Wooden Boats of the Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta in the Far South of Vietnam is a flat country, never more than a few feet above water level. The seven major mouths of the River and dozens of major canals (not to mention sloughs and cutoffs) mean that nowhere is far from the water and the traditional wooden boats, modern Motor Fishing Vessels and small craft that work the waterways. Interestingly, it is often far into the countryside before you find a bridge too low to pass ocean–going boats. So besides the river boats, you see large ocean-going vessels far from the sea.

In all that water, there is a tremendous variety of boats working: most of them still traditionally built wooden boats. The smallest are still propelled by hand using oars or paddles, and many use a combination. They have small long-tailed outboards for use on the open river but pick up and swing the propeller on board and shift to a pair of oars to work in close quarters. Amongst the engine powered boats there is every sort of power plant, from little air cooled gas engines to quite powerful diesels. A great many of them are mounted as long-tailed outboards, though some of the largest freight boats are inboard powered, with conventional installations.

The river freighters basically utilize one basic hull type and adapt it to all the different trades. For perishable produce, for example, they build a full length cabin top. For sand and gravel the hold will be open but have stout bulwarks to hold the water out when the boat is loaded clear down. For hauling bricks, there will be a flat deck at the bottom of the hold to start the stack, and for hauling poles and timber the bulwarks will open forward so the long pieces can be pulled out and sent ashore. All these boats though, are built much the same: double ended, round bottomed, with very full lines, carrying their greatest beam well into their ends. The boat building trades are very well developed here and the boats are built to a high standard of fit, if not finish. The vast majority are either unpainted, oiled, or given a light coat of whitewash above the waterline. They do, however, almost universally carry a bright red bow ornament with a pair of eyes to watch for traffic and a painted anchor for a “nose.”

Can Tho

The waterfront of Can Tho, one of the finest cities of the Mekong Delta is full of scenes of heavy ocean-going fishing vessels tied along the quays and river boats passing back and forth. Vietnamese fishing vessels in harbor are often trimmed to crazy angles of heel. Are they working on the hulls near the waterline? Shifting fuel or ice or water tanks below decks?

Small Craft Propulsion: Long-Tailed Outboards

In the small boats of Can Tho, the combination of two long oars worked across the body and a long-tailed outboard is the propulsion of choice. The motors are typically a 5-horse generator model. The pieces that turn a little air cooled engine into a long-tailed outboard are locally made, a pivot on the transom of the boat that lets the whole works swivel 360 degrees, a handle that fits neatly between the knees of the standing boatman, the long propeller shaft and its pipe-sleeve bearing. The whole works costs only a few hundred dollars American and is superbly reliable. The outboards are always started in the air, an unnerving sight when in close company. There’s no neutral or reverse and the prop spins mightily in the air as soon as the starter cord is jerked. You’d expect bloody mayhem from boats starting up alongside and swinging their motors around, but the skill level among these people is remarkable and nothing unpleasant occurs.

Heavier Long-tailed Units

Unlike the small long-tail outboards, the heavier units on larger boats don’t steer the boat. They’re just propulsion, straight ahead, and often reverse as well. Steering is by a large outboard rudder, usually the subject of considerable decoration. The photos show the basic anatomy of the large units: a powerful engine, diesel or gasoline; a dry exhaust, often muffled; and a cooling-water intake that’s no more than a funnel on a pipe behind the propeller. (Who needs a water pump?)

These long-tail units have some serious advantages over conventional inboard power. The whole unit can be picked off and rebuilt at need, without having to carve up the cabin top or the accommodation. Really though, the biggest advantage is probably the ability to hoist the prop out of the water and clear whatever has fouled it in these shallow, rubbish-laden waters. Plastic bags, blue tarps, old lines, even water hyacinths plug water intakes or bind up props. The long-tail unit takes it all in stride.

Barrel Stave Construction Style

A style of construction common in this area and used for boats from small skiffs to large freight haulers: long pairs of planks are tapered evenly and sharply bent to bow (and stern) and coming not really to a transom, but rather just a small platform over the stem. Actually, there isn’t a stem, it’s just the bottom plank bent up like all the rest and making the starting point for the hull. The cabin top (when there is one) is tightly built so she can be loaded down until she actually floats on it. The construction at the stern is much the same as the bow. The hulls are very nearly double ended, close to identical at each end. More about this style of construction.

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The Fast Canoes

The construction of the Vietnamese Mekong speed boats is actually very similar to the typical barrel stave boats that carry most of the region’s cargo, but their design is very different. These fast canoes range from small boats about eighteen feet long but hardly three feet of beam, up to fairly substantial boats about forty feet long and as much as six or seven feet of beam. The largest even have small cabins aft, or at least sturdy sun shades.

The essential differences between the typical freighters and the canoes, of whatever size, are:

• Obviously, the canoes are long and slender in comparison with the barrel boats.
• Although they are built on a flat bottom plank, the canoes do have distinct sharp stems to carry their side planks.
• The canoes are not double ended. They have sharp, sleek bows forward and sterns cut off square to produce a high speed flat run and a steeply reversed, raked transom.
• The canoes have substantial side decks full length and high coamings around the long cockpit.
• The canoes are all brightly painted, usually in combinations of blue and white with occasional trim of other colors as well.
• Although the vast majority of these boats are still traditionally built by hand from wood, you will see a few of the smaller size that are fiberglass. The fiberglass makes a very serviceable boat and we will probably see many more in years to come.

The canoes are heavily powered compared to the freighters and always powered by longtail outboards, some of them outrageously big. This requires substantial structure in the stern sections, with cross beams and reinforcement. The obvious problem that comes from having a very skinny boat with a heavy engine high above the hull is that the boat has a relatively strong desire to turn wrong way up. Hence the very low stern deck over the reinforcing, and the sloping transom, both designed to get the motor as low as possible. The deck and coaming structure also add substantially to the stiffness and strength of the hull (besides the obvious advantage of keeping the water out of the narrow, open hull). In effect it turns the entire boat into an engineered girder .

You would expect a speedboat to be engaged in the passenger trade as a normal thing, but besides passengers, a lot of these boats work at more mundane trades as well: bringing produce to the city markets for example, or even hauling livestock.

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