What is a coracle?

A coracle is a small, light, single-person boat - a lattice of split wooden laths bound at the rim and covered with a waterproof skin, shaped roughly like the half of a walnut shell and drawn through the water with one paddle worked over the bow. It is a river craft, keel-less and almost flat-bottomed, light enough that the fisherman carries it home on his back. The heartland of the coracle is Wales, but the craft reaches into England on the Severn and along the Welsh border, which is where it sits within this archive’s patch. I should be straight about the archive’s position: there is an essay here, The Last Coracle Makers, but the archive has not yet sat with a maker and watched a coracle built and skinned. This page defines the craft; the documentation is still to come.

The defining thing about a coracle is that it has no keel and almost no draught. It sits on the water rather than in it, which makes it astonishingly manoeuvrable in shallow, fast river - and tippy and strange to anyone used to a rowing boat. It is paddled, not rowed: one paddle, held over the front, sculled in a figure-of-eight so the boat is pulled forward while the other hand tends a net. That one-handed working is the point, because the coracle was above all a fishing platform, worked in pairs across a river with a net strung between two boats to take salmon and sewin (sea trout).

It is easy to confuse with the currach (or curragh), the Irish and Scottish skin boat - but they are different vessels. A currach is larger, longer, built to be rowed, and goes to sea; a coracle is small, round, one-person, and belongs to inland rivers. And although every coracle shares the same idea, there is no single coracle: the design changes from river to river. A Teifi coracle, a Tywi coracle and a Severn coracle differ in shape, in the seat, and in the pattern of the laths, because each was developed for its own water and handed down in the families who fished it.

The frame is the lattice of split laths - traditionally cleft ash or willow - laid in two directions to make the open basketwork of the hull. The gunwale is the woven band of hazel or willow plaited around the rim that locks the lath ends and gives the boat its strength. The seat (or thwart) is a single board across the middle, often with a space beneath for the catch. The covering is the skin - the waterproof layer over the frame. The paddle is single and broad, and the action of using it is called sculling. The word coracle itself comes from the Welsh cwrwgl.

The maker begins with the frame. Split laths are laid out in a lattice, the ends pushed into the ground or a jig and bent up, then woven together and locked with a plaited hazel gunwale around the rim - much closer to basketwork than to carpentry. A seat board goes across. The whole frame is light enough to lift with one hand.

Then it is covered. The oldest coverings were animal hide; for most of the documented history it was calico or flannel stretched over the frame and sealed with tar or pitch; modern makers often use canvas sealed with bitumen, or a synthetic fabric. The skin is drawn tight, fixed under the gunwale, and waterproofed, and the boat is finished. Because the pattern is local and unwritten, a coracle is in effect a piece of inherited regional design - the reason the craft is fragile is that the knowledge of any one river’s coracle may sit with only one or two families.

The archive’s essay The Last Coracle Makers sets out the craft and its decline, but the archive has not yet documented a coracle being built first-hand, and this page will keep saying so until it has. The natural place for the archive to meet it is the English end of the tradition - the Severn and the border country - which is also the subject of The Border Country. Coracle-making is on the list of crafts the archive intends to document; the day it does, the photographs of a frame being woven and skinned will replace this section.

Heritage Crafts lists coracle-making among its endangered crafts. The commercial reason the boats existed - licensed net-fishing for salmon and sewin - has been all but legislated and fished out of existence: on the Welsh rivers where it survives, the Teifi and the Tywi, the licences are now held by a handful of families and dwindling. On the English Severn the working tradition has largely become heritage and recreation, kept alive by enthusiasts rather than fishermen.

What holds the craft up now is interest rather than industry: the Coracle Society, the National Coracle Centre at Cenarth, museum collections, and the makers who teach building courses. That is a precarious base - a craft kept by a few makers and a society of enthusiasts is one generation from a gap - but it is a real one. The archive’s Learn a Craft directory points to where the building can be learned.

What is a coracle made of?
A frame of split ash or willow laths woven into a lattice, bound at the rim with a gunwale of plaited hazel or willow, and covered with a waterproof skin. Historically the skin was animal hide, then tarred calico or flannel; today it is often canvas sealed with bitumen, or a modern fabric.

What is the difference between a coracle and a currach?
A coracle is small, round or pear-shaped, keel-less, and built for one person on inland rivers. A currach (or curragh) is the larger Irish and Scottish skin boat, longer, with a keel-like form and built to be rowed on the sea. Both are skin-on-frame boats, but they are different vessels for different water.

Are coracles still used for fishing?
Only just. Licensed coracle net-fishing for salmon and sewin survives on a few Welsh rivers such as the Teifi and the Tywi, held by a small number of families, with licences now very restricted. Elsewhere, including the English Severn, coracle use is largely kept alive as heritage and recreation rather than commercial fishing.