• Drifters and trawlers grew steadily larger through the nineteenth century, adding steam winches and then engines, until the sailing smack was overtaken by the steam drifter and the motor trawler.

A working smack tells you its job in its deck layout: where the trawl warps ran, where the dredges were stowed, where the crew of four or five ate and slept in a space you would now call a cupboard.

Other boats worth knowing

Travel round the coast and the vocabulary changes with the accent.

• Fifies from the Scottish east coast had a near-vertical stem, a long straight keel and a huge sail area — fast, seaworthy herring boats.
• Zulus were a deliberate hybrid: a fifie bow married to a raked, transom-style stern, giving a shorter hull with more deck room, popular around Buckie and Fraserburgh.
• Sixareens from Shetland were open, six-oared boats, often carried as decked boats aboard larger craft, and built for deep water and long lines.
• Coracles on the Teifi and Towy are the other end of the scale entirely — ash laths, a calico or hide skin and a coat of pitch, netted for salmon by one man with a paddle.

Reading a boat, and keeping the knowledge alive

Next time you stand on a harbour wall, look for four things. The bow: is it flared and high, or fine and vertical? The keel line: long and straight for tracking, or curved and shallow for beaching? The planking: overlapping strakes, or smooth? The rig: one mast or two, lug, gaff or Bermudian? Those four details will place a boat on the map more reliably than any label.

You do not need to own one to keep this heritage useful. Heritage harbours, small boat museums and coastal boat festivals around the country rely on volunteers, and many yards will happily explain why a particular strake is shaped the way it is. Even at home there is a modest pleasure in it: an old clinker dinghy planted with sea thrift, erigeron and a little thrift-tolerant grass makes a fine coastal garden feature, and it keeps a good hull shape in view. Boats like these were never designed to be admired. They were designed to bring people home, and that is worth understanding properly.