Talk:Sewn boat

Clinker-built?

No doubt the second paragraph is right, when it says "usually clinker-built", but if we describe them as "clinker-built" at the beginning of the first paragraph, we are excluding the British wooden sewn-boats, such as Ferriby and Dover. I suggest that we say "usually clinker built", unless someone can show me why we would say otherwise.

IceDragon64 (talk) 09:49, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A sewn boat is a type of wooden boat which is clinker built .... seems to be disastrously wrong. It hardly matters whether the rather old reference given actually says that. In any case, the article needs a substantial audit for accuracy. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 09:36, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Potential references

Burningham, Nick (1 September 2019). "On the Flexibility of Indian Ocean Sewn‐Plank Vessels: the structural performance of Jewel of Muscat". International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. 48 (2): 335–341. doi:10.1111/1095-9270.12362.
Staples, Eric (1 September 2019). "Sewn‐Plank Reconstructions of Oman: construction and documentation". International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. 48 (2): 314–334. doi:10.1111/1095-9270.12370.
Staples, Eric; Blue, Lucy (1 September 2019). "Archaeological, Historical, and Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Sewn Boats: past, present, and future". International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. 48 (2): 269–285. doi:10.1111/1095-9270.12361. This paper might have a useful definition of the term "sewn boat". I have vague recollections of seeing a more concise definition – will keep looking.
"The distinguishing feature of Arab craft of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea from antiquity until the late twentieth century is generally agreed to be “the use of fiber, rather than nails, to sew the planks of hulls together” (Said 1991: 107). The earliest-known sewn boats come from Ras al-Jinz in Oman and date to the third millennium BCE (Cleuziou and Tosi 2000)."The Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archaeology (Oxford Handbooks) (p. 507 and elsewhere in this book)
McGrail, Seán (2009). Boats of the world: from the stone age to medieval times (Reprinted ed.). Oxford New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-927186-0. This work provides extensive coverage of the subject. Just looking at the index there is coverage of this subject in Americas, Arabia, Atlantic Europe, China, East Africa, India, Mediterranean, Oceania and Southeast Asia, as well as several passages about the construction methods, performance, etc. I don't see how you could write an article about this subject without some reference to this source.
"It is necessary, however, to clearly differentiate Southeast Asian traditions from the sewn-plank building tradition known until recently in the Indian Ocean. Two features differentiate the two traditions: Southeast Asian and Arabo-Indian. The discrete stitches (or lashings) used to fasten hull planks in Southeast Asia are structurally different from the continuous sewing with a continuous thread observed in western Asia or in the Mediterranean......." This could be useful in the decision-making for the breadth of the article. Source is Manguin, Pierre‐yves (1 September 2019). "Sewn Boats of Southeast Asia: the stitched‐plank and lashed‐lug tradition". International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. 48 (2): 400–415. doi:10.1111/1095-9270.12367.. The issue for the article is whether or not "sewn boats" includes "stitched boats", as they are two different things. Note that this paper records the terminology decision on lashed lug construction regarding stitched planks.

ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 15:17, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks as though this would be useful for ancient Mediterranean: Pomey, Patrice; Boetto, Giulia (11 February 2019). "Ancient Mediterranean Sewn-Boat Traditions". International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. 48 (1): 5–51. doi:10.1111/1095-9270.12337. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 19:58, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Examples

Per the tag added by User:Mathglot, yes the Examples section would be better with narrative text giving a brief description of each. It would be easier to do that job with a full list of all the possible candidates for inclusion. I am still reading into the subject to see what else we need in the list. We certainly need one of the classical era sewn boats from the Mediterranean, but need to do a bit of reading to decide which is the best example. At present I am still reading up on the Dover boat, with quite a lot more to go.(Clark, Peter (2012). The Dover Bronze Age Boat. London: English Heritage Publishing. ISBN 978-1873592595.)
I also have McCarthy, Mike (2023). Ships' fastenings: from sewn boat to steamship (Second ed.). College Station: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1648431043. to read.

