Boat

A boat is a vessel made by humans for travel on water. Boats can be traced back to prehistory but are also widely used in modern times. While humankind started with simple boats carved out of hollowed trees, modern enthusiasts around the world have available hundreds of different types of boats. These include the banana boat, a long, banana-shaped inflatable vessel used for recreation; the barge, a flat-bottomed boat used in rivers, canals, and other inland waterways to carry freight and cargo; the tugboat, mostly used in harbors or ports where they help larger vessels move into tight spaces; the ferry boat, a passenger vessel that generally runs on a scheduled route between two points; the fishing boat, which can vary between small boats and larger vessels used for fishing; and the canoe, a long, narrow boat that is paddled by a navigator. While ships are also vessels used on water, individuals and industries typically differentiate between them. The term boat is used to refer to smaller water vessels; some say a ship can carry a boat, but a boat cannot carry a ship. With regard to sailing vessels, a ship is a square-rigged watercraft with at least three masts; anything else is a boat. When discussing motorized watercraft, ships are designed for deep-water transportation, for example ocean travel, while boats are not.

Boats have been historically important in transporting goods and people and participating in warfare and recreation. However, boats can have a negative impact on the environment including destruction of ecosystems, harm of wildlife through noise pollution, and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, boaters recreating in shallow waters in Florida can damage delicate seagrass beds, putting the ecosystem and its animal inhabitants at risk.

Background

Humans have been building and using boats for hundreds of thousands of years. Some researchers say an early human species called Homo erectus may have reached islands where their tools have been found by making boats 800,000 years ago. Primitive artwork reveals early boat use, for example a rock carving in Azerbaijan dating back to 10,000 BCE depicts a reed rowing ship carrying about twenty men. However, the earliest archaeological proof of boats dates to about 8200-7600 BCE. The oldest discovered so far is the Pesse canoe, which was found in the Netherlands in 1955. It is a dugout, a boat made from a hollowed out tree, about 9.8 feet (3 m) long.

Two of the earliest civilizations—the Egyptians and Mesopotamians—used boats extensively for transport on the Nile, Euphrates, and Tigris Rivers. Ancient Egyptians utilized boats for cargo, funerals, fishing, and warfare, among other activities and events. They used reeds to build possibly the first sailing boats in the world as early as 4000 BCE. Egyptians used large rectangular sails so they could sail upstream on the Nile. They rowed the boats downriver. The Egyptians also used larger seagoing boats known as Byblos when they traveled the Mediterranean Sea. The name refers to the main port for the export of cedar wood in Lebanon. The naming decision suggests a trade network between Egypt and Lebanon for this wood, which was essential in Egypt’s architecture and boat construction. One of the earliest examples of Egypt’s wooden boats capable of sailing on the ocean dates to about 2500 BCE. The 143-foot-long (43-meter-long), 20-foot-wide (6-meter-wide) cedar boat was buried beside a pyramid at Giza.

Byblos transitioned to a Phoenician port by about 1100 BCE. The Phoenicians were known as some of the greatest seafarers in the ancient world. Their fleet included new ship designs. A squat and tubby boat rounded at both ends was used for carrying goods and people. A longer boat, also rounded at the rear, had a battering ram in the front. A battering ram, in its simplest form, is a large, heavy log designed to break open barriers like walls and gates upon impact. However, at sea, a battering ram is designed to ram enemy ships. This was the main sea warfare strategy during this era. These ships designed for war were powered by oars, which made bursts of speed and maneuvering possible. About 100 BCE the Phoenicians began to craft biremes, boats that had two rows of oars on both sides. These ships were about the same length as earlier warships but were capable of double the speed. This gave armies an advantage in ramming their opponents. Within a few centuries a third rowing bank was added, probably by the Greeks. This design, called the trireme, was used in the first war that was largely decided at sea—a fifth century BCE conflict between the Greeks and Persians.

The Romans were also known for their boat building capabilities. The first Roman navy dates to about 260 BCE. It consisted mostly of quinqueremes, ships with five banks of oars rowed by three hundred oarsmen. These were copied from a Carthaginian warship captured by the Romans during the first Punic War. The Roman Senate ordered one hundred of these ships and twenty triremes.

Around 1000 CE, the Vikings started building larger ships called longboats. Longboats had sails and were rowed by up to sixty men. Because they were long, narrow, and shallow, the Vikings were able to navigate rivers and open sea. About a century later, the Chinese began to use boats they called junks, which had rudders for steering and watertight compartments. Junks were used for transport as well as fighting.

