Traditional fishing boats were built of wood, which is not often used nowadays because of higher maintenance costs and lower durability.

Early fishing vessels included rafts, dugout canoes, and boats constructed from a frame covered with hide or tree bark, along the lines of a coracle.

[1] The oldest boats found by archaeological excavation are dugout canoes dating back to the Neolithic Period around 7,000-9,000 years ago.

[3] These early vessels had limited capability; they could float and move on water, but were not suitable for use any great distance from the shoreline.

[4] An example of their skill is the Khufu ship, a vessel 143 feet (44 m) in length entombed at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza around 2,500 BC and found intact in 1954.

People living near Kongens Lyngby in Denmark, came up with the idea of segregated hull compartments, which allowed the size of boats to gradually be increased.

A crew of some two dozen paddled the wooden Hjortspring boat across the Baltic Sea long before the rise of the Roman Empire.

In the 15th century, the Dutch developed a type of seagoing herring drifter that became a blueprint for European fishing boats.

The nets would be retrieved at night and the crews of eighteen to thirty men[5] would set to gibbing, salting and barrelling the catch on the broad deck.

During the 17th century, the British developed the dogger, an early type of sailing trawler or longliner, which commonly operated in the North Sea.

England, France, Italy, and Belgium have small boats from medieval periods that could reasonably be construed as predecessors of the Dory.

Lightweight and versatile, with high sides, a flat bottom and sharp bows, they were easy and cheap to build.

By the early 19th century, the fishermen at Brixham, needed to expand their fishing area further than ever before due to the ongoing depletion of stocks that was occurring in the overfished waters of South Devon.

The Brixham trawler that evolved there was of a sleek build and had a tall gaff rig, which gave the vessel sufficient speed to make long-distance trips out to the fishing grounds in the ocean.

This revolutionary design made large scale trawling in the ocean possible for the first time, resulting in a massive migration of fishermen from the ports in the South of England, to villages further north, such as Scarborough, Hull, Grimsby, Harwich and Yarmouth, that were points of access to the large fishing grounds in the Atlantic Ocean.

The dock covered 25 acres (10 ha) and was formally opened by Queen Victoria in 1854 as the first modern fishing port.

The Lancashire nobby was used down the north west coast of England as a shrimp trawler from 1840 until World War II.

The earliest purpose built fishing vessels were designed and made by David Allan in Leith in March 1875, when he converted a drifter to steam power.

She was of wooden construction with two masts and carried a gaff rigged main and mizen using booms, and a single foresail.

The steam boats also gained the highest prices for their fish, as they could return quickly to harbour with their fresh catch.

In 1947, the company Christian Salvesen, based in Leith, Scotland, refitted a surplus Algerine-class minesweeper (HMS Felicity) with refrigeration equipment and a factory ship stern ramp, to produce the first combined freezer/stern trawler in 1947.

At the other extreme, two-thirds (1.8 million) of the undecked boats are traditional craft of various types, powered only by sail and oars.

In the United States and Canada more use is made of large factory trawlers, while the huge blue water fleets operated by Japan and the Soviet-bloc countries have contracted.

The International Maritime Organization, convened in 1959 by the United Nations, is responsible for devising measures aimed at the prevention of accidents, including standards for ship design, construction, equipment, operation and manning.

This is a large group ranging from open boats as small as 10 metres (33 ft) in length to ocean-going vessels.

These records often omit smaller boats where registration is not required or where fishing licences are granted by provincial or municipal authorities.

Large numbers of artisan fishing boats are still in use, particularly in developing countries with long productive marine coastlines.

Many of the boats in this area are double-outrigger craft, consisting of a narrow main hull with two attached outriggers, commonly known as jukung in Indonesia and banca in the Philippines.

Usually some form of fishing tackle is brought on board, such as hooks and lines, rods and reels, sinkers or nets, and occasionally high-tech devices such as fishfinders and diving drones.

According to a newspaper report at that time, the Crete had "a deep cockpit, a chair fitted for landing big fish and leather pockets for placing the pole.