ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on the author’s practical field experiences as a consultant naval architect visiting Bangladesh on many occasions between 1985 and 1993. It draws on the results of more than two hundred interviews with boatmen from all over the country and on detailed studies of nine individual boats (BIWTA, 1994), but it is particularly concerned with the smooth-skinned boats that operate on the inland water and canals of Bangladesh – boats that Bengalis refer to as of binekata construction. In Chapter 2 we discussed the much less common digekata (reverse-clinker) boats, which these days appear to be almost exclusively restricted to the northeast of the country.
