clinker lute stern

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wstirling

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It seems that on the East Coast around 1870 building big clinker boats stopped (big is in this case above 50’.) This corresponds with the transition of fashion and a builders desire to keep up with modern practices which saw lute sterns become counter sterns. I have just begun planking a clinker lute stern and it struck me that if it were a counter stern it would be jolly difficult to plank it clinker. Are there any existing vessels or pictures of clinker counter sterns?
(This does not apply in general to Scotland, where clinker building went on for longer with many types being double ended, or the West Country where clinker building lost favour earlier although double enders and transoms were popular. A lute stern is like a counter, but the counter is a transom-if you want to clarify this you can view one at cuttersandluggers.co.uk-I hope I am not contravening the forum’s rules in the interests of historical investigation.) I am doing a part time MA at Exeter University in Maritime History and my dissertation is focusing on the development in hull shape and rig in British vessels under 200T between 1750 and 1900. If anyone has thoughts about other interesting reasons for change, particularly the transition between clinker and carvel around the coast I would be very interested to read them.
 
Thanks for your reply. The bigger, perhaps 1st class, boats seem to have stopped being built at Hastings and Rye around 1860. After that time they built alot of smaller clinker boats with a rudimentary lute stern. Were there also counter sterned boats amongst this fleet? What I am really trying to unearth is evidence-or not- of a first class boat with a clinker counter stern. I would also be extremely grateful if anyone could point me in the direction of specific books and articles. Thankyou.
 
Surely counter sterns are a purely yachting development, having their reason for being based upon aesthetics? They would have no place on a working boat. The only British working boat that I can recall having a counter stern would be the Lancashire Nobby, which derived much of its design from yachts. In this respect, I think that there was a divergence of design philosophy between working boats and pleasure boats. Similarly, working boats usually had internal ballast of pigs and scrap metal, while yachts had the more expensive moulded external ballast. My own boat, built in 1917 as a fishing boat, is ballasted internally with pigs and scraps of lead, while an older yacht from the same builder is externally ballasted and counter sterned. While it is well-known that the lute stern was used widely among the Kent and Sussex beach-based boats, was it ever used anywhere else? Did it evolve as a result of the boats being beached, perhaps to keep the following surf out of the boat?
Peter.
 
A pretty sailing vessel is a combination of functional aesthetics. At present it is generally accepted that the lute stern developed as a method of extending the deck aft in order that the fishermen had more deck space to work the gear. It is likely that this idea was a development and/or works in combination with the method of raking and curving the transom over the rudder so that the vessels’ Achilles Heel was protected from jostling in crowded ports. There may be other reasons too and I would be keen to learn about them. Certainly the overhanging stern was in use early as the 16th century; the evolution to the beautiful lutes built between 1760 and 1860 in vessels from naval cutters, through yachts to the fishing fleet, was no swift invention. Our historical perspective is extremely tainted as the invention of the camera arrested in photographic print only a few instances of the lute stern while the shorter era of the lute’s descendant, the counter stern, is well documented.

With regard to the nobbies;
“Though yacht like in their lines these are not yachts that are being considered but fishing boats in which the concepts of underwater form developed within the average nobby hull, whether Welsh or Lancastrian, were up to sixty years ahead of contemporary yacht practice…”
pp. 203 Inshore Craft (Chatham Publishing. London 1997)
 
I have fairly recently reconstructed a clinker counter, albeit on a small scale. The boat is 21 feet overall, straight-stemmed, dating from about 1880. She was built in East Anglia, probably originally a half-decker.
The overhang is not great, however, not an extreme yacht form.
The construction detail, which I worked out for myself, was not easy, involving a complicated gradual transition from clinker, as the planking began to turn underneath, to carvel as it merged into the structure right at the stern.
I took my analogy from the similar construction near the stem of a clinker boat. The apparent overlap gradually diminishes as the planks near the stem, because the degree of chamfering increases. Finally, when it had diminished to zero and adjacent planks became flush with each other, it became easier, I found, simply to treat them as carvel, and butt them edge to edge, rather then maintaining the extremely thin chamfering.
It was not easy to effect this transition, and my result is not perfect. However, it is hardly visible, being underneath the counter and only about a foot above the water at most.
 
I was pleased to read your message Clifford, and have also found a photo of a clinker Rye boulder boat with a short counter (again-Inshore Craft pp110.)
Are the parts of the planlks that are butted together in carvel fashion built blind (without caulking?)
Is it possible to post photographs of your boat on the forum at some stage aswell as I should be most interested to see both the detail of the planking and the shape of the hull. If not and it doesn't involve more than a 'drag and a drop' would it be possible to email them to my website at cuttersandluggers.co.uk
Yours Will.
 
Will

I guess you have Edgar March's Sailing Drifters and Sailing Trawlers.

These have the following photos of large clinker built boats with English smack type sterns.

SAILING TRAWLERS
Plate 85 Bow view of a beached clinker built 40t smack (built 1871)
Plate 98 - stern view of a clench built lute sterned cutter

SAILING DRIFTERS
Plate 7 - Lowestoft lugger c. 1870 beached bow view
Plates 9 and 10 - side and bow views of beached Lowestoft dandy PRINCEPS 1884

On page 59 he says "most of the drifters built after the early 1880s had carvel planking with short elliptical sterns.........."
 
Will

nothing to do with your clinker counter sterns, but an example of change in rig around the British Isles.........

It is well documented but still quite interesting to see how the Manxmen abandoned the more modern fore and aft smack rig in favour of the lug rig for their Nickeys and Nobbys in the 19th century (probably under the Cornish influence). And they were not the only ones to revert to the lug.

A good example of "progress" not always being linear.
 
Sadly I don't have a copy of sailing trawlers. Do you think that the 40t smack in plate 85v has a lute or counter stern?
As a reply to your second message I would say that hopefully that is going to happen a bit now too! There are several strong advantages to the lug rig and hopefully the increased confidence in new wooden boats will see more luggers on the sea too.
 
Not sure what type of stern the one in Plate 85 has (she is bow on), but my guess is counter.

On looking at the photo more closely, this large boat is clinker built to above the waterline, and carvel built above. Perhaps thats an interesting waypoint on your route from clinker to carvel.

If you are interested in that period of English working craft, these two books by Edgar March are well worth getting hold off (though expensive to BUY).

He managed to go round the coast in the middle of last century and interview men who built and sailed these boats 50 years or more before. So, although the books are a bit unstructured, there are a lot of nuggets buried in them......like when the elliptical stern was introduced to Lowestoft and displaced the transom stern.
 
That's an interesting use of the combination of clinker and carvel. Here in Victoria, there were some double-ended fishing boats about 20 - 26ft long built with thick carvel hardwood bottoms and light clinker softwood topsides. This put the weight where it was most useful, and the heavier bottoms also dealt better with the abundant shoals.
Peter.
 
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