Sewn boats in the Qatar Museums collection, Doha: baggāra s and kettuvallam s as records of a western Indian Ocean technological tradition
2020; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 49; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/1095-9270.12422
ISSN1095-9270
AutoresJohn P. Cooper, Alessandro Ghidoni, Chiara Zazzaro, Luigi Ombrato,
Tópico(s)Maritime Security and History
ResumoVernacular sewn boats from southern Iran and Kerala, India, in the collection of Qatar Museums are documented and their construction described. The Iranian baggāras are unique preservations of sewn boats from the Arabian-Persian Gulf, notable for their previously undocumented keel-garboard sewing technique and extensive use of bitumen coatings. Comparison between individual boats enables conclusions to be drawn about the builders' conception, as well as variation within the type. The Keralite kettuvallams represent an ongoing vernacular tradition that is nevertheless poorly documented or preserved in museum contexts. Construction drawings, naval-lines drawings, and 3D photogrammetry models are provided for all vessels. Barcos cosidos en la colección de Museos de Qatar en Doha: baggāras y kettuvallams como registros de la una tradición tecnológica del del Océano Índico Occidental Este artículo documenta y describe la construcción de las embarcaciones cosidas vernáculas del sur de Irán y Kerala, India, en la colección de los Museos de Qatar. Las baggāras iraníes son preservaciones únicas de embarcaciones cosidas del Golfo Arábigo-Pérsico. Son notables por la técnica de cosido de las tracas de aparadura a la quilla y el uso extendido de recubrimiento de bitumen que previamente no habían sido documentados. La comparación de embarcaciones individuales permite llegar a conclusiones sobre la concepción de los constructores sobre los barcos, así como sobre la variación dentro del tipo. Las kettuvallams keralitas representan una tradición vernácula aún existente que sin embargo ha sido escasamente documentada o preservada en contextos museográficos. El artículo incluye dibujos de construcción, planos de líneas y modelos fotogramétricos 3D de todas las embarcaciones. Palabras clave: Dhow, baggāra, kettuvallam, barcos cosidos, Qatar, India, Kerala, Océano Índico 卡塔尔博物馆 (多哈) 藏品中的缝制船:记录西印度洋技术传统的巴加拉和克图瓦拉姆 卡塔尔博物馆对来自伊朗南部和印度喀拉拉邦的土著缝制船藏品登记造册并对其建造方法进行了描述。伊朗的巴加拉船是阿拉伯——波斯湾唯一保存下来的缝制船, 特别是未见于记载的龙骨——龙骨翼板的缝制技术以及沥青涂层的广泛应用。通过对不同船只的比较可导出造船者的建造构想及得出同船型内存在个体差异的结论。喀拉拉的克图瓦拉姆代表了一种持续的土著传统, 但其却缺乏记录, 也很少被博物馆收藏。我们为所有馆藏船只制作了结构图、型线图和3D摄影测量模型。 关键词: 阿拉伯三角帆船, 巴加拉, 克图瓦拉姆, 缝制船, 卡塔尔, 印度, 喀拉拉邦, 印度洋 卡塔爾博物館 (多哈) 藏品中的縫制船:記錄西印度洋技術傳統的巴加拉和克圖瓦拉姆 卡塔爾博物館對來自伊朗南部和印度喀拉拉邦的土著縫制船藏品登記造冊並對其建造方法進行了描述。伊朗的巴加拉船是阿拉伯——波斯灣唯一保存下來的縫制船, 特別是未見于記載的龍骨——龍骨翼板的縫制技術以及瀝青塗層的廣泛應用。通過對不同船只的比較可導出造船者的建造構想及得出同船型內存在個體差異的結論。喀拉拉的克圖瓦拉姆代表了一種持續的土著傳統, 但其卻缺乏記錄, 也很少被博物館收藏。我們爲所有館藏船只制作了結構圖、型線圖和3D攝影測量模型。 關鍵詞: 阿拉伯三角帆船, 巴加拉, 克圖瓦拉姆, 縫制船, 卡塔爾, 印度, 喀拉拉邦, 印度洋 Recent acquisitions by Qatar Museums (QM), the state museums, archaeology and heritage organization of Qatar, have added a number of sewn boats to its existing collection of watercraft from the Arabian-Persian Gulf and Oman. Five are fishing baggāras (Arabic , pl. or ) from the Gulf, while two others are a variety of kettuvallam from Kerala, India. The acquisitions are a rare instance of preservation of significant examples of a broadly western Indian Ocean tradition that is today limited only to parts of India (Moreland, 1939a; 1939b: 63–64; Hornell, 1941; 1942: 22; Hourani, 1995 (1951): 92–93; Bowen, 1952: 202; Prins, 1982; 1986: 64–94, 100–111; Adams, 1985; Kentley, 1985; 1996; Kapitän, 1987: 135–148; 2009: 66 ff.; Kentley and Gunaratne, 1987: 35–48; Shihab, 1987: 41–58; Varadarajan, 1993; 1998; Vosmer, 1993; 2005: 236; 2019: 305; Prados, 1996: 99; Flecker, 2000: 199–200; 2001: 336–337; 2011: 101; McGrail, 2001: 71–72; Agius, 2002: 78–81; 2008: 138–140, 148–150; Rajamanickam, 2004: 68–71, 87–88, 139–140, 187–192; Camelin, 2006: 103–108; Ransley, 2009: vol. 1, 88–125, vol. 2, 10–127 (passim); 2012; Shaikh et al., 2011; Jansen van Rensburg, 2016: 114–115; Burningham, 2019; Dixon, 2019; Fenwick, 2015; 2019; Ghidoni, 2019: 375; Shaikh, 2019: 377; Staples and Blue, 2019; Weismann et al., 2019). The baggāras in particular are extremely rare. They are the first sewn versions of this type of vessel known to academia—it was previously