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Small Craft
Although the most exciting shipwrecks ever found are large - such as the Vasa or the Mary Rose
- most ships and boats built in the last 50 thousand years were comparatively quite small. But it was from this
diversity of basic floating solutions that all larger vessels evolved.
Small craft are a cheap way to improvise, to attempt new solutions, to test new ideas, or
to copy new technologies.
The study of small craft - both from a technical and an ethnographical viewpoint - is an
important component of any study of the history of wooden shipbuilding.
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Small Craft of Portugal
It is difficult to summarize the rich and diverse maritime culture of the Iberian Peninsula
without oversimplifying its reality. Today's Portuguese and Spanish territories constitute the extreme southwest
of Europe, from which they are separated by the Pyrenees.
In the shape of an ox hide, according to Strabo, this stone raft, as it has been called by
José Saramago, is a large plateau that slopes westward, into the Atlantic Ocean. Along its extensive and
diverse coast the population speaks Basque, Castilian, Asturian, Galician, Portuguese, Castilian again, and Catalan.
The diversity of its cultures and populations encompasses the influences of the many visitors
and invaders that have established colonies and factories on this territory. Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians,
Romans, Goths and Arabs left their influences in the architecture, language, agriculture, religious beliefs and
many other cultural traits, including its shipbuilding techniques.
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