subject: Whitehall Boat Plans [print this page] I have a daydream, of building my own Whitehall Boat. Some simple Whitehall Boat Plans would be exactly what I need right now. Absolutely nothing very tricky, just a straightforward one sheet skiff, or even a canoe. During my dream, the previous few centuries have slipped away, and it's a beautiful early summer day somewhere in the North-East of what has become called The brand new World, perhaps on St. Lawrence river, or the Great Lakes, or one of several a huge number of waterways that criss-cross the Canadian Shield.
My whitehall boat plans are sketched on a few sheets of worn and creased foolscap, or even parchment. The craft of stitch and glue boat building, learned from your native Algonquins and employed by them to build their great war canoes, I now put to some more serene use. The stitching cures in strong summer sun. This is a sturdy boat, and can take me long and far.
In the early morning I slide away from the little settlement, gliding quietly within the stillness, listening to the swish of river reeds about the sides of my boat, the soft splash of my oars in water. Casting a line in waterto catch my evening meal. At night, the smell of smoke from my campfire and the noise of crickets chirping, and the following morning, onwards all over again.
It is a world the proud and independant fur traders made theirs. Men with a tongue for adventure and also a calling for the wild spots, these people bartered with all the native peoples for that fantastic bounty of the rich boreal nature, coming to settlements or perhaps trading outposts for additional trade goods, provisions, powder and ball for that musket. And after that to the river.
Inside my dream, it's my personal world. I paddle through the great, primeval widerness, around the uncounted and immeasureable streams. Throughout gorges along with rapids, past sheer cliffs and then islands blocked with fir and even spruce, and stair-like waterfalls, dipping my blade in mirror-flat lakes as a call of the loons echoes from the way distance.
That's my dream, anyway. How realistic do you find it? Not realistic, I suppose. For starters, I cannot go back in its history three hundred years. For another (and also knowing something about boat building, then you noticed this), the art of stitch and glue boat building is really modern development, not the method learned through the Algonquins, not something they had from the time of Radisson and Groseilliers and also the voyageurs . So please forgive my little anachronism. Remember, it is every bit a dream.
And somehow, that makes my dream more likely to come true. Building your own boat is a lot, easier today than it has ever been in the past. Whitehall Boat Plans are much easier to come by in todays world. No, you cannot get wealthy from the fur trade, but those primeval forests criss-crossed and dotted with a thousand rivers and lakes continue to be out there. You can still recapture that feeling, that sense of adventure. All that's necessary to begin is a boat...
Whitehall Boat Plans
By: Mike Quaid
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