recorded only as a nailed vessel—and are probably the only predominantly sewn boats from within the Gulf held in any museum. They complement four sewn kambārīs held by museums in Oman as representative of the wider sewn tradition of Arabia (Weismann et al., 2019). In one respect—the attaching of both port and starboard garboard strakes to the keel in a single, continuous stitching process—baggāras are unique in the scholarly record. The rarity and importance of the baggāras is augmented by the extensive presence of bitumen on the hulls, applied as a waterproofing, anti-fouling, and otherwise protective coating. While the use of bitumen on seagoing and river craft is attested in the region from ancient times (Cleuziou and Tosi, 1994; Potts, 1995; Vosmer, 1996; Carter, 2002), its recent use on plank-built vessels—whether in the region's sewn or clenched-nail traditions—remains little examined. We apply common English usage in referring to vessels with timbers bound together by continuous cordage as 'sewn'. This closely reflects Arabic, where the root kh-y-ṭ () denotes the action of joining (i.e. sewing) both textiles and boat timbers (Wehr, 1976: 267–268; Agius, 2008: 161–168; al-Salimi and Staples, 2019: 63–65). It less effectively reflects Malayalam, where the term kettuvallam means 'tied (or bound) boat', the action kettuka, meaning 'tying' (Ransley, 2009: 5 (§5), 18; 2012: 247–248) or 'binding tight' (Gundert, 2013 (1872): 205). This article is the outcome of fieldwork that had as its primary objective the detailed documentation of QM's sewn watercraft for the first time. The principal visual outputs—construction drawings, naval-lines drawings, and 3D digital models based on photogrammetry—are presented (Figs 1-7; see also supplementary materials). The fieldwork further sought to understand the processes and techniques deployed in building the craft, as well as the variety occurring among them. A further objective—to be addressed in a separate publication—was to compare the use of bitumen on the hulls of the baggāras with fragments recently found at Fuwairit in north-eastern Qatar by an archaeological team from University College London-Qatar led by Robert Carter: these may relate to nautical activity (Carter, pers. comm., 23 November 2019). QM kindly granted access to the vessels at its Dhow Section in Doha in April 2019, preparing and positioning the boats for survey. The authors undertook a programme of 3D photogrammetric survey and close visual inspection of the QM vessels. The authors carried out three photogrammetric surveys per boat using a different camera each time: a Nikon D310 digital SLR, a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 II compact camera, and a GoPro Hero 3+ action camera. The triplication enabled comparison of the data obtained across the devices and selection of the best for the intended use, as well as mitigating against camera failure. The two-stage process began with the team taking series of overlapping photographs of each vessel from a relatively fixed distance in a sequence of orbits around the boat. The limited space between the vessels necessitated the use of wide-angle lenses (Tamron 10–24 mm, 1:3.5–4.5 on the Nikon camera): the Metashape Pro photogrammetry software1 is capable of correcting the resulting distortion (Fiorillo et al., 2016: 69–70). The authors took as many as 767 photographs gathering their first set of photographs, for baggāra 1, but later reduced this to 418 for the kettuvallam. The second stage involved processing the photographs in Metashape Pro, which generates 3D point clouds from the still images (Yamafune et al., 2017: 3). The files produced can be scaled and measured with a high degree of accuracy (cf Martorelli et al., 2014: 91). The authors reverse-engineered conventional construction drawings from the photogrammetry models. Screenshots were taken of orthographic views of the plan, profile, bow, and stern of the 3D models, plus a longitudinal and three lateral cross-sections. These were then imported into one or other vector-drawing software programs (Affinity Designer for Cooper's drawings; VectorWorks for Ghidoni's; Autocad for Zazzaro's), and the visible structure traced. Areas of blinding, especially under the fore and quarter decks, presented a challenge to tracing, as did the dark bitumen colour: