Found a sunk canoe/rowboat on uninhabited pond

[blackriver]

Hello,

Someone from the Clayton museum directed me to this forum for some help. We recently discovered this thing in about 3 feet of water , at the end of a pond with no trail. This area of the Adirondacks was used heavily by guides in the late 1800-1940s. This canoe/rowboat is very heavy and I very much doubt anybody carried it again once it made it to this pond. We are going to go back and see if we can find the seats, it barely came out of where it settled. It has some sort of lap bottom, the boards on either side are one piece. It has a small keel board. It's assembled with brass or bronze screws, it has two iron oarlocks. The bow and stern were assembled with carriage bolts and square steel nuts. The bottom has some orange paint as a base layer. I know we won't get any specific info but it would be nice to know if this construction was common at some point so we could date it or have some idea of its importance.

Thank you, Jim

 

[patrick corry]

Curious, what ADK pond? My guess is that it may have been a site-built bateau or pirogue to serve loggers or drivers for a short time. Perhaps not carried in from some other location in completed form, but assembled at the pond. Just a guess, but a pretty cool find!

 

[MGC]

Back in the70's I used to spend quite a bit of time bashing around in the park. One of my "specialties" was making my way to off the beaten path ponds. More often than not, most of these had some kind pond boat. These were usually dragged out into the woods in the winter, often by horse or some of them (as with yours) might be built on site. In the 60's people started using snow mobiles to pull their boats. In the 30s and 40's this was done with what were called doodlebugs.
Most of the boats I found were actually quite reasonable old boats. There were also a few canoes. Some were locked to a tree, some were not. Some had oars, most didn't. The general idea was that once you had a boat at your top-secret pond, you would carry only a paddle or oars and your pole to it when you went there to use the boat.
Some of the boats we found were still useable...most were not. The general idea was that if you used one, when you were done with it you would always put it back.

 

[Worth Gretter]

I agree with Patrick in calling it a bateau. The cross-wise bottom planking is a distinctive bateau feature.
And like MCG says, it is not unusual to find a boat stashed at a remote pond. The ones I have seen have been aluminum, perhaps because aluminum outlasts anything else when left completely exposed to the weather.

 

[John Sand]

Adding to the theme of leaving a boat a the pond: I built a flatiron skiff for friends on their property in NH. They lived on a dirt road that ended on a pond. I built the boat similar to yours, one plank sides, cross planked bottom, no plans. Mine had a transom stern. They would leave the boat tied up at the pond. If they went to use it and it was out, they just yelled to bring it in. That boat was built with lumberyard pine and galvanized roof nails. It lasted years stored outside.

 

[blackriver]

Thanks for the insight guys! It was definitely a transport boat left there for year round use, it's so heavy it took 4 people to carry it. We're really interested in the age of it, because if it dates to before the 1940's it was definitely a guide boat for the local hotel. The orange bottom paint I have only seen on very old wood inboards, before the 1930s. If that sounds accurate to somebody here, we'd be thrilled

 

[MGC]

Loggers and drivers would not have been operating on a small pond. If you travel up and down the Raquette up through Piercefield or down to Norwood you can see the types of serious hardware and booms they were using. Purpose built boats were of a substantial nature and able to withstand the serious rapids and massive volumes of wood that were being ferried down river. The Museum on Blue Mountain lake is a good place to learn out our logging history.
One of the very interesting things that we used to see on the Allagash before it became gentrified were the stacks of bateaus that were resting under cover at what has since become the Chase Rapids museum. There is still one (more?) there on display. They are quite substantial as would have been any used on our North Country rivers.
This may very well have been used by a hotel guide... although definitely not year-round. And, it may, as most were, have simply been a pond boat. If I were trying to date it, I would be looking at the types of nails used in it's construction. Nail types are very specific to different time periods. Square nails, cut nails, wire nails....what was used?

 

[John Sand]

That orange paint may be "red lead" used to preserve wood. The inside hull of my 1968 ketch is painted with it.

 

[Gone West]

If a newbie may wade in on this? For a definitive answer take a core with a tree auger across as much grain as possible and send to a college or university where they can do tree dating from the growth ring patterns. Tree augers aren't made for working in thin boards though, so might have to make up a thin core drill from a piece of 1/2" tubing with some teeth filed in the end? Getting the plug out can be a trick: measure the depth on the side of the plank and push a knife blade in to sever the core at the bottom of the hole, after withdrawing the drill some way. If the board is edge grain there should be plenty of grain to study there. Glue a dowel in the hole and you're done.