Very early in the history of mankind boats were built for local fishing, to carry loads over water and as an alternative to overland trekking. Boat travel over longer distances was strenuous and required courage as people ventured beyond familiar territory. Navigation was very much a matter of managing the imponderables posed by the environment and the weather. Knowledge about naviagtion and boat-building was passed down the generations orally.
A meal in a restaurant in Portugal started me off on the theme of early seafaring. The waiter recommended bacalao - a stew prepared with dry salt-cod - Portugal's national dish, he proudly told us. I was puzzled by this. Cod is a cold water fish found neither off the Portuguese coast nor in the Bay of Biscay. This was before you could look information up on the internet so I put it to the back of my mind. Some months later my fishmonger lent me Mark Kurlansky's book „Cod“ which looks into the history of cod-fishing. I was and remain fascinated by the fact that Basque (and Portuguese) fishermen set off in small sailing vessels northwards over the Atlantic as far as Newfoundland to catch cod, spending weeks if not months at sea not only bringing the fish in with their hand-lines but also filletting and salting it. The catch fetched a high price back home and was sold to the royal courts in Scandinavia.
A further example of early boldness in overseas travel the seas goes back even earlier to the Polynesians, who in prehistoric times, navigated the thousands of miles between the Pacific islands in their outrigger canoes, entirely reliant on the winds and the strength of their arms.
The infinite resourcefulness of early seafarers, coupled with their intrepid courage, inspired my boat project. I decided that I too would make use of available materials, in my case salvaged paper, card and twine. It was to be an archetypal boat, and at the same time emphasize the fragility of early vessels. And it was absurd, a paper craft that would sink very shortly after being launched. But, equally, it turns out, it has all the advantages of early boats: it is light and can be carried down to the water like a backpack, it was assembled using basic joining techniques, and, once it has travelled to and fro bewteen exhibition venues, been packed and unpacked and perhaps soiled and damaged in the process, can be dismantled and composted, all components thus being absorbed back into the natural cycle.