these were mitigated by continued reference to still photographs and field notes. The final drawings are presented in Figures 1-4. The principal dimensions and ratios, plus comparisons with other western Indian Ocean sewn craft are presented in Table 1. The conventions of naval-lines drawings rest on the presumption of a longitudinal reflectional symmetry in the hull that few vernacular vessels have in reality: modelling the buttock and half-breadth lines of only one side of the hull, following convention, would therefore generate a misleading representation of moulded form. Meanwhile, the 3D mesh models that were generated through the photogrammetry process provide the necessary basis for any future hydrodynamic modelling of the actual hulls. Instead, the authors generated 'edge-shaped' lines drawings for the baggāras, presenting an idealized representation of the hull that is nevertheless extrapolated from actual dimensions: essentially, any mutual deviations in port-starboard symmetry were mathematically 'smoothed out' (Figs 5A-B and 6A). This approach preserves the particular polyhedral geometry of the hull, and can be seen as presenting the underlying 'archetypal' concept of the hull, while at the same time excluding irregularities introduced in the execution of the build (Ombrato et al., 2020). For example, the builder of baggāra 3 has inserted a small triangular plank towards the bow in order to achieve the desired degree of curvature. The lines drawings were produced initially by creating actual curves from the mesh models generated from the 3D photogrammetry. The mesh was divided into eight equal parts and sliced to produce seven each of half-breadth lines, buttocks, and waterlines. As expected, the resulting lines proved highly asymmetrical. In order to obtain the final 'edge-shaped' representation, the principal 'edges'—angles found along the planking seams of the hull—were traced onto the mesh model, before starting the slicing. The curvatures of each side were then mirrored, overlapped, and mediated with the curve on the opposite side, and the final edge-shaped hull lines created. Because the drawings simply mediate the asymmetries, they remain a valid basis for generating moulds in any reconstruction scenario. The less faceted and more symmetrical hull of the kettuvallam allowed the authors to produce only the conventional form of naval-lines drawing (Fig. 6B). Little is known of the provenience of the sewn baggāras, except that QM acquired them in Hormuzgan province, southern Iran, in 2013. Whether sewn or nailed, vessels known by this name were in the previous century found on both sides of the Gulf and in the Gulf of Oman between Musandam and the northern Batinah coast (Lorimer, 1915: 2323; Howarth, 1977: 46; Shihāb, 1987: 53; Vosmer, 1997: 219; al-Hijji, 2001: 11–12; Weismann et al., 2014: 418). An 1898 model of what appears to be a large sewn baggāra from the Horniman Museum, London bears a label saying it operated throughout the Gulf.2 Agius (2002: 106–107) traces the word baggāra through text as far as the 18th century CE, and suggests the term might be Persian—although al-Salimi and Staples (2019: 48–49) argue it might relate to the Arabic word baqara (), meaning 'cow', given the vessel's somewhat bovine stem-head. In any case, textual mentions are problematic because they might refer to a variety of vessel types and construction methods. Native speakers apply the term to indicate the vessels described here or a range of similar, predominantly nailed, boats from south-eastern Arabia—the already mentioned 'Emirati baqqārah', the shāhūf (), zārūqa (), and battīl (), which vary in length from 4.5–20 m (Lorimer, 1915: 2323; Howarth, 1977: 45–47; Facey, 1979: 142; Shihāb, 1987: 113–117; Vosmer, 1997: 219–230; al-Hijji, 2001: 13; Agius, 2002: 105; Weismann, 2005; Weismann et al., 2014). These have in common a double-ended hull, straight, raking stem, stern fin (fashīn) and angled, two-part keel with a rocker aft (Vosmer, 2005: 306). Some, such as the Omani battīl and badan, had their stem and stern posts sewn (Facey, 1979: 144; Shihāb, 1987: 53; Agius, 2002: 111), perhaps as an intermediate stage in a sewn-to-nailed transition. The QM baggarās have strong similarities to the Omani zārūqa and battīl: fashīn shape and hull profile resemble those of the former, while