How a Ship Is Built

There are two methods of building ships in the Sultanate of Oman. For centuries past, the Omanis used cords to bind the parts of ships made of (teak) wood — a wood of great endurance, unharmed by contact with iron, distinguished by a flexibility that eases the process of its use, in addition to its ability to remain long in water, where it almost resists wetting and can remain in water more than two hundred years; this is its description in the book (The Arabs and Navigation in the Indian Ocean). Teak wood is imported from India, where it is found in abundance.

As for the cords that the Omanis used in binding the parts of ships made of this wood, they are ropes made from the fibres of {coconut}. The ancient Arabs and Persians used to import them from India and its islands, or go to its very homelands to build their ships there — which is what the Omanis used to do.

The ship is built by laying the keel (the hirab), upon which a set of planks called (sharayer) are fixed; after that a set of curved timbers called (al halqam) are installed, then the main ribs called (al shalman); after that the installation of the ribs and the rest of the planks is completed. All these operations pass through several stages requiring distinguished intellectual effort, muscular energy, patience and unrivalled practice.

Teak wood enters principally into shipbuilding, especially the main parts such as the hirab and the sharayer; a last type of wood called (bantij) comes second in the structure of the ship. In addition to that, the woods fini, fan asl, fans, bangali and karanj are used, all of which are imported from India; as for the ribs of the ship, the shalman, they consist of the Omani sidr and qart woods, in addition to the Somali mit wood.

Added to that is the (qalfat), the cotton used to seal the very narrow openings between the planks. The second method is the {method of nails}, a traditional method similar in essence to the regions of the Arab Gulf as well as the regions of the Red Sea. The craft of blacksmithing generally arose to make up for the shortage of the kinds of nails and iron tools that shipbuilding needs, in addition to household and agricultural tools.

As for the tools used in building ships, they are all primitive and simple, such as the hammer, the saw, the thread drill (bow drill), the chisel, the plane (sahj) and the caulking iron.