The Decked Canoe Archives

Assembled by Tim Gittins

The Decked Canoe Archive

Assembled by Tim Gittins some years ago, this is a superb collection of archive material

A personally fascinating piece of Western History is the rise and fall of the Decked Sailing Canoe. These pages explore the people, the society, and the craft behind this movement and the evolution of the decked sailing canoe into the contemporary IC.

"These canoes... There is nothing I know to equal it. There is the feeling of speed, and the clean rush of air, as the water rushes swiftly underneath you. There is also the joy of gliding low and swiftly over the water, the only sounds being the swish of your canoe through the water and the singing of the wind through your mast, rigging and sails. At sixty.. I still look back with a quickening pulse and tingling of the blood at the exciting moments on the end of a sliding seat in a lightweight canoe."

- Uffa Fox, Sailing Boats

"... canoe sailing is the highest and most intelligent form of sailing, the most interesting and the most healthy branch of sailing and indeed any sport. ... Sailing a light canoe under a cloud of sail is the nearest approach by man to the controllable flight of a bird and the governable passage of the fish in the water, and all that can be legitimately introduced to perfect such action should indeed be welcomed." ... Warrington Baden-Powell, 1889

In the archive here

Drawings and Photographs

• A collection of lines drawings for various decked sailing canoes
• Historical Photo Archive

Books, Book Extracts and other Articles

• Sailing Canoes: A Brief History. pub: American Canoe Association, mid 1930's.
• Correspondance about Theo Smith of Oxford: a forgotten hero.
• Excerpts of "Champion Canoes of Today" from Outing, 1897, detailing Gilbert-built "Mab"
• "The Past and Future of American Canoeing: 1880 - 1900" from Forest and Stream, January 6, 1900
• "A Canoe Cruise from New York to Sag Harbor, L.I." from Forest and Stream, June 6, 1903
• "A Short Sketch of the Life and Work of W. F. Stevens." by F. H. Froling from Forest and Stream, June 1921
• "Canoeing under Sail" by Maurice D. Wilt, from E. Schoettle's Sailing Craft, 1928
• Gordon Douglas "1933 - The Year of the International Challenge Cup" from Sixty Years Behind the Mast, 1986
• Uffa Fox "Winning the Canoe Championship of America", 1934
• Gordon Douglas "We Challenge for the International Cup (1936)" from Sixty Years Behind the Mast, 1986
• Uffa Fox "International Canoe Class" from Sail and Power, 1937
• Uffa Fox "International Canoe Class - Flying Fish" from Racing, Cruising and Design, 1937
• Uffa Fox "Craft I Have Owned and Sailed" from Thoughts on Yachts and Yachting, 1938
• "The Modern Sailing Canoe: She Offers the Keenest Sailing Pleasures ..." by Irwin W. Tyson from Yachting, July 1949
• Uffa Fox "International Canoe Class" from Sailing Boats, 1959

Copyright: its unrecorded to what extent the compiler of this collection established copyright clerance for all the material. Much of it is old enough to be out of copyright, and smaller extracts permissable under fair use or equivalent legislation. If you own copyright in any of this material and wish it to be removed please contact the webmaster below.

Elsewhere on the Internet:

• Canoe Sailing Resources 2010 with links to much more Canoe archive material.
• A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe. by J. MacGregor 1866, 1892
• Practical Canoeing. by Tiphys, 1883.
• The Canoe Aurora; a Cruise from the Adirondacks to the Gulf by Charles Neide, 1885
• Canoe Handling. by C. Bowyer Vaux, 1885, 1888.
• Canoeing (with sail and paddle) by J.D. Haywards (Mersey Canoe Club) 1893.
• Canoes and Canoeing. by C. Bowyer Vaux, 1894.
• Canoe Cruising and Camping. by Perry D. Frazer, 1897.
• Seglers Handbuch IV. Teil. Das Kanoe by Georg Belitz, 1897.
• Canoe and Boatbuilding for Amateurs by W.P. Stephens, 9th Edition, 1903.
• Building a Decked Sailing Canoe an Article from 1915.
• Alone in the Caribbean. by Frederic A. Fenger, 1917.
• Sailing Canoes: A Brief History by O. S. Tyson, 1935.
• Replicating Canadian Ralph Britton's 16X30 "Tomahawk" Antique Boat Museum, Clayton, N.Y., 2006
• American Canoe Association Collection (of papers and Historical records at the Mystic Seaport documents collection)