The Ancient Indian Ship-Building Technique That Navy And Government Want To Document Before It Goes Extinct

“One of the most common observations made by ancient and medieval travellers is that the ships of the Indian Ocean had hulls that were ‘stitched’ together with rope rather than nailed around a frame.

“. . .There are still a few coastal villages in India that have preserved the skill of stitching together fishing boats, but it is a dying art”.

That was author and economist, Sanjeev Sanyal, in his The Ocean Of Churn, in 2016. He was referring to the knowledge of creating stitched ships that was once common on the Indian coast but was now on the brink of being lost. 

Jump seven years ahead, to present day, and he finds himself intimately involved with a project that seeks to revive and conserve this near-extinct technique. 

The revival

On 12 September, the Indian Navy, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and the Goa-based Hodi Innovations, formally initiated a project to recreate an ancient Indian stitched ship that upon its completion will undertake a voyage along historic maritime routes. 

Sanyal, along with the Architecture Team of the Indian Navy, worked on the ship’s design for more than a year before the current layout was finalised. Several inputs, including paintings in Ajanta were used as reference for the task. 

It would take 18 months to build the ship and six months of testing before it is sailed in open waters. 

Why were ships in India stitched and not nailed together?

One possible answer, according to Sanyal, is that the stitched technique gave the hull (the body of a ship) a degree of flexibility and the ship was less likely to break up if it ran into a shoal or sandbar.

“This was no small concern given that the Indian coastline has few natural harbours and most of the ports were either in an estuary or require sailing through a narrow passage like that of Lake Chilika”. 

The flexibility also helped when it came to sailing in turbulent monsoon winds. “This meant that arriving ships were often beached rather than tied by the quayside”.

The design of the stitched ships, informs Sanyal in his book, originated in India, but was soon adopted by the Yemeni and Omani Arab sailors as well.

But were Indians not familiar with nails that they sought to stitch a ship?

They were familiar with iron nails and if the example of the Delhi Iron pillar is counted, even with rust-resistant iron. 

However, the advantages of sailing on a stitched ship would have been deemed too great for switching to any other technique. In fact, stitching ships remained the preferred method until the Europeans arrived in their ships in the late 1500s. 

Recreation

The construction of the current ship will involve a team of traditional shipwrights, led by Babu Sankaran, an expert in stitched ship construction. This team would employ the age-old technique of shaping wooden planks using the traditional steaming method to match the hull's form. 

Each plank will then be meticulously stitched to another using cords or ropes, and then sealed with a combination of coconut fiber, resin, and fish oil-akin to the ancient Indian shipbuilding practice. 

Sanyal shared on his X (Twitter) handle that while it will be a stitched ship, it will not be entirely frameless. It will have a light internal frame. 

Modern precedents for this voyage?

There is a rather recent example that would encourage the people involved in the construction of this as yet unnamed ship. 

In 2003, a group of sailing enthusiasts in Java, Indonesia, recreated a historical Indonesian outrigger ship. They called their design the Borobudur ship since they had based it on ships carved on the panels of Borobudur in Java. 

The recreated vessel, named Samudra Raksha, sailed from Java to Madagascar and all the way ahead to Ghana. 

Even closer in time, the governments of Singapore and Oman, and salvage company Seabed Explorations collaborated in 2008 to create a ship named The Jewel of Muscat. This, too was a stitched ship.

Its design was based on the Belitung shipwreck, an Arabian vessel discovered off the shores of Belitung Island, Indonesia, in 1998, and later recovered.

The Jewel of Muscat however, was based on 17th century design. What is being recreated in India is based on a design from the the 4th century CE, i.e., 1300 years older.

Countdown begins

The current Indian endeavour was approved as a Commemoration Project by the National Implementation Committee, that is chaired by the Home Minister of India, on 14 December 2022.

The keel-laying ceremony for this ship was held in Goa on 12 September. Keel-laying refers to the formal beginning of a ship’s construction. 

On the same day, the team working on the project went to the shrine of Nau Devi in Goa to seek her blessings. As her name suggests, Nau Devi is regarded as the Goddess of ocean voyages.

As Sanyal points in his tweet attached below, the vigraha depicts the Devi standing on a ship. This ship is a stitched craft.

The project is being funded by the Ministry of Culture, and the Ministries of Shipping and External Affairs will be providing their support when the completed ship sets out to travel. 

Swarajya caught up with Sanjeev Sanyal to discuss the project and the other themes of Indian maritime history.

Here edited excerpts from the conversation:

Swarajya: When are you looking to set sail? Do you have a specific date or festival in mind? If yes, what is the historical significance of it?

Sanyal: The ship will hopefully be ready in early 2025 and then be subjected to six months of live testing. After that, the attempt will be to sail it on Kartik Purnima 2025 (November). That is when the winds begin to blow from the north. The idea is to sail the ship from Odisha to South East Asia.

Swarajya: What do we know about the first Indians to sail a vessel on the sea? Were they using the stitched ships as well? 

Sanyal: We do not know much about ocean-going Harappan ships that sailed in Bronze Age to the Middle East. We have a better idea of ship design from the late Iron Age onwards and a good idea by Gupta period.

This ship will replicate a ship from circa 4th century AD as depicted in a painting in Ajanta. Other inputs include ancient texts, carvings and descriptions by foreign travellers. An interesting aspect of ancient Indian ship technology was that the vessels were “stitched together” rather than nailed. This technique was used for thousands of years but went into decline after the Europeans came to dominate the Indian Ocean.

The technique is alive with very few remaining shipbuilders who make small fishing boats and it may go extinct soon. Hence, this ship is a way to record the technique for posterity.

Swarajya: We know of the Indian coast’s trade with Rome. Did all of that trade ply on such stitched ships? 

Sanyal: There were ships from different countries crossing the Indian Ocean. The Indian and Arab ships used the stitched technique. Romans and Greeks may well have used ships derived from their own Mediterranean galleys. Later Chinese ships would use a totally different design for their “treasure fleet”.

Swarajya: This project is an effort to revive and conserve a knowledge-tradition. Once the voyage is made, will the Indian Navy or Ministry of Culture or you, be publishing the entire process as a book for history/sailing enthusiasts?

It is being documented at each step of construction in video, photographs and text. Same will be done for the voyage. So we hope that there will be enough material for documentaries and books.

This is not an attempt to “revive” this ancient stitched technique but to document the technique before it goes completely extinct. Nonetheless, note we are reconstructing a 4th century ship that will be using certain long-dead designs aspects like a trailing oar (not rudder) and square sails (not lanteen).

The sailing characteristics are not fully known or understood. Building such a ship will help us understand maritime history. Of course, we may discover new things with modern applications.