Large Canoe
Thursday, April 26, 2018 (Storlommen), 12 comments
I got a call yesterday about a large canoe for many paddlers/passengers. So I turned the archive upside down and found my old "Storlommen" (arctic loon or black-throated diver) – a canoe I designed for the tourist business in Värmland (a canoe-friendly lake district in Sweden) over 20 years ago. It was built in a couple of sizes by Wermlandia Kanoter, a company that was very active building wooden kayaks and canoes over a few years – and built the prototype for my Sharpie 600. Storlommen have a capacity of approx 1650 kgs and room for 15-20.
In the photo above Storlommen is shown at a tourist event in Stockholm.
Large canoes were common in Canada during the 19th century och were used as freighters when the trappers delivered furs to the trading stations downstream the rivers. Hudson Bay Company was the big player in this trade.
These Canots du Maître, or Rabeskas, came in different sizes and models – the largest, the "6-fathoms fur trade canoes" were approx 11 meters long, the smallest, the "express canoes" 6 meters – and the style depended on the cultural background of the builder: Algonkin, Ojibway, Têtes-de-Boule or Iroquois (Source: Edwin Tappan Adney: the Bark Canoes of North America).
Fur-trade Maître Canot with passengers, oil painting by Arthur Hopkins (Public Archive of Canada Photo)
Hudson's Bay Canoe running the rapids,oil painting by Arthur Hopkins (Public Archive of Canada Photo)
Interested in a somewhat bigger project? I have the plans ;-)
