There is actually one scenario where this rather odd technique could be useful, and if the wood shows signs of ever having been fiberglassed, I suspect that's why it was done. When you fiberglass a rib and plank hull, the planking gaps present a problem. As you are saturating the glass cloth with resin, the cloth will bridge the gaps fine, but most freshly-mixed polyester resins and some epoxy resins are thin enough that they tend to drain through in those spots This leaves a thin line of what looks like fiberglass screen wire over the gaps (big dents at tack heads can also do the same thing, leaving small circles of screen wire). Filling over these defects after the fact with your resin filler coats and trying to get all the little gaps in the screen wire closed is a real b!tch. At the same time, you're draining resin down into the cracks in the planking, where it isn't really desired and it may even be dripping and running on the inside of the hull.
This is one of the main reasons why I tell people that properly glassing a planked wooden hull is much more difficult and tedious than glassing a stripper hull and a hell of a lot harder than just replacing the canvas. It's probably also one of the reasons that so many owner-applied fiberglass jobs tend to be glopped-up with massive amounts of resin and way over-weight.
In order for the glassing job to go smoothly with one of these resin formulas, all of the surface irregularities (planking gaps, tack head dents, etc.) have to be filled and smoothed-out before any glassing begins, so that the resin has nowhere to drain out of the fiberglass cloth. This can be done with some sort of filler putty in the cracks, or maybe with something removable after glassing, like wax or clay, but a strip of strapping tape would most likely do the job. It would add minimal weight and wouldn't be a problem to glass right over. Aside from the debate over whether or not fiberglassing such a hull is right or wrong, my guess is that this wasn't the first hull that individual ever fiberglassed and this was his solution for the resin-drainage problems he encountered on previous attempts. If nothing else, it would make the glass easier to remove by keeping resin out of the planking gaps.
Rollin, for the Assembly Morris I would suggest two layers of strapping tape in a double-diagonal configuration. In reality, it should make a pretty durable and watertight skin.
