Smaller York Boat

[dennisbur]

I have been asked by the Fort Langley National Historic Site to start a hands-on/ active boat building demostration display. The site used HBC York Boats of 42 feet, which is too large to conveniently build and move to and from the water. Maybe someone knows how to contact DF Johnson, he wrote the article in Woodenboat #144, and I could scale down his lines and offsets.

Does anyone have a flat-bottomed skiff/dory plan around 24 feet that would work. I'd scale down the original; however, Parks Canada seems to have lost the plans they used for the Lower Fort Garry boat program they had several years ago.

thanks Ladies and Gents

[Thorne]

What time era are they looking to reproduce?
Would one of Gardner's batteaus or early dory designs fill the bill?

[dennisbur]

era is 1830 to 1870.

York boats were double enders and had straight stems. the ones at Fort Langley were lapstraked. The early versions only had nails at the stems. The rest of the laps were glued together with pitch. I'm going for something a little more durable. at least clenched nails. I haven't seen Gardner's Dory book but I have the other ones.

Dennis

[SaltyD from BC]

The first York boats were built by the Hudson Bay Company for use on the Bay itself back in ~ 1750! They were used into early 1900s throughout Canada.

http://hbc.com/hbcheritage/images/content/YorkBoats-Sail.jpg

http://www.hbc.com/hbcheritage/history/transportation/yorkboat/

edit: woops, I was typing and missed your second post dennisbur

[Thorne]

Perhaps something in Chapelle's _Amercian Small Sailing Craft_? He lists many historic designs. Available from our kind hosts at WB.

http://www.woodenboatstore.com/images/300005S.JPG

Edited to add - they sure look like the batteau in Gardner's book! Should be easy to scale down, but have a care as you can go too small == there's a guy out here who built one at under 16' and it is quite tender...

http://www.luckhardt.com/mendo2.jpg

[SaltyD from BC]

dennisbur, reading through that HBC history link I posted up there I see that in Norway House Manitoba they celebrate the York boat each summer with "York boat days". There's boat races! I wonder if these folks have any information that would help you? Might be worth checking out...

[dennisbur]

Looks not too bad. I'll scale it up though. I would like 4 scullers and a steersman so that we can have some fun races during Brigade Days ( our August long weekend ) and other special events. I also want to get the sawpit going again and have volunteers saw planks. Which is only a wee bit better than walking them.

[dennisbur]

thanks Salty I'll give them a call as well.

Dennis
AKA Denis Beaudoin voyageur Extraordinaire

[SaltyD from BC]

Make sure you fuel the crew with pea soup msr voyageur!

[dennisbur]

Thanks for the help gentlemen. Gardner's maine river batteau will do nicely.

Dennis

[Father-of-Ten]

Thanks for the help gentlemen. Gardner's maine river batteau will do nicely.

Dennis


Hello Dennis
What did you finally do... I am looking for some plans to build a 28-32' York boat and am having a hard time finding plans.

Thanks for any info.
Norm