30 footer ?

[David Satter]

Am curious about how many 30 foot canoes are out there. I'm going to look at one this weekend in the rafters of a barn. I did a 26 foot chestnut a cople of years ago. just wondering about what companies like old town, or others made them. Any info would help before i go look at it. The woman doesn't know what it is. Thanks, Dave. I'll look at dragonfly also for info.

 

[Dan Miller]

Not very many.

What it may be depends on the actual length. At 30' you are definitely in the war canoe realm, but if it actually measures 24' or 26' it opens up other possibilities.

Old Town built war canoes 25' and 34'
Carleton built war canoes 25' and 34' (same as Old Town), and 38' in the early days.
Kennebec built 25' 30' and 35' war canoes.
Robertson built a 25' war canoe.
Chestnut's largest canoes were th 26' Ogilvy and 25' Centennial Group Paddling Canoe.

There are others certainly, but assuming it is in fact a war canoe, I'd bet on the first three.

Dan

 

[Benson Gray]

I agree with Dan's comments that not many were made. The table at http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/models.html has an estimate that about 633 of the 25 foot long war canoes were built based on the 39 examples that show up in the Old Town database subset. This is a pretty small sample size for an accurate estimate but it can give you a rough idea. There are only three examples of the 34 foot long war canoes in this same subset so that is even less likely to provide an accurate estimate. However, if I apply the same approach to these three then it yields an even rougher estimated total of 51 examples between 1906 and 1927 and an average of about two per year. The pictures at http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?5421 confirm that Old Town continued to make these well after 1927. The original form still exists so you could probably special order one today if you had a really big budget.

Dan also completed an extensive analysis of the Kennebec records many years ago which shows they made 193 war canoes in the 25 foot length, 41 that were 30 feet long, and 12 that were 35 feet long. Good luck and let us know what you find.

Benson