Dhow, the traditional sailing vessel of the Read Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean
Thursday, 1 September 2016 - 01:00 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Yachting and Spa General , Tall ships , Yacht of the Month
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Dhows Parade during Qatar National Day © flickr.com – Mohamod Fasil/cc-by-2.0
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Dhow is the generic name of a number of traditional
sailing vessels with one or more masts with
lateen sails used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Historians are divided as to whether the dhow was invented by Arabs or Indians. Typically sporting long thin hulls, dhows are trading vessels primarily used to carry heavy items, like fruit, fresh water or merchandise, along the coasts of Eastern Arabia (Arab states of the Persian Gulf), East Africa, Yemen and some parts of South Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh). Larger dhows have crews of approximately thirty, smaller ones typically around twelve.
The exact origins of the dhow are lost to history. Most scholars believe that it originated in India between 600 B.C.E. to 600 C.E. Some claim that the sambuk , a type of dhow, may be derived from the Portuguese caravel . The Yemeni Hadhrami people , as well as Omanis, for centuries came to Beypore , in Kerala , India for their dhows. This was because of the good timber in the Kerala forests, the availability of good coir rope, and the skilled carpenters who specialized in ship building. In former times, the sheathing planks of a dhow’s hull were held together by coconut rope. Beypore dhows are known as ‘Uru ‘ in Malayalam , the local language of Kerala. Settlers from Yemen, known as ‘Baramis’, are still active in making urus in Kerala.
Dhows in front of the West Bay skyline in Doha in Qatar © StellarD/cc-by-sa-4.0
In the 1920s, British writers identified
Al Hudaydah as the center for dhow building. Those built in Al Hudaydah were smaller in size, and used for travel along the coasts. They were constructed of
acacia found in Yemen. Captain
Alan Villiers (1903–82) documented the days of sailing trade in the Indian Ocean by sailing on dhows between 1938 and 1939 taking numerous photographs and publishing books on the subject of dhow navigation.
Even to the present day, dhows make commercial journeys between the Persian Gulf and East Africa using sails as their only means of
propulsion . Their cargo is mostly dates and fish to East Africa and
mangrove timber to the lands in the Persian Gulf. They often sail south with the
monsoon in winter or early spring, and back again to Arabia in late spring or early summer. For celestial navigation, dhow sailors have traditionally used the
kamal . The latter is an observation device that determines
latitude by finding the angle of the
Pole Star above the horizon.
Read more on
Wikipedia Dhow . Learn more about the
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