Ratnakar Dandekar and his son Prathamesh are considered to be among India’s premier boat builders. Their company, Hodi Innovations, located on the riverine Divar Island in Goa, has built celebrated sailing vessels such as the Mhadei and the Tarini, which have been used by the equally celebrated global circumnavigators Dilip Donde, Abhilash Tomy, and Varthika Joshi and her all-women crew. (Also Read | Why an Indian-American whiskey industry icon is training his sights on India ) The Dandekars mostly work with fibreglass, but right at this moment, they are engaging with a material they are not familiar with — wood.
Their brief, which came from high places in the government late last year, is to build a ‘stitched’ ship of the kind that sailed in the Indian Ocean in the first millennium of the Common Era. Archaeological evidence or records of the technique used to build such ships is scant, and their sole visual reference is a mural from the rock-cut Ajanta Caves that depicts a ship from the 4th century CE with a high stem and stern and oblong sails attached to three masts. The stitched ship project The stitched ship project is among the numerous projects undertaken by the government to revive traditional knowledge systems.
Backed by the Ministry of Culture and the Indian Navy, the project is the brainchild of Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, and author of, among others, The Ocean of Churn and Land of the Seven Rivers . But, what exactly is a stitched ship and why is it considered a part of India’s maritime heritage? Stitched ships or boats are a dying Indian Ocean tradition, in which vessels were built by stitching wooden planks using coir rope. Kerala’s kettuvallams are stitched boats (‘kettu’ literally means to tie in Malayalam); sewn plank boats are also found in Goa, and in Lakshadweep, odams or sewn boats were once used for hopping around the archipelago.
(Also Read | From Audemars Piguet to Berneron, finding beauty in asymmetry ) The reason why our ancestors, despite having sound knowledge of metallurgy, chose to largely stitch their ships instead of using nails is unclear. We built the iron pillar in Mehrauli, after all, and wootz, a crucible steel made in south India, was most famously used in the making of Damascus swords. In his book Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India’s Geography , Sanyal writes: “It is more likely that this was because ships sailed in waters full of atolls and reefs and had to be beached at many places due to lack of sheltered harbours or due to the rough monsoon seas.
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. It was only with the arrival of the Europeans that the Indian Ocean world shifted to ships nailed to frames to allow use of cannons (the stitched ships could not handle the blowback and tended to warp)”. The 20-metre, two-masted ship that the Dandekars are building will have square sails, two trailing oars, and a flexible hull.
The keel of the boat is made from the Indian Laurel, the stem and the stern from teak, and the planks from wild jack. “The wooden planks are first shaped by steaming them so that they conform to the shape of the hull,” says Prathamesh. “The planks are stitched together, and then sealed with coconut fibre, fish oil and resin,” says Prathamesh.
The father-son duo is guided by Babu Shankaran, one of the last remaining master shipwrights with in-depth knowledge of the stitching technique. Shankaran, who hails from Beypore, in Kerala, was among those involved in the Oman government’s Jewel of Muscat project, a reconstruction of a 9th century shipwreck discovered off the coast of Indonesia, in 2010. The ship’s planks were stitched together with 130 kilometres of coir rope.
Radhika Seshan, author of several books on maritime history, including most recently of Empires of the Sea: A Human History of the Indian Ocean World , says the stitched ship is apt representation of our maritime heritage because it is still a living tradition. She adds that sewn ships were likely lighter and more flexible than ships built using nails. (Also Read | We are working with other distillers to protect the Indian single malt category: Radico’s Abhishek Khaitan ) “They were more common in the Arabian Sea, because these would typically be shorter voyages — from Gujarat to Aden, for example — with clearly defined currents and very few circular wind and current movements.
At the same time, these ships would have navigated the high surf in the Bay of Bengal well because they could move over the wave than through it.” Seshan feels that stitched ships were especially suited to coastal navigation. “Our coasts are full of coconut fibre — the word ‘coir’ comes from the Tamil-Malayalam ‘kayar’ — so the boats could always be brought to shore, turned over and restitched.
” Igniting India’s maritime history The backers of the project will also hope that it ignites an interest in India’s maritime history and cures us of our ‘sea blindness’. The Indian Ocean has been among the busiest global thoroughfares of commercial and cultural traffic for over 2,000 years, with every major empire vying for control of its trade routes. The Harappans are credited with building the world’s first tidal dock in 2300 BC, and by the 16th century when the Europeans arrived, India had nearly 200 ports along its 6000-km coastline that housed boat-building centres.
Indian merchant guilds owned large fleets that sailed both to south east Asia and Arabia and beyond, and the Cholas had a significant maritime presence in the Malay Peninsula and the Eastern archipelago. The corporatised merchant guilds include The 500 Lords of Ayyavole, which was based in the town of Aihole in present day Karnataka and whose influence extended as far as Sumatra. Seshan considers the Chola invasion of Srivijaya, a maritime kingdom in what is now Indonesia, as “our major maritime moment”.
“But, other than that, they were always more focused on the control of the coasts.” Prathmesh Dandekar expects the ‘stitched ship’ to be ready by early 2025, after it will be put through a battery of tests. It is then expected to sail from Orissa to South east Asia, recreating earlier voyages such as the Baliyatra.
Held towards the end of November in Orissa, the Baliyatra festival commemorates the voyages Odia Sadhabas (sea traders) undertook to distant lands..
