A gulet is a traditional design of a two-masted or three-masted wooden sailing vessel (the most common design has two masts) from the southwestern coast of Turkey, particularly built in the coastal towns of Bodrum and Marmaris; although similar vessels can be found all around the eastern Mediterranean. Today, this type of vessel, varying in size from 14 to 35 metres, is popular for tourist charters. For considerations of crew economy, diesel power is now almost universally used and many are not properly rigged for sailing.
There are differing opinions about the history and etymology of gullet which took the Turkish name “gulet” from the Italian word guletta. There is still controversy on whether it originated from the schooner, which has long been used as a sweeping net, trawl net or sponging vessel in Turkey in the Aegean and Mediterranean shores, and as a freight vessel in the Black Sea; or it originates from the fishing vessel guletta (gouëlette or goélette in French), that has come up with the evolution of the word galea or galeotta for the old Italian naval vessels or “goleta” in Spanish. Others have argued that it resembles the American gullet used in ling fishing in the Greenland banks, or the clippers carrying goods from India or Australia to England in the periods of colonization.
The origin of the Bodrum type schooner vessels falls to a nearby date, to the beginning of the 1970s. These types of vessels have come up as a result of the need to carry tourists, who have come in numbers to the Aegean region and especially to Bodrum and Marmaris at the end of the 1960s, to nearby bays. The first samples of the vessels called the Bodrum gulet are seen in those years with the addition to meet that demand of chambers and seating on the back of the deck to the chamberless gulet used in fishing or sponging till those years.
The preliminary doubts on the seaworthiness of the Bodrum schooner and the claims that it is a vessel type “bulky, unable to speed, not suitable for setting sails” and “traveling only with the engine power” have disappeared with the boats that are built in the last 20 years and have proven themselves in the Bodrum Cup Wooden Yachts Races. The investment approach to boat construction has changed in time, construction of other types of boats other than Gulet have started and this sector specialized from boat design, materials, construction techniques and construction teams have turned into one of the most important economic sectors in Bodrum.