Unless there are strong opinions to the contrary, I think we take the simple list as a transitional step towards a narrative. And it might take a while to get there.

Incidentally, the Mirror dinghy may be questionable for inclusion in the list, as the copper stitching simply aligns plywood panels for gluing. The glue and fibreglass tape provide the strength with the copper wire not really doing anything once the resin has set. (I believe you can just use cable ties instead of copper wire.) So that is very different from a sewn boat such as a dhow, where the sewing is done to very close to the breaking strain of the thread, with that tension remaining present until the boat is re-sewn as part of routine maintenance. So the stitching is a major structural element. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 20:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And it might turn out better to have the narrative examples incorporated into the main text of the article, split under suitable headings. There is already some narrative about the Jewel of MuscatThat might just leave an "Other examples" section which is briefly annotated with things like "similar to xxxx but dated yyyy" – or something like that. But that decision-making is for after the reading exercise.

I am still short of the reference that many use (McGrail and Kentley 1985), but with some of the theoretical stuff being contradicted by Nick Burningham (who played a large part in the Jewel of Muscat and has written several papers on sewn boats), I am not sure how useful that rather elderly reference would be. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 20:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you are referring to this volume, I have it on ILL request at my local library. They usually tell me within a couple of days whether it's been located, and then it may take 2-6 weeks to arrive for pickup. If you go to that link and log in, it will tell you what libraries close to you have it; in my case, two within an hour of me, but I'd rather wait for it to show up at my local library, even if it takes a while. If you get it sooner, please lmk, and I will release the ILL request. Mathglot (talk) 01:15, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I like your idea of a transition to a full narrative. Rather than doing this all at once, we could do it in a series of steps, would give the reader a bit more to chew on at each step, and would lead editors a step closer to developing a proper narrative in an organic and I hope, natural way. Here is one possible sequence:

copy an excerpt from the lead sentence of each of the articles, and paste it onto the bulleted link
find a reference or two for the copioed bit in the source articles and add them to the bullet descriptors (presumably the source articles would (or should) each have one, but if not we would have to find one)
expand the brief descriptor into a bit more text for each one, concentrating on text that demonstrates where there are commonalities between different sewn boat types, and what makes each one unique (and thus worthy of a separate article; if any pair has nothing unique to distinguish it, it should probably be merged)
start using the commonalities and differences to reorder the list to put similar ones adjacent to each other, and recognize any patterns that suggest subgroupings, adding sub-bullets if that makes sense
the structured, somewhat ordered list should suggest an ordering of the narrative to come; perhaps by region, or thematic/construction method if that seems applicable. If nothing applies, default to chronological.
convert the regrouped, reordered descriptions into a narrative, possibly adding subsection headers or paragraph breaks as needed.

Step one is the easiest, and could be done almost right away, even in the absence of any references to hand (assuming we trust the authors of the existing articles, or at least, their sources if they have appropriate ones). Just one idea, but one that allows us to stop and start as we have time, instead of having to do a big bang after a long period of studying the sources; we could save that for the last couple of steps, but meanwhile the article will look gradually better to readers during the transitional sequence. Mathglot (talk) 02:35, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As a quick answer (and perhaps more later) I have had some bad experiences relying on other wikipedia articles actually saying what I expect them to say. I have even deleted links until after I have corrected the target article. The whole subject area of maritime technology seems to be a particular minefield for this problem (but perhaps I have too little experience on other subjects).

Generally, I am thinking of the narrative text being split with sub-headings that group similar examples – in many cases just one example per sub-heading. That way a skim-reader could spot the heading and the links and therefore gain quick access to the subject. But, as ever, I don't think you ever know if it works until you try to write it. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 10:55, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, fair enough, I can go with that. Willing to go along with whatever approach you think is workable here. I would like to decompose it if at all possible into some intermediate steps, so that we can give readers some value-added before coming up with the full-narrative version; can you delineate some intermediate steps that might achieve that? I'm willing to help us get there, but I think you have a better overall view of how that might come about. Mathglot (talk) 11:05, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]