their size and sewn through-beams resemble the latter. In the Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and more generally in the southern and western shores of the Gulf, smaller baggāras—such as those in the QM collection—were used for coastal fishing, and were generally rowed. The larger versions (cf Fig. 8) were used for pearling and carrying cargo, and had one or two masts and a crew of 15–30 (Lorimer, 1915: 2323). In Oman, the baggāra of the mid to late 20th century was a medium-sized vessel of nailed construction, ranging in length 25–35 ft (7.6–10.7 m) used for fishing and cargo (Facey, 1979: 143; Agius, 2002: 105). Its geographical distribution—between that of the battīl of Musandam to the north and the badan of the coast of southern Batinah and Muscat to the south—is reflected in commonalities in shape and construction with both these vessels (Vosmer, 1997: 230). Iconographic evidence for baggāra-like vessels is limited. The gharookuh illustrated by Pâris while visiting Muscat in 1839 (1841: 13–14, Plate 5), is among the earliest: he says it occurred in the Gulf and travelled as far as Kerala. It has features common to both the baggāra and battīl, such as the raking bow, fashin, and angled keel; however, the stem-head makes it closer to the former. Although the Horniman Museum model is labelled only as an 'Arab Vessel', Weismann (unpublished report 2005) identifies it as a baggāra on the basis of the stem-head, even though its fashīn resembles that of a battīl. Evidence for the existence of baggāra-like vessels in Qatar itself comes from the rock carvings of vessels in profile at Jabal Jusasiyah in the north-west of the peninsula (Kapel, 1983: 53–55, fig. 9-11; Facey, 1987: 200–201, 211, fig. 4). These have been recently dated to 235 years before present (Hassiba et al., 2012: 13). QM acquired the kettuvallams in 2012 from a private individual, the only provenience being that they came from Kerala. Photographic evidence suggests that they are amphidromous. There is a dearth of published literature on Keralite sewn vessels, despite it being one of the last strongholds of sewn construction in the Indian Ocean. Rajamanickam's study of Indian watercraft (2004: 68–71, 102) lists a number of 'stitched plank-built boat[s] without keel' in Kerala, but the QM boats correlate to none of them precisely. Other, earlier studies on Indian watercraft, such as by Edye (1834), Pâris (1841), and Hornell (1920, 1946) focus on vessels from other Indian regions, while Hornell states—incorrectly—that vessels from Kerala can be divided into dugouts and planked 'pseudo-dugouts', remarking (bizarrely) for the latter that 'there is so little variation … that there is almost nothing to say of them' (1920: 150). What little recent research there has focused on riverine vessels, such as those of the backwaters around Alleppey (Ransley, 2009), or sewn boats from neighbouring regions (Kentley, 1985; 2003a; 2003b; Shaikh et al., 2011; Fenwick, 2015; Shaikh, 2019). Rajamanickam's description of what he calls a kettuvallam (2004: 68–69) bears some similarity to the QM vessels: both are double-ended and sewn, with a crescent-shaped profile and U-shaped cross-section. Neither have a proper keel: the flat, central 'keel plank' has the same thickness as the rest of the hull. The stems and sterns of both vessels are fastened only to the top strakes. Rajamanickam says his kettuvallam can measure up to 20 m in length, while only 1.35 m wide and 0.9 m deep at midships. Frames, spaced around 1 m apart, give the hull structural strength, as do a series of thwarts. Rajamanickam provides only one small photograph and a lines plan to illustrate his kettuvallam (2004: 70, fig. 11, 116, pl. 19). Unfortunately, his photograph gives limited information and the purported lines drawing is of an entirely different vessel. This lack of information makes our identification of the kettuvallams by that name tentative. The term is generic for a vessel fastened with cordage (Ransley, 2009: 18; 2010: 429). Early Tamil and more recent Malayalam works of literature mention also the term but provide no details of form (Greeshmalatha, 2013: 33; Rajamanickam, 2004: 64). Keralite fishermen use the kettuvallam for coastal fishing. They launch through the surf and propel the vessel with oars, steering with a paddle (Hornell, 