The Curragh

The Curragh is the quintessential Irish boat. This boat, which probably originated in the Neolithic period, is the only one still in use in the maritime environment of Western Europe. The curragh is the most archaic of all. It seems to have served as a vector for the various Celtic migrations from the first to the second millennium BC. There are few representations of the boat, the best known being on the Bantry stone or on a 17th-century engraving showing Captain Philipps.

History of Curragh

The Curragh, an Irish boat with ancient origins

This type of skin-boat has been appearing all over the world without consultation. At the same time, the Normans had “cyules”. The Greeks and Romans had “Carabas”. The latter, in Caesar’s time, had discovered curraghs during the campaign in Brittany and used them in Spain.

Legend has it that Saint Brendan, an Irish saint and great navigator, crossed the seas and oceans with his disciples aboard a curragh.

Introducing Curragh

This lightweight canoe has no keel. The skin is increasingly replaced by tarpaulin, but the internal wooden structure remains unchanged. Its use is limited to inshore fishing and transport between the country’s western islands.

There are two main types of Curragh:

the small ones, averaging 5 meters in length, are made from wicker and willow carcasses, covered with beef hides. Some 45 cow hides were needed to cover a 9.6 m long curragh. Their shapes can vary from round, oval or long in woven wood, skirted with animal skins.
the largest measured 12 meters, and were equipped with “sub-square” sails (wider than they were high). The payload of the latter could reach 2 tons.

The reliability of these coracles in rough seas was proven by the voyages of Tim Séverin and his companions in 1976 and 1977.

Curragh manufacturing processes

Powered by oar or sail, it can now be fitted with a motor. Construction begins with the manufacture of the top of the frame. Two longitudinal pieces of wood joined together by a series of struts form the gunwale of the boat. Once the perimeter of the boat has been completed and assembled, battens are bent transversely and embedded in the gunwale.

Finally, a series of laths are placed at regular intervals lengthwise on the outside of the frame. Once the framework is complete, it is covered with tar-coated canvas or 8 to 12 millimetre-thick skins sewn together with pitch-coated linen thread to make it watertight. One of the advantages of canvas, apart from its cost, is the ease with which it can be repaired by adding new pieces of canvas, on the same principle as patching.

In bad weather, this skin covering could be folded down and closed, making the boat watertight and relatively “unsinkable”.