Timber rafting

The tradition of timber rafting cultivated in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, Poland and Spain was inscribed on UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2022[1] Unlike log driving, which was a dangerous task of floating separate logs, floaters or raftsmen could enjoy relative comfort of navigation, with cabins built on rafts, steering by means of oars and possibility to make stops.

Timber rafts were also used as a means of transportation of people and goods, both raw materials (ore, fur, game) and man-made.

5.8.2) records how the Romans imported Corsican timber by way of a huge raft propelled by as many as fifty masts and sails.

Timber rafting allowed for connecting large continental forests, as in south western Germany, via Main, Neckar, Danube and Rhine with the coastal cities and states.

The advent of the railroad, steam boat vessels and improvements in trucking and road networks gradually reduced the use of timber rafts.

In Spain, this method of transport was used in the Ebro, Tajo, Júcar, Turia and Segura rivers, mainly and to a lesser extent in the Guadalquivir.

They were there sometimes referred to as Joggins-Leary log ships because they were financed by businessman James T. Leary and originated at Joggins, Nova Scotia.

On Georgia’s Altamaha River, for example, the maximum width was about forty feet (12 m), that being the widest that could pass between the pilings of railroad bridges.

Among the many "riverman monikers" was Old Hell Bight, where the river marks the border between Long County to the north and Wayne County to the south, and is a particularly troublesome bend, with associated dangerous currents, where a pilot and crew might lose "their wages, their timber, and occasionally their lives"[9][10][11] Most rafts were sharp-chute, that is, V-bowed, rather than square-bowed.

Raftsmen had learned that with a V-bow a raft was more likely to hold together and glance off if it drifted out of control and hit the river bank.

As one old-time raftsman put it: “With a square bow you were compelled to hold the raft in or near the middle of the river: if it butted the hill it would come to pieces.

During those years, Darien, a town at the mouth of the river with a population of perhaps a couple of thousand, was a major international timber port.

The timber was transported by floating, down the current of the rivers, which required the work of cages and log drivers (Cajeux - Draveurs).

While the more technically challenging log driving down rivers declined from the 1960s and mostly ended by the early 21st century, timber rafting has continued to some degree along lakes.