The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-08-26
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

| I've got boats on the brain; in fact, [ have been thinking much of late about-All kinds of water craf. from the bateau to the ocean liner, for the matter of water tansportetion is submerging us on the platform and in the press
 The origin of the word boat is prob ably to be looked for 1T. the Anglo-saxon pat stem, stick, piece of wood. If this be SO the term in it's inception re. ferred to the material of which the primi- tive variety was constructed, and in thIs respect may well be entrusted with the word ship"
 | Now, it is not known who was the IT'S, man to fasten together material of sut- hcient buoyancy to float and carry him on the bosom of the water. but whoever he was. he evidently preceded the later man who had ingenlity afteAgetting tired Of straddling los to hew out it's center and avail himself of brush or padre in guiding it.
 | A fool idea has just popped into my head. for all at once it came to me ss being. appropriate that the apparatus for measuring the rapidity of ships motion should be callee it's Jog" for ir man rom the dawn of history had been con- tent to float around on driftwood or logs, and had not holowed himself out log canoe, there would have been no ships l
 l We talk about cave dwellers, and the cave man, but l datesay we owe to the lake dwellers the invention of primitive boats, and I suppose the appearance of the first man in dugout padding among 1 the houses on stills caused as great a sensation among the inhabitants as did Robert Fulton when he went steaming on the Hudson in the Clermcnt
 1 But man is always striving to improve his mode of transportation. rne cugou, put some other fellow to thinking. and after paddles he annexed a rudder; then came the wheel and later the. propeller Use multiplies wants, anu man is prone 10 get into hurry, and therefore those who moved slowly on rafts laid them aside for log canoes, and out of the two we get our swirt-going river boats and sea vessels.
 Homer among the Greeks, Shakespeare among the English, and f they fan you. try out Herodotus or one Samuel Pepys. and you will be mighty apt to find trail that vii point you to where you can get hold of high material to adorn your modern tale. I've tried them time after time, and rarely nave~ ~they disappointed me and this is why Iso confidently rec ommend them to my readers.
 The development of the raft is admir- ably illustrated in the description, given us by Homer in the Odyssey, of the con- struction by the hero Ulysses of a vesse, or the kind. Floating timber Is cut down and carefully shaped and planed with ax and adz, and tne timbers are thoa exactly fitted face to. face and compacted with trenails and dowels, just as the flat floor of river barge might be fashion d
 
 these days. Some students of Homer think he is braggiEg aoout the skill .3. his hero when he goes into such details. |
 I said first a loose kind of raft of ouoyant materials kept ye ancient man from having to peel off his clothes or get them wet when he wanted to cross a stream or navigate pond or lake Proud as was the first man who padded his dugout, he soon, as hnted above, found out it's limitations tor speed, and as a freighter was worth but lr,se. Tor the largest trees that could be thrown and scooped out afforded but a narrow space 1 for carrying goods, and was liable to be overturned when the water became rough
 I hold to the opinion, without having gone into it very carefully, that the next evolution was the canoe. An attempt was evidently to shape the bow and stern, and give a bulsing to the sides. Then gre v the idea of the f,atboat or the barge. The start was made on a floor composed of timbers squared and shaped, with built-up Sides. In this variety may De included all of the flat-bottomed craft from the junk" of the Orient, and tn 1, lighters of En5land to the "scows' on the Mississippi.
 There is little need to take space and time to describe the barge and the cana s or the flatboats of the rivers. for they are familiar to all who have ever lived on the banks of canalized streams or Gods natural waserways. There is an eternal fascination about water craft of all kinds for the average boy. and it's a two to one shot if a lad is missing after school hours and a boa is passing near his home he will be found near it.
 
 | am now looking at some of the oil. time types of bargos anl fiatboats placed Ialongside of some of the modern ons which are intended to displace them They are as mucn out of date in this twentieth century as the OK cart and as our highways are now filled with pleasure cars and trucks, so will 1t soon be that the primitive horse-drawn barge and scow drifting lazily with the stream will give way to steam or gasoline propelled boats This, however, provided that our nav gable waterways for the transportation or merchandise are given a square deal by the railroads and are not tied up with too much rad tane hy the poyernrent Tf's