Canoes: A Natural History in North America

A worker at Old Town Canoes puts the finishing touches on a fiberglass model.

The Linkcanoe was another attempt at perfecting what was already a pretty perfectly designed boat, in the 1940s.

The Linkcanoe was another attempt, in the 1940s, at perfecting what was already a pretty perfectly designed boat.

The old-line canoe builder Old Town expanded into the fiberglass market in the 1960s. This advertisement, for its Rushton model, claimed a weight of 18.5 pounds on the 10-foot solo boat. Cost was $195.

Here a Nova Craft Moisie model tackles the rapids on Ontario’s Madawaska River.

Sometimes canoe manufacturers went to extreme lengths to tout the quality of their synthetic canoes. In this case, Old Town dropped a Tripper model off of the roof of its plant in Old Town, Maine, to show it could take a punch and more-or-less snap right back to straight again.

The Kansas-based outdoors company Coleman was a formidable competitor in the low-end canoe market by the 1970s.

The largest Kevlar canoe manufacturer in the world by the turn of the 21st century was Wenonah, with an annual output of around 10,000 boats in a good year (the company also owns Current Designs kayaks). Canoe campers love them for their light-weight, sleek design and durability.

By the late 1950s, canoes represented the best in American outdoor life, appearing on the covers of magazines with regularity, such as this edition of Field & Stream from June 1959. There was more than a hint of nostalgia in the artwork by C. E. Monroe, Jr.

Mark Hamel, Canoe Livery, Lake Nokomis, 2014. Oil on mounted linen, 16 × 20 in.

On Westport Island, Maine, the Writer’s Block studio doubles as a boat house.

A party of four girls canoeing near an island on Burntside Lake. Photograph located in the records of the United States Forest Service. 1940.

Design for a sail to be used with Rushton boat; drawn on Rushton Boat Shop letterhead ca. 1894.

Inventors have struggled to make canoes feel more stable for years and years. Sponsons, which are essentially buoyant pieces attached to the gunwales, were a common answer, including this attempt by D. P. Tuck from 1900.

Floats projecting from the boat apparently weren't a desirable solution for F. W. Zeidler and C. Halpern, who in 1921 came up with a system to rotate the canoeist, rather than add to the exterior of the boat. In terms of catching on, this patent did not.

Stability wasn't the only concern for inventors and shade-tree tinkerers. Portability, which did not seem to be a problem for native American builders, couldn’t be left alone by the mid-and-late 1800s. V. Colvin patented a canoe that rolled into a giant tube in 1874.

V. Colvin’s giant Tootsie Roll-shape was one of several attempts at a packable canoe. W. Armstrong, six years later, designed a folding canoe that fit in a handy carrying pouch. It also had oarlocks attached to outriggers.

The human-powered engineering movement of the late 19th century might be mostly known for perfecting the bicycle. In 1896, R. L. Boulter cross-bred a canoe and a bike to come up with a bicycle boat, or boats, depending on how you looked at it. Perhaps it was a distant relation to paddleboats of the 20th century.

Canoes were used in wartime by native tribes for centuries, and sometimes by all sides, as late as the Seminole War (1835–1842) in Florida.

The real-life story of a World War II canoe raid by the British military on an enemy base was made into a movie in 1955 starring José Ferrer and Trevor Howard.