page_title: Currach
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Currach / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A reconstruction of a C1 AD British Curragh (a big coracle),made of wicker work and covered with 3 cow hides. It is capable of carrying 10 people. It was being paddled on the River Great Ouse at the 2008 Bedford River Festival.
context_page_description: A currach is a type of Irish boat with a wooden frame, over which animal skins or hides were once stretched, though now canvas is more usual. It is sometimes anglicised as "curragh".
  The construction and design of the currach are unique to the west coasts of Ireland. It is referred to as a naomhóg. Another explanation is that it comes from the Latin navis, and it has also been suggested that it derives from the Irish nae, a boat.
  A larger version of this is known simply as a bád iomartha. It is suggested that the prototype of this wooden boat was built on Inishnee around 1900 and based upon a tender from a foreign vessel seen in Cleggan harbour. These wooden boats progressively supplanted the canvas currach as a workboat around the Connemara coast. This rowing currach measured up to 20 feet, and is still seen in water in North Donegal.
  The currach has traditionally been both a sea boat and a vessel for inland waters. The River currach was especially well known for its shallow-draft and maneuverability. Its framework was constructed of hazel rods and Sally twigs, which was covered by a single ox-hide, which not only insulated the currach, but also helped dictate its shape.
context_section_description: During the Neolithic period, the first settlers landed in the northern part of Ireland, likely arriving in boats that were the ancestors of the currach. Development in joining methods of wood during the Neolithic period made it possible to eventually create what the currach is today. Hide-covered basket origins are evident in currachs found in the east of Ireland, and using the skins for lining currachs in the Neolithic period likely was how the early Irish were able to make their way over to the British Isles.
  The currach represents one of two traditions of boat and shipbuilding in Ireland: the skin-covered vessel and the wooden vessel. The flimsy construction of the former makes it unlikely that any remains would be available for the marine archaeologist, but its antiquity is clear from written sources.
  One of these is the Latin account of the voyage of St Brendan (who was born c. 484 in the southwest of Ireland): Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis.  This contains an account of the building of an ocean-going boat: using iron tools, the monks made a thin-sided and wooden-ribbed vessel sicut mos est in illis partibus (“as the custom is in those parts”), covering it with hides cured with oak bark. Tar was used to seal the places where the skins joined. A mast was then erected in the middle of the vessel and a sail supplied. Though the voyage itself is essentially a wonder-tale, it is implied that the vessel as described was built in accordance with ordinary practice at the time. An Irish martyrology of the same period says of the Isle of Aran that the boat commonly used there was made of wickerwork and covered with cowhide.
  Gerald of Wales, in his Topographia Hibernica (1187), relates that he was told by certain seamen that, having taken refuge from a storm off the coast of Connacht, they saw two men, long-haired and scantily clad, approaching in a slender wickerwork boat covered in skins. The crew found that the two spoke Irish and took them on board, whereupon they expressed amazement, never before having seen a large wooden ship.
  The consistency in accounts from the early Middle Ages to the early modern period makes it likely that the construction and design of the currach underwent no fundamental change in the interval.
  A 17th-century account in Latin by Philip O'Sullivan Beare of the Elizabethan wars in Ireland includes a description of two currachs built in haste to cross the River Shannon. The larger was constructed as follows: two rows of osiers were thrust in the ground opposite each other, the upper ends being bent in to each other (ad medium invicem reflexa) and tied with cords, whereupon the frame so made was turned upside down. Planks, seats and thwarts were then fitted inside (cui e solida tabula, statumina, transtraque interius adduntur), horse hide was fixed to the exterior and oars with rowlocks were supplied. This vessel is described as being able to carry 30 armed men at a time.
caption: Reconstruction of a 1 AD skin-covered boat on the Great Ouse in Bedford
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