15 Boat-Building and Seamanship in Classic Philippine Society. by Wiliam Henry Scott Fig. 1 Artist's reconstruction of classic Philippine caracoa, by Raoul Castro, PLANK-BUILT BOATS IN of barrio Libertad, which had been The author is an American specialist THE PHILIPPINES1 discovered by unauthorized "pot- on Philippine history and culture. Dr. hunters" looking for marketable Scott now teaches at a college in in October 1976, Butuan City Chinese trade porcelain. The find Sagada Mountain Province The article was promptly announced in the is reprinted from Philippine Studies, Engineer Proceso S. Gonzales ex- Vol 30, 1982. cavated four planks of an ancient public press, using Antonio Pigafet- Philippine boat in sitio Ambangan ta's early sixteenth-century Italian 16 spelling, balanghai for barangay, presumably because that author mentions one that belonged to the Rajah of Butuan's brother. Dr. Jesus Peralta, Curator of the Anthropology Division of the Na- tional Museum, then took charge of salvage archaeology at the site, and ...the Butuan discoveries Research Assistant Leonard Alegre subsequently removed the planks for (are) one of the most chemical treatment and preservation. Just one year later, nine planks from another vessel of the same significant events in type were discovered a kilometer to the southeast of the first find, and were systematically salvaged and Philippine archaeology... (and) removed to Manila by National Museum researcher Cecilio Salcedo. There they have been treated by a marine archaeology as well. preservative process known as PEG — i.e., polythyline glycol — and will eventually be reassembled for public display. The location of the two finds appears to be a former shoreline — even a harbor waterfront — of Tokyo from wood samples, thick, and pegged to the keel every subject to the strong currents of make the Butuan discoveries one of twelve cm. by hardwood pins or one of the mouths of the Butuan the most significant events in Phi- dowels nineteen cm. long, driven River which evidently washed away lippine archaeology. Moreover, an into holes in the edge of each board. all the disintegrating parts of the even earlier date for the first find — The pegs fastening the other boards vessels except the hull planks, it lay more than a meter below a together are shorter — twelve cm. — which presumably survived because layer of midden materials contain- and those which have come loose they collapsed flat on to the clay ing Sung porcelain — makes the dis- are 1.5 cm. in diameter and pointed bottom and so presented no resis- covery an important event in marine at one end. The keel itself is hardly tance to the current. Other than archaeology as well. Happily, too, worthy of that designation — it these planks, nothing was recovered comparison with other Southeast is simply a plank one to two cm. except a short piece of one rib and Asian vessels built in this tradition thicker than the other planks, three small pieces of what was makes it possible to describe the though forty-five cm. wide amid- probably a mast. It is therefore im- sort of boat these Philippine ships and tapering to a point at possible to reconstruct whatever specimens must have been and both ends, thinning slightly to interior fittings, thwarts, or super- moreover, by recourse to Spanish about 2.25 cm. The most distinc- structure the vessels may have had, records, to describe their role and tive feature of the planks is a or even to determine whether they significance for Philippine social life series of flat, rectangular protru- had outriggers or not. On the other and progress. sions or lugs carved out of the hand, the configuration of the surface of the wood on the upper planks themselves is recognizable as The planks of the older vessel side of each plank — that is, the a distinctive style of marine architec- run the full length of the hull in inside of the boat. They are seven- ture which once extended from one continuous piece — almost ty-eight cm. apart, exactly opposite Scandinavia to the South Pacific, fifteen meters — and thus consti- one another on each strake, average from the third century B.C. until tute what nautical jargon calls 30.7 cm. long, 16.5 cm. wide, and the present time in a few remote strakes. Those of the second boat 2.5 cm. thicker than the planks corners of the South Seas. These are made of two sections of doongon themselves, and have four holes facts, taken together with a Carbon- wood (Heretiera litorales) joined by along their edges through which 14 date of the thirteenth and Z-shaped scarfs, and those next to cords or lashings can be passed. The fourteenth centuries for the second the keel — i.e., the garboard strakes— purpose of both the lugs