1920: 150; Rajamanickan, 2004: 69). Patrice Pomey briefly describes kettuvallams in two articles (2012; 2011: 138–139) and in a documentary film (Pomey and Raymond, 2012: minute 08.30). His interest in these boats is primarily directed at their sewing technique, which is very similar to that of Greek archaic sewn boats found in Marseille, France (Pomey, 2012: 126–127, fig. 17). In both articles Pomey states that kettuvallam are from the Malabar coast and identical in technique to those of the Lakshadweep islands. The documentary provides unique evidence of maintenance and construction tools. The QM baggāras are in varying states of repair (Fig. 8). The three presented in this article have a high degree of structural integrity, but show deterioration around key areas of stitching, in particular along internal and external portions of their garboard-keel jointing, and also at their posts. Plank stitching and its wadding is also worn internally in areas of greatest traffic.3 Baggāra 3's prow timber—the term we use to designate the carved, decorated, and possibly sacrificial timber that establishes the vessel's bow profile—is broken off (Fig. 3). Baggāra 1 showed signs of dry rot on some planking. The two baggāras not discussed in this paper are in significantly poorer condition. These were wrapped in geotextile at the time of the survey, and the authors did not inspect them in detail: however, their keels were visibly weakened by past infestations of marine boring organisms. The two Indian kettuvallams, meanwhile, are in a robust state.4 The timbers are largely intact and show no signs of deterioration beyond general wear; the stitching and wadding remain in place and tight throughout. The QM sewn boats are built according to variants of a shell-conceived system of sewing and lashing that is one of two principal western Indian Ocean boatbuilding traditions—the other being the clenched-nail system (Hourani, 1995 (1951): 92–97; Yajima, 1976: 25–27; Howarth, 1977: 20; Shihāb, 1987: 41–112; al-Hijji, 2001: 44–76; Agius, 2002: 143–145). In the sewn tradition, hull planking is joined by continuous stitching along a flush seam, usually leaving a |X|X|X|X| pattern inboard, with plugged holes. In the Arabian tradition—and, on the evidence of the baggāras, the Iranian—the planking is aligned using wooden dowels fixed into the faying surfaces (Bowen, 1952: 220–221; Prins, 1986: 87–89, 100–109; Prados, 1996: 101; Vosmer, 1997: 233–234; Weismann et al., 2019: 354–356). Many Indian and Sri Lankan sewn boats do not have dowels (Kentley, 2003a, 142; 2003b, 174–175; Fenwick, 2015, 393; 2019: 389); builders sometimes make use of plank edge-grooves instead (Shaikh et al. 2011: 152).5 The 8th-century-CE Phanom-Surin and 9th-century-CE Belitung wrecks also have no dowels visible in their hull planking (Abhirada Komoot, pers. comm. 29 April 2020; Flecker, 2000: 200), although the Phanom-Surin wreck has not yet been fully investigated. Outboard, the planking stitches on the QM vessels are set into vertical rebates between the stitch holes, creating a | | | | | pattern; inboard, the stitching is over a continuous pad of wadding; this is vegetal in the baggāras, and in the Indian kettuvallams is composed of a fine netting of unknown material. Framing timbers are fixed with lashings in both vessel types. The inferred construction sequence of the baggāra is as follows. The construction process begins with the builders laying a keel comprising two end-butted timbers with a broadly U-shaped or rounded-trapezoidal cross-section, similar to the sewn kambārī in the Museum of the Frankincense Land, Oman (Weismann et al., 2019: 349), the Goan revenchem vodem (Shaikh et al., 2011: 151) or East African mtepe (Prins,1986: 84). The keel's longer forward timber represents about two-thirds of the total keel length6 and has an upward-curving forefoot that joins an outer ('false') stem. The keel's shorter aft timber rakes upward—at 12° on baggāra 1, and at 10° on baggāras 2 and 3—and is slightly curved at its forward end (Figs 1-3). The internal joinery of these two vital timbers is unknown. It is improbable they are simply end-butted, given the forces in play during both construction and life of the baggāra, but there is no indication of any internal joinery visible externally. Likewise, the presence of stitching