The Voyage of the Drontheim
From Greencastle Yawl to Mackinaw Boat

 

by

Gordon Ramsey

gordonramsey@hotmail.com

 

This paper was originally prepared for a course in Cultural Geography supervised by Prof, Paul Davies in the

Queen’s University of Kingston, Ontario: 2003.

Revised April 2004

Special thanks to the Boat Restoration Team, Marine Museum of the Great Lakes, and to the

Four Directions Aboriginal Student Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.

 

INTRODUCTION.

 

I was out for a stroll by Lake Ontario when I came across the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes. I am a mature student from Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland and am spending a year on an exchange programme at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Back in Ireland, I am a member of the Causeway Coast Maritime Heritage Group, based in Portrush, County Antrim, which is involved in preserving, restoring and sailing traditional boats, so I headed into the museum to see what was on display. Tucked away in a corner, I found a group of beautifully made models of traditional fishing-boats of the Great Lakes. I was astonished to see that these models were identical in almost every detail to a real boat owned by the Causeway Coast group back in Northern Ireland, a traditional fishing boat of the northern Irish coast known as a ‘Drontheim’. I set out to research what links might exist between the vernacular fishing boats of Ulster and those of the Great Lakes. This paper is the fruit of that research.

 

Model of Lake Ontario Fish Boat - Marine Museum of the Great Lakes, Kingston, Ontario.

(photo by author)

During the 19th century, a number of different types of wooden fishing craft appeared on the Great Lakes. Some of these had flat, transom sterns, while others were double-ended. It seems that the fishermen who worked these boats referred to them simply as ‘fish boats’, but one specific type of double-ender, deriving from Georgian Bay, became known as a ‘Collingwood Skiff’. Towards the end of the 19th century, as some of the double-ended boats became popular with yachtsmen, the term ‘Mackinaw Boat’ began to be applied to all double-ended boats, including ‘Collingwood Skiffs’. In the 20th century, the origins of the ‘Mackinaw Boat’ have become a matter of considerable debate. Kiefer sums up the current state of this debate:

 
  The origins of the Mackinaw boat are not completely known, but it is generally recognised that the boats developed entirely within and for Great Lakes sailing conditions. There is speculation that the French bateau and the Norwegian faering influenced the Mackinaw boat design since both French and Norwegian immigrants settled first in the northern lakes. While similarities to other boat types exist, Mackinaw boats grew to be unique… (1992).
I will suggest that this statement is inaccurate in two related respects. Firstly the boats that are currently referred to as Mackinaw Boats did not develop entirely within and for Great Lakes sailing conditions, but that their form is largely derived from the boats that fished the Atlantic waters around the north coast of Ireland, and secondly that these boats are not unique – in fact if one were to place an Ulster Drontheim amongst a group of Mackinaw Boats, or vice-versa, it would probably not be identified as a stranger.
Having made this case, I will go on to question why this question has become sufficiently important to generate the debate that it has, and look at the importance of ‘naming’ in establishing local identities in a globalising world.