Scow
In modern times their main purpose is for recreation and racing; there are also garbage scows for aquatic transport of refuse.
[1] The basic scow was developed as a flat-bottomed barge (i.e. a large punt) capable of navigating shallow rivers and sitting comfortably on the bottom when the tide was out.
The scow hull is also the basis for the shantyboat or, on the Chesapeake, the ark, a cabin houseboat once common on American rivers.
Various towns and villages claim their own variants (Lymington, Keyhaven, Yarmouth, West Wight, Bembridge, Chichester), they are all around 11 feet (3.35 m) in length and share a lug sail, pivoting centre board, small foredeck and a square transom with a transom-hung rudder.
The broad hull gave them stability, and the retractable foils allowed them to move even heavy loads of cargo in waters far too shallow for keelboats to enter.
Sailing scows were popular in the American South for economic reasons, because the pine planks found there were difficult to bend, and because inlets along the Gulf Coast and Florida were often shallow.
In 1873, a sea captain named George Spencer,[3] who had once lived and worked on the American Great Lakes and had gained a first-hand knowledge of the practical working capabilities of the sailing barges that plied their trade on the lakes, recognised the potential use of similar craft in the protected waters of the Hauraki Gulf, Auckland.
He commissioned a local shipbuilder, Septimus Meiklejohn,[4] to construct a small flat-bottomed sailing barge named the Lake Erie,[5] which was built at Ōmaha, not far from Mahurangi.
It was fitted with lee boards (a type of keel slotted onto the sides of the vessel), but these were highly impracticable in rough weather on the New Zealand coast.
This one small craft spawned a fleet of sailing scows that became associated with the gum trade and the flax and kauri industries of northern New Zealand.
[9] The Jane Gifford was gifted to the Waiuku Historical Society[10] by Captain Bert Subritzky and his wife Moana in 1985, where it was re-masted and re-rigged to its original splendour.
The Owhiti was sold to Captain Dave Skyme and fully restored to its 1924 sea worthiness, and it subsequently starred in the 1983 movie Savage Islands (starring Tommy Lee Jones and amongst others Kiwi icon and singer Prince Tui Teka as King Ponapa).
It was named after an old-time New Zealand seafarer and scowman, Ted Ashby, who had the foresight to document much of the history of these coastal work horses in his book Phantom Fleet - The Scows and Scowmen of Auckland, which was published by A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington, in 1976.
The Jane Gifford[12] is a ketch-rigged deck scow built in 1908 by Davey Darroch, Big Omaha, New Zealand.
She was nearly broken up in 1990, but is now preserved at Picton, New Zealand Howard I. Chapelle documented a number of scows in his book American Small Sailing Craft.
Scows were widely used to carry freight and passengers along or across inland waterways, sometimes preceding the arrival of railway transportation.
After being stuck in place for more than 100 years, in November 2019, the scow broke loose during a wind storm and moved 50 metres (164 ft) closer to the edge of the Horseshoe Falls.
[17] In the early 20th century, smaller sloop and cat rigged scows became popular sailboats on inland lakes throughout the midwestern United States.