and wadding inboard and outboard along the keel's length—together with the in situ garboards—made it impossible to ascertain whether the builder of the QM baggāras rabbeted the keel to receive the garboard strakes, something common in regional clench-nailed boatbuilding (Millward, 1951: 198–199; Hawkins, 1977: 102; Howarth, 1977: 63; Facey, 1979: 158; al-Hijji, 2001: 44–49; Agius, 2002: 150–153) and also seen on the sewn battīl and at least some Omani kambārīs (Vosmer, 1997: 224; 2005: 332; 2019: 309), the Yemeni sewn sanbūq (Prados, 1996: 100), and the Goan revenchem vodem (Zeeshan Shaikh, pers. comm., 19 October 2019). The fact that a portion of the upper face of the baggāra's keel steps outwards suggests unseen rabbets (Weismann et al., 2019: 350). An alternative explanation might be that the builders carved longitudinal lugs along the keel's upper face to prevent the garboard strakes from slipping inward, an approach adopted by the builders of the Belitung wreck (Flecker, 2000: 202), but with no recent ethnographic parallel. The existence of these steps rules out the possibility that the QM baggāras' garboard strakes are simply butted against a bevelled upper corner of the keel. Weismann et al. (2019: 350) infer that bevelling is 'probably' the configuration on the four museum-held kambārīs in Oman. However, they note (2019: 343–344) that the two kambārīs on display at the Fatah al-Khair Centre in Sur, Oman, were all built by the same builder for museum display, rather than as working boats. Weismann suggests this might be a factor in their divergence from kambārīs observed ethnographically (pers. comm., 24 October 2019). Another feature of the garboard-keel jointing in the QM baggāras is the sequence of obliquely cut wooden dowel heads apparent along the length of the keel—at the rate of one per keel-garboard stitch (Fig. 9A). One function would have been to hold the shaped garboards in place in readiness for stitching, but their close spacing suggests a long-term fixing role. By measuring the ends of the dowels cut flush with the keel's moulded faces, it is possible to infer their angle of insertion and calculate their paths through the keel. Amidships, for example, the dowels of baggāra 3 form angles of between 33˚ and 40˚ with the keel's moulded side. This angle deviates too much from the vertical to allow it to fasten the garboard on the same side of the hull: rather, it suggests that the builders of the baggāras drove the dowels diagonally through the lower edge of one garboard and through the keel, emerging on the keel's opposite moulded face. The use of dowels to align and anchor the garboard is also seen on the working kambārī from Taqa in the Oman Across the Ages Museum (OAAM) in Manah, Oman (Weismann, pers. comm., 24 October 2019). Professor Dionisius A. Agius of the University of Exeter also showed the authors a photograph he took of a kambārī in Taqa in 1996 that also shows such dowels. The builders of QM baggāras 1 and 2 set the stem at around 38° to the keel, while that of baggāra 3 was set at a more raking 35°. The nature of the joinery fastening the keel to the stem posts—the 'false' outer one and, where present, the inner one—is again unknown due to its concealment. However, at least some use of oblique dowels is evident on the joinery of the false outer stem to the keel on baggāra 2—including, apparently, some pegged dowelling (whether intentional or coincidental). The visible heads of horizontal dowels driven perpendicularly into the keel alongside this joint on baggāra 1 also suggest these are acting as locks to an unseen internal joint (Fig. 9B). In comparison, Flecker (2000: 201–202) reports a lightweight mortice and tenon arrangement in the keel-to-stem joinery of the Belitung wreck, which he suggests was for initial alignment rather than structural strength. In the sewn revenchem vodem of Goa, meanwhile, the stem is obliquely stop-tenon-jointed into the keel before the planking is laid: the joint is also locked, using a 'small wooden block' (Shaikh et al., 2011: 151). A parallel for the construction of the baggāra bow section may be Vosmer's interpretation (1997: 229) of the sewing-on of the false outer stem of the otherwise-nailed Omani battīl, the hood-ends of which are sewn together before the post is affixed. In the case of QM baggāra 2, the