Reflections on a Strategy of ‘Mixed’ Hull Construction – The Case of a Ngwanda , Zanzibar, Tanzania

This article explores the idea of ‘mixed’ construction in wooden boatbuilding through the building of a plank-built ngwanda of Zanzibar, Tanzania. This nebulous notion is the product of a longstanding polarity that largely characterises wooden hulls as ‘shell-built’, ‘frame-built’, or something in-between. We trace how our builder, Fundi Hamdan, planned his hull, then varied his dependence on framing and planking as determinant of hull shape. While offering a record of regional hull construction, we advocate an epistemology of boat building defined less by the ‘pure’ shell/frame poles, and more by the ‘active’ roles that builders assign to frames and planking.