and the find, determined by the University are twenty cm. wide, three cm. holes is made clear by the fact that 17 a fragment of transverse ribbing was tambukos carved on each plank. found securely bound to the lugs of Finally, a combination of such the several planks it crossed by thwarts and ribs lashed together, Historically, cordage of cabo negro palm fibers. and even tightened by tourniquet These lugs are called tambuko in action in the lashings themselves, there are two Visayan and Maguindanao, as well produces a sturdy vessel whose hull as in many of the languages spoken and other structural parts are held methods by which in the maritime cultures to the south firm under prestressed tension. This the planks in plank- of the Philippines. Their presence is is the sort of hull the Butuan boats the earmark of this older ship-build- must have had. built boats are ing technique. Of course, since this technique fastened together- In the more familiar modern ship- provides no solid ribs to fasten the building technique, developed in planks to, they cannot be steamed, sewing and both China and Europe as long ago bent to shape, and held in place by edge-pegging. as the Middle Ages but still in use, a nails. Instead, they must be carved rigid framework of keel and ribs is to shape in advance, no mean feat of carpentry in a boat the size of in modern times in remote Pacific first constructed, not unlike the islands. Sewing boats was a Luzon spine and ribs of a whale or carabao the Butuan examples. It is because of the essential nautre of this feature technique noted in the San Buena- in appearance and function, and the ventura Tagalog-Spanish dictionary wooden planking of the hull is then that boats constructed by this technique are called "plank-built of 1613, which continued in use nailed to it with metal spikes or into the present century. Baranga- wooden trenails. The older tech- boats." On the testimony of Spanish records, Philippine plank- yans or cascos with a capacity of nique was to build the hull like a two or three thousand cavans of shell first, plank by plank carved to built boats usually had strakes hewn of one piece from stem to stern, rice for loading and unloading fit, and to fasten the ribs in after- ocean-going steamers were being wards. This technique is probably a even in twentyfive-meter warships manned by crews of over 200. Each constructed in Cagayan by this natural development of the one-log method in the 1920s. The timbers dugout canoe by adding one board of these planks was literally hand- carved out of half a tree-trunk with were cut in the Sierra Madres and to each side to obtain higher floated downstream to Aparri where freeboard. The prototype seems t o an adze. Saws, had they been available, would have been of little they were reduced to baords, and have survived in Taiwan to be des- then carpenters working in teams cribed in the eighteenth century by use for such shaping, especially considering the projecting tambukos of two, one inside the hull and one Huang Shu-ching in the following outside, drilled the holes, laced terms: along one surface. Although these adzes were made of metal during them with barrid rattan, and A mangka is a single tree-trunk holloweo the Spanish period, it is worth caulked them at the rate of P 15 out, with wooden planks fastened on both sides per hole. During the preceding with rattan; since they have no putty for caulk- noting that the same results could ing and water easily enters, the barbarians keep decade, the turtle-eating, seafaring 2 have been attained with neolithic bailing with a ladle. tools. Indeed, there is an elegant Dumagats of Ambos Camarines By incrasing the number of such nephritejade chisel in the National were constructing nine-meter beni- additional planks, a fully developed Museum which could perform such tans by sewing overlapping strakes boat or ship is produced. But as work. together on a keel thirty cm. thick, the sides of the canoe, or banca, are plugging up all the openings after- thinned, some transverse strengthen- Historically, thereare two methods wards with coconut coir and pili ing is required, and this can be by which the planks in plank-built resin. On the rare occasions when provided by running strut-like boats are fastened together — sew- they lived ashore, they simply took thwarth across the vessel, securing ing and edgepegging. Sewing — or, their boats apart and stored them them to the sides without nails by better said, lacing — the boards under the house, ready to reassemble means of tambukos and lashing. together is done by drilling a whenever they had reason to take Similarly, as the number of strakes matching row of holes through the to the sea again.