At the beginning of the 21st century, the inland waterways and boatyards of southwestern India remain little explored by nautical archaeologists and ethnographers.   Perhaps the best-known traditional construction method of the area is sewing, a technique whose antiquity can be traced back to the late second millennium BC (Pedersen, 2004a).  Despite its abandonment elsewhere around the Indian Ocean littoral in the 20th century (Casson, 1971: 9; Agius, 2005: 9, 21), sewn boats are still built in southern India on both west and east coasts indicating a conservative traditionalism (Kentley, 1996: 247).   While the sewn boats of Kerala need further study, a brief exploration of the area indicates that at least one other method of construction survives in the Keralan backwaters: clenching. 

My involvement in the recording of the Kadakkarapally Boat in 2003 led to my encounter with this type of construction.  In a boatyard along one of the backwater passages south of Cochin, somewhere near to Chertala (Fig. 1), I observed a small craft with what have been traditionally known in boat-building as “rivets and roves,” but with evolving terminologies McGrail suggests should be more properly called clenched nails with roves, or perhaps simply clenching (McGrail, 2004: 152).

The boat with the bow in the foreground.

A view inside the after half of the boat.

For more information click the article title below:

"A Clench-Fastened Boat in Kerala, India." International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (2010) 39.1: 110-115.

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