Wooden Boats on the Mekong II

December 05-January 2006

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by James Michael Dorsey

Setting the keel.

In the past year, I made two separate trips to Vietnam to document life on the seventh largest river in the world. Both times I went by small boat from the river’s mouth at the South China Sea, north to Phnom Penh Cambodia. [For James’ article on dugouts that navigate these inland waterways see Oct/Nov 2005.]

I am an avid kayaker and my intention was to paddle at some point on the Mekong, but that was not to be. I never saw a kayak, and the currents were far too swift for even the most experienced paddler. The wooden boats that I did find were remarkably similar to kayaks in many respects. Most were less than 20 feet long and were either paddled or pushed along with a pole, usually by a single boat handler. Some used a double paddle technique much like sculling.

Between the tiny homemade dugouts and large engine-powered river merchants, there is another type of boat that is the most numerous on the river. They are called Ghe Noc in Vietnamese which roughly translates as ‘sewn plank’ boats.

It is believed that these boats originated around Hue but no records were kept and no plans exist since boat building in Vietnam has always been a family tradition passed on from father to son, with each boat being an individual piece of craftsmanship. These particular boats are an ancient art form that is known to have existed in only a few places and is all but lost now. They may very well predate the written word.

The original Ghe Noc were literally ‘sewn’ together using no nails. Today’s versions use nails when they can be found, but in Vietnam such items are an extreme luxury. Most of the boats today are fitted tongue-in-groove and held in place with perfectly fitted wooden pegs in hand drilled holes. This may sound archaic and even un- seaworthy, but centuries of doing the actual work have produced boat-building masters who have a magical touch.

With this type of boat rapidly disappearing, a Washington State boat builder named John Doney founded an organization to keep the old ways alive. The Vietnam Wooden Boat Foundation takes care to document the planning and building of such boats under the watchful eye of an octogenarian master from Hue, Mr. Quang Le, one of the last surviving Ghe Noc builders.

In 2004 Mr. Le was commissioned by the foundation to build an original, 18 foot, hand sewn boat. This boat and a smaller woven ‘basket boat’ (five feet in diameter), were shipped to Port Townsend, Washington in September of this year to act as centerpieces for the annual Wooden Boat Festival.

Steam bending planks.

The basket boat, called a Ghe Thung Chai, is an even rarer version that requires special sculling techniques to keep it moving in a straight line rather than just twirling around on the water. Simpler to make than the plank boats, these basket boats are still in occasional use along the Mekong as dinghies or to tend fishing traps. I saw one small girl paddling a plastic wash tub out to her family’s fish traps. It was in a rather swift current but her course never faltered. She obviously had the proper paddling technique learned in a Ghe Thung Chai to keep a circular boat moving straight ahead.

Of course, the larger boats on Vietnam’s waterways are now commercially constructed to keep up with modern needs. Old handmade boats simply cannot stand up to the vibration of an engine or the increased speeds that propel them through the water, but the small personal boats that ply the inland waterways today are a morphed version of the Ghe Noc, improvised and adapted to each individual’s needs. Overall, they are remarkably similar in design and construction.

During my two trips up the river, I was able to go aboard several of these boats, often which had more than one generation living aboard. I always looked for nails in the construction and found a total of 22 from almost two dozen boats visited. In most cases, I was astounded at the close fitting construction of the planks. It reminded me of the Incan stonework from Peru, where each stone is so perfectly fitted that it’s impossible to pass even a credit card between them. Even the poorest of these boat people had a tremendous sense of pride in their vessels and enjoyed showing them off to me.

I spent one afternoon with two fishermen, photographing them as they laid out a keel, cut it and began the bending process over an open fire.

They began with a hand drawn design on a center plank. While they did have some tools and even a power saw, they had no rulers or straight edges. They had a length of string with knots tied at varying distances and this is all they used to make their measurements. Sometimes they simply eyeballed it and each time their calculations were remarkably accurate

Paddling plank boats is the way of life on the Mekong River.

Once the keel piece was cut, the wood was beveled. Two side pieces were cut to form the three-piece keel and then the wood was heated over an open fire to assist in bending it to shape. This was done by placing one end of the keel under a rock to hold it down while the length was laid over a sawhorse and pressure applied until it met the desired shape.

When these pieces were deemed ready, the boatmen brought out a gourd wrapped in leather and quite worn looking. They heated the gourd over the fire, then using their fingers and wood scraps, they dipped what they told me was tree sap from the gourd and applied it all over the seams to seal the joints.

Next the keel and side planks were laid out beside each other and holes were marked for drilling. They had no actual drill but used what looked like an old iron wedge. This was hammered into the wood about an inch and then twisted around, over and over, until a hole had been pushed through the wood. After that they took a short piece of rusty barbed wire and passed it through the hole, with a man on each side drawing it back and forth slowly to sand off any rough spots.

In the old Ghe Noc, once the holes were drilled, the boat was sewn together using braided strips of rattan. Today the rattan has been replaced by wooden pegs, hand cut and hammered into place.

I saw one small girl paddling a plastic wash tub out to her family’s fish traps. It was in a rather swift current but her course never faltered. She obviously had the proper paddling technique developed for traditional ‘basket boats’.

When the body of the boat is finished, interior work such as seats or storage areas vary according to the builder’s needs. No two boats are exactly the same and there may be, in fact, large differences in the building process, but this is basically how the majority of the smaller boats on Vietnam’s inland waterways are made.

The people who live along the Mekong River and its tributaries are remarkably adapted to this waterworld. I have watched them repair a broken paddle with woven reeds as a wrapping and once I saw a fisherman stuffing grass into a waterline hole after two older, worm-eaten boats had collided.

Wood worms are a serious problem in the warm waters of Southeast Asia but they do not attack bamboo, so the more industrious folk will use countless slices of bamboo as a hull covering, adhering it to the boat with tree sap. This does not last very long, though, so it’s only a temporary solution to a never-ending problem.

Needless to say, these boats need constant maintenance, and repairing them is as much a part of daily routine as fishing or eating.

When it comes to building small, personal boats, the Vietnamese are unsurpassed masters. The sheer number of these boats on the river is staggering and a tribute to human industry.

© James Dorsey is a widely traveled freelance writer/photographer, and a marine naturalist for the American Cetacean Society. For more information on Vietnam’s wooden boats go to www.vietnamboats.org, the website for the Vietnam Wooden Boat Foundation, located at 425 Washington Street, Port Townsend, Washington 98368.