The article by Tim Morrison in NRJ 66: 3-4 about the sailing canaller reminded me of the fact that the watercraft of the rivers, lakes and canals of this world are hopelessly underrepresented in magazines such as the NRJ, while their diversity is infinitely greater than that of seagoing ships. But perhaps that is precisely the problem.
I would therefore like to draw the reader's attention to these two books as a successful example of the analysis of a small section of the wide world of inland vessels. It concerns a group of vessels, many of which were towed on the canals in a similar way to the sailing canaller (though on a smaller scale) but were sailed on the Oder Lagoon and even on the Baltic Sea.
It must be said in advance that the territorial situation of this area has changed fundamentally compared to that before World War II. A large part of it now belongs to Poland, and it must be credited to the Poles that they maintain the German traditions as much as their own.
The author’s profession is design manager at Alstom, the second largest railway technology company in the world. He sells his books through his own publishing house Sohn-Art (www.sohn-art.de). And although the first book is a little older, both are still available. The fact that the texts are in German should not put anyone off, because the many detailed illustrations alone are very informative. And nowadays, if necessary, you can even make the passages that seem particularly interesting speak with the help of a cell phone photo and Google Translate.
In the first book, the author has staked out his field a little more and also discusses the many types of craft on the upper reaches of the Vistula, Oder, Elbe and Danube rivers. Not least, however, he presents his working method, which consists of processing a large number of very different contemporary sources into the beautiful computer-generated illustrations and plans that make up the main part of the two books. But conventional illustrations and, above all, photos are not neglected either.
The second book, on the other hand, discusses the few types of craft that were native to the lower reaches of the Oder river and the Oder Lagoon. Today it is hard to imagine how and why inland boatmen ventured out onto the lagoon and across the Baltic Sea to the island of Rügen with a flat-bottomed vessel originally from a river basin.
As an example of the many types of vessel, I will try to describe a type called Mollenkahn of about 1910 in a few words. The hull is 130 feet. long, 15 feet wide (L/B = 8.6) and about 9 feet deep. It is flat-bottomed with an angular chine, box-shaped over almost its entire length and covered by a single, long hatch. Only the ends are rounded and the stern has a balance rudder. The ship has four (!) leeboards and three masts, all of which carry spritsails and are not only of different heights but also have irregular spacing. For someone who is used to the regularity of the American fore-and-after, all of this seems almost as exotic as the Nile felucca.
Finally, I would like to say that I find the style of presentation and the mix of text and illustrations a little awkward. But that is my personal opinion, which is perhaps old-fashioned, and it does not detract from the general high quality of the work. I do however have one real criticism: the lack of an index in both books, which would certainly have been very useful given the amount of information. This is a shortcoming that is usually found in French publications, while I have to praise most American publications in this respect.
