Gundalow
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A gundalow (also known in period accounts as a "gondola") is a type of flat-bottomed sailing barge once common in Maine and New Hampshire rivers, United States. It first appeared in the mid-1600s, reached maturity of design in the 1700 and 1800s, and lingered into the early 1900s before nearly vanishing as a commercial watercraft.[1]
Characteristics
A form of sailing
Up to 70 feet (21.34 m) long, gundalows were fitted with a pivoting leeboard in lieu of a fixed keel, giving them an exceptionally shallow draft and allowing them to "take the hard" (settle into sand, ledge, or mudflats) both for loading and unloading cargoes and maintenance.
Cargoes
Common cargoes were bricks, timber, cattle, sheep, and other bulk raw materials downriver, and finished goods up. Gundalows were very active delivering cordwood to brickworks to fire their kilns, picking up cargoes of finished bricks in return.[citation needed]
Cannon-sporting gunboat style gundalows with fixed masts and square yards were built and deployed on Lake Champlain by both British and American forces during the American Revolutionary War, meeting in combat at the Battle of Valcour Island.
Today
The
See also
- Noble train of artillery, in which gundalows were used to transport heavy weaponry in the American Revolutionary War
- Battle of Valcour Island, in the American Revolutionary War, in which gundalows were used
- Gandelow, a type of flat-bottomed fishing boat used on the River Shannon in Ireland
References
- ^ What is a gundalow? gundalow.org
- ^ "Gundalow Company". Gundalow Company. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
- ^ New Dover playground officially opened, Seacoast Online
Bibliography
- Cross-Grained & Wiley Waters: A Guide to the Piscataqua Maritime Region, Jeffrey W. Bolster, Editor; Peter Randall Publisher, Portsmouth, 2001 [ISBN missing]
- Ports of Piscataqua; soundings in the maritime history of the Portsmouth, N.H., Customs District from the days of Queen Elizabeth and the planting of Strawberry Banke to the times of Abraham Lincoln and the waning of the American clipper, William G. Saltonstall, New York, Russell & Russell [1968, c. 1941] [ISBN missing]
- The Piscataqua Gundalow: Workhorse for a Tidal Basin Empire, Richard E. Winslow, III, Portsmouth, NH, Peter Randall, Publisher (Portsmouth Marine Society) 2002 [ISBN missing]
- The Way of the Ship: America’s Maritime History Reenvisioned, 1600–2000, Alex Roland, W. Jeffrey Bolster, Alexander Keyssar, Authors, Wiley, NY, 2007 [ISBN missing]