 The master shipwright
selects his tree
Noted
historian William Henry Scott elaborated on Francisco
Alcina’s account of boatbuilding and seamanship in the
Philippines by describing the basic methods of
constructing plank-built boats in detail.
A master shipwright was called a panday a
title he shared with other craftsmen such as
iron-workers and goldsmiths. The panday went to
the forest with his ax, a straight adz called a dallag,
a curved one called a bintong and a spoon-bit
about 20 centimeters long with a wooden handle called a lakob.
He then selected his tree. Lawaan was preferred
because it is a strong hardwood which grows large enough
for a canoe 120 centimeters wide to be hewn from a
single trunk.
In the Philippines, tropical trees generally have
a decayed center – the Visayans call it bokag
– caused by a fungus infection which enters through
the root system and eventually rots and splits the
trunk. The center therefore had no rejected, though the
two halves could be solid timber if the tree was
carefully selected. The other 4 or 5 centimeters were
also rejected as being aramay – soft spongy or
fibrous – and thus vulnerable to insects. Since the
tree was too large to be moved conveniently on the
ground, it was felled in the exact position the panday
wanted. He then marked out straight lines along it with
a cord called a kutur, and set to work.
A boat emerges from
the wood
The
entire outer from of the hull was carved into shape
before hollowing out
the inside – sharp at the bottom like a keel, pointed
at both ends, and V-shaped, with sides no thicker than a
board. The adz was sometimes used like a chisel,
hammered with a mallet called a pakang. To check
the progress of the thinning process as he worked, the panday
frequently bored holes through the sides with the lakob,
holes which would later be plugged watertight. Then the
interior was hollowed out, leaving the necessary
projections or tambukos for the ribs or agara.
A good panday could make such a hull, 9 to 10
meters long and 1-1/2 meters wide, working by himself,
in eight to ten days.
Such a boat carved out of a single piece of wood
was called a baroto, what the Tagalogs called a banca.
Some were small enough for one man to lift. It was
impractical, however, to build larger vessels on dugout
canoe bases, so those above 10 meters in length were
constructed on square keels as edge-pegged, plank-built
boats. This was the size and style knows by the name of barangay
or balangay, although the Tagalog version was
sewed or laced, not edge-pegged.
Putting the pieces
together
 The
flat or round-bottomed Butuan boats, lacking either a
real keel or a canoe base, did not fit any of these
categories, though they were within the balangay
size range. In addition, they displayed another unique
feature: the center plank, which served as a keel, had
two or three thin tambukos parallel to one
another instead of the broad ones appearing on the
adjoining planks, though these were of the same length
and thickness.
In the absence of other known examples, a
definite function has not yet been assigned to this
special feature. It was possible that the plank-shaped
timbers standing on edge may have been lashed to these tambukos
to serve as a kind of interior keel, though these would
have been cut out to fit the transverse ribs.
The shell was then left to season for a moth or
two, carefully elevated to avoid infestation by
termites. When it was sufficiently dried out, the planks
were removed one by one and all the broken pegs removed
and replaced. Then the shell was reassembled in three
distinct stages called sugi (matching), os-os
(tightening), and pamota (closing).
Sugi
was carried out with the use of a little wooden tool for
making lines. It had sharp iron point 2 to 3 millimeters
above a projecting tongue or lip, and was small enough
to fit in the palm of the hand. After the planks had
been put together again but not hammered tight, a
carpenter with a strong grip placed the little lip of
the upper edge of a board, with the point biting into
the side of the board. Then he ran it from stem to
stern, both inside and out, applying enough pressure to
incise a sharp line along the upper board near its lower
edge.
This mark naturally reproduced whatever
irregularities the original adzing may have left on the
lower board.
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