Boats continued to evolve from single mast sailing ships to those with two and three masts. By the end of the fifteenth century, some ships carried four masts. The caravel, a small, light ship used by the Portuguese, was the most effective sailing ship at the time and was utilized by explorers Bartolomeu Dias, Christopher Columbus, and Ferdinand Magellan. The largest European sailing ship of the fifteenth century was the Spanish carrack, which could carry more than one thousand tons, while the caravel was capable of carrying about two hundred and fifty tons. By the mid-sixteenth century the carrack was the standard vessel used in the Atlantic trade.

Starting in 1819, steam-powered boats were made to cross the Atlantic. In 1910, boats transitioned from coal power to diesel power. Since the 1980s, container ships have been the primary means of moving cargo. This type of ship was designed to carry uniform containers stacked on the deck. Since the latter twentieth century passenger cruise ships have grown in size and often feature shops, restaurants, and recreational opportunities such as casinos, simulated waves for surfing, and zip lines.

Overview

Boats have many different parts with specific terminology. The body of a boat is called the hull. The upper edges of the hull are the gunwales. The front of a boat is called its bow, while the back is called the stern. When looking frontward, the left-hand side of the boat is called the portside while the right side is called the starboard. A cleat is a metal fitting on the boat where a rope can be fastened. Most modern boats have lighting. These may include red or green sidelights and an all-around white light, which is specific to power boats.

The boating world is rich in unique terminology that refers to different aspects of the boat. The beam is the width of the boat, measured from the widest point. In most cases, larger beams make more stable boats. Keel is the lowest point of the boat’s hull and provides strength and stability to the boat. Draft is the distance between the waterline and the keel. This is the minimum depth of water in which a boat can float. Aft is the area toward the stern while forward is the area toward the bow. Freeboard is the distance from the waterline to the gunwale.

Issues and Concerns

Boats have been blamed for causing environmental damage in modern times. For instance, the noise of motorboats can stress animals and stunt the growth of young fish, according to scientists who studied animals on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Researchers found that one fish, the spiny chromis, fans water over its eggs to help the embryos grow with streams of fresh oxygen. However, in reefs with motorboat noise, these parents fan their eggs less often and swim around more, possibly exposing their offspring to more predator attacks.

Recreational boats, ship transports, and oil tankers can pollute the water through engine leaks or oil spills. For instance, in July 1979, two oil tankers collided in the Caribbean Sea and leaked 88.3 million gallons of crude oil. An oil tanker hit the Nowruz Field platform in the Persian Gulf in 1983 and caused about 80 million gallons of oil to spill into the water.

Cargo ships often ignore environmental laws when they dump untreated oily wastewater called bilgewater into the sea instead of unloading it at port facilities. SkyTruth found hundreds of potential dumps like this in 2021 using satellite images. The nonprofit environmental watchdog group estimates that ships could be dumping more than 52.8 million gallons annually into the seas. SkyTruth also stated that recreational boats intentionally dump around 230 million gallons of oil into waterways annually.

Another environmental concern when it comes to boats is carbon dioxide emissions. If shipping vessels were a country, they would come in sixth globally for carbon dioxide emissions in the early twenty-first century. Some ways that ships can reduce their emissions are by sailing at lower speeds and modernizing their engines. The recreational boating industry is also responsible for polluting, emitting six hundred million car equivalents of gases like nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons annually.

Abandoned GRP, or boats made from fiberglass, negatively impact sea animals like oysters and mussels. Researchers say that fiberglass causes asbestos-like damage to these animals. The fiberglass severs the animals’ flesh and becomes embedded, and then the organism develops inflammation, tumors, and cancers. When boats containing the substance, which does not degrade, lay idle in boatyards around the world, tiny shards of fiberglass pollute nearby water and can also be moved out to sea. Paddleboards and surfboards also contain fiberglass. One of the major challenges is boat abandonment and lack of recycling of boats.

Boaters can also cause environmental damage to ecosystems like the fragile seagrass in Florida’s Everglades National Park and around the Florida Keys. Shallow water makes the ecosystems particularly vulnerable to damage from propellers, boat hulls, and damaging wakes. Sandbars in the Florida Keys are especially prone to damage due to shallow water combined with high boat traffic. Sand flats, coral reefs, and seagrass beds in this area are also prone to damage from boating activities. Boaters may cause damage by trying to plow through shallow areas or by running aground. Some wildlife at risk from the destruction of seagrass beds include spiny lobster, pink shrimp, stone crabs, and Florida manatees, which eat seagrass as their primary food source. Seagrass also helps improve water quality, reduce erosion, and stabilize sea floors.

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