Pirogue

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the type of boat. For the food, see Pirog. For the Senegalese film, see The Pirogue.
outrigger canoe) with sail from Madagascar
Group of pirogues at sunset on the river bank of Don Tati, Si Phan Don, Laos.
Pirogues of Madagascar
Pirogues, Niger
A pirogue on the Niger River in Mali
MHNT

A pirogue (

Carib
piraua.

Description

The term 'pirogue' does not refer to a specific kind of boat, but is a generic term for small native boats in regions once colonized by

outrigger canoe.[4][5]

Pirogues are usually propelled by

tailwinds, while the triangular-shaped ones are used to transfer goods from one place to another by maintaining a bowline direction.[6]
Outboard motors are increasingly being used in many regions.

Uses in military and piracy contexts

Lewis and Clark's pirogues mounted blunderbuss to the bow with a pintle.

There are accounts of 17th and 18th century Caribbean pirates using pirogues to attack and take by force much larger vessels including sloops and even barca-longas.[7] Pirogues were used extensively by pirates and buccaneers throughout the Caribbean, the now-Mexican and Gulf Coasts and the East Coast of what is now the United States. For the most part, though, such vessels were used for scouting or as tenders.[7]

Pirogues were used by Lewis and Clark on the

Henry D. Thoreau
writes of using heavy pirogues in his book The Maine Woods.

Louisiana

Pirogues in the

Cajuns of the Louisiana marsh. The early Creole pirogues were cypress dugouts but today they are usually flat-bottomed boats. Pirogues are not usually intended for overnight travel but are light and small enough to be easily taken onto land. The design also allows the pirogue to move through the very shallow water of marshes and be easily turned over to drain any water that may get into the boat. A pirogue has "hard chines" which means that instead of a smooth curve from the gunwales to the keel
, there is often a flat bottom which meets the plane of the side.

In his 1952 classic song "

Hank Williams, Jr.
(son of the aforementioned Hank Williams) had a hit song in 1969 "Cajun Baby", which refers to the pirogue in the line "ride around in my old pirogue".

Doug Kershaw's 1961 hit "Louisiana Man" includes the line "he jumps in his pirogue headed down the bayou". Many online lyrics sites misunderstand this line, saying 'hero' or sometimes 'biro' instead.

See also

  • Periagua, a cognate which became applied to a different kind of sailing vessel in the 18th century
  • Perahu
  • Mackinaw boat

References

  1. ^ "pirogue". dictionary.com. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
  2. ^ "Pirogue". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
  3. ^ "Among the pirogues of Africa". Voyage to the Sargasso Sea. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  4. ^ "Sakalava pirogue". Alefa. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  5. ^ "Setting sail". www.economist.com. Retrieved 9 June 2008.
  6. ^ "Pirogues - Madagascar discovery". Alefa. Retrieved 20 November 2022.
  7. ^
    ISBN 9781598842012
    .
  8. ISBN 0-684-82697-6
  9. ^ "Pirogues", Discovering Lewis & Clark, The Lewis and Clark Fort Mandan Foundation, 2009[dead link]

External links

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