Wooden Ship Making of Gujarat

For centuries, port cities of Gujarat have traded with places through the sea routes. In the port city of Mandvi, shipyards for wooden ships were established by the 18^th century. The local craftsmen have been in shipbuilding for generations. The skills of construction have been passed down for the past four hundred years.

The craftsmen were skilled in building ships using their instinct rather than scale diagrams and blueprints. Despite the evolution in shipbuilding technologies, the boats of Mandvi and Veraval used for fishing and short distance trips are still handmade from wood. The wood used for construction is the locally available saal/salwood. However, due to deforestation, it is now obtained from Malaysia. The construction begins from the base of the hull. Huge wooden planks are bent over a fire to get the required shape. The wood is cut, planed, chiseled and drilled by hand. The planks are joined together with big sizes of nuts and bolts. To make a vessel watertight, a thin cotton cord, soaked in oil, is wedged by hammer and chisel into seams between the planks. It takes at least twenty-five laborers around two years to build a ship. A well-built ship can survive the torrent waters of the Indian Ocean for fifty years.

Due to recently accessible electrical appliances, kotia or the vessel sent into the sea that was built entirely by hand is now partly mechanized.