hood-ends appear to have been brought together around a fine internal stem of trapezoidal cross-section. No comparable internal stem was visible on baggāras 1 and 3, although these might have been concealed beneath stitching and wadding. By analogy with Vosmer's battīl interpretation, it would have been after the stitching together of the hood-ends that the false outer stem was affixed to the bow: by means of a second run of stitching. Prados (1996: 103) also observed the practice of attaching the outer stem after the stitching together of the hood-ends in the Yemeni sewn sanbūq. Meanwhile, Chittick (1980: 299–300) notes that the Somali builders of the beden added the stem and stern posts after the third strake had been fixed. On baggāra 2, the false outer stem is rabbeted at its upper end to accommodate the hood-ends, but lower down it is simply butted (Fig. 9C). A further corroboration of the battīl analogy is the presence on all three of the QM baggāras of a short run of outboard stitching running back from the stem for about 0.30 m along the seam between the garboard and second strakes (Fig. 9D). Vosmer (1997: 229) observed this same feature on the false stem on the otherwise-nailed Omani battīl. This is unlike the approach taken by builders of the Indian masula, who join the stem and stern posts and hood-ends together in a single sewing action (Kentley, 1985: 307). The lack of visibility of the internal jointing again hampered interpretation of the builders' approach(es) to bringing the hull planking together at the stern. In baggāra 1, and probably also 3, the builders butted the hood-ends directly against the forward moulded face of the first plank of the fashīn—the upright 'fin' at the stern—and stitched this assemblage together (Fig. 9E). However, in the case of baggāra 2, the builders brought the hood-ends together at a dedicated, though still lightweight, sternpost that is set along the rake of the hood-ends (Fig. 9F): at the time of inspection, there was no surviving stitching holding this joinery together, but holes indicate it had once existed. The planks of the fashīn are aligned using concealed dowels, and the whole held in place by two cheekpieces, the lower one lashed in place, and the upper one nailed. The planking of the baggāras is c.25 mm—being 1 inch—thick with a surface kerf that is straight and parallel but of variable spacing, consistent with use of a band saw (Williams, 2008: 114). The Imperial dimension and machine-cutting technique are suggestive of a long-distance commercial timber-supply chain. The bituminous coatings on the planking made it difficult to establish how the planking had been cut, although the authors suppose the through-and-through method was used (Kentley, 1985: 307). The species of timber used for the planking is/are unknown. The fayed edges of the planking are largely obscured by neat seams, wadding, and bitumen, making close inspection of any tooling difficult. However, a gaping scarf joint on baggāra 2 revealed a variability on the joint's faying surfaces consistent with use of an adze or chisel—common tools in regional boatbuilding (Agius, 2002: 141; al-Salimi and Staples, 2019: 189). The same joint also revealed the deployment of dowels driven obliquely from one plank-end to the other, from outboard to inboard, securing the scarf. Meanwhile, the necessary tapering of the breadth of the planking along its length to realize the overall hull shape, as well as variation of the angle of the planking edges to achieve watertight seams, would also have required the skilled use of an adze, or perhaps a plane. Because the builder cannot access sewn seams after the stitching is complete, the kind of caulking seen in the region's nailed vessels cannot be applied: instead, luting is necessary (see below). All three baggāras show their builders' preference for diagonal scarf jointing of the planking (Fig. 10), in contrast to the butt joints seen, for example, on the Belitung (Flecker 2000: 206) and Phanom-Surin wrecks (First Regional Office of Fine Arts, 2016: 45, fig. 45; Guy, 2017: 179, 181: figs 1, 2). They also show a broadly similar conception in overall planking arrangement: with three full strakes immediately above the keel, two immediately below the sheer line, and the roundness of
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