Dugout canoes discovered by archaeologists have been dated at more than 8000 years old. It was only a matter of time before sails were added to help propel boats in favourable winds, originally using skin, bark and woven reeds. Pictures of double sailing canoes and sailing outrigger canoes were drawn in 1769 during Captain James Cook’s first Endeavor voyage to the Pacific. However, it was John MacGregor in 1865 that is generally credited with starting the development of the sailing canoe as a pleasure craft for racing and cruising, following his voyages in Rob Roy boats. His travels in these 14-15ft (designed to fit in German railway wagons) lug and jib boats were publicised through his popular books, A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe,The Rob Roy on the Baltic, and The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Nile, Red sea, & Gennesareth. One of the Rob Roys (14ft LOA, 26in beam, 19.5sqft sail) survives today in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
In 1866, McGregor instigated the creation of the Canoe Club (becoming the Royal Canoe Club in 1873), situated on the Thames in Teddington, to encourage the participation in Rob Roy type boats. This also led to the further development of the boats (approximately 200 Rob Roy canoes had been built at this point), notably James Gordon who introduced a retractable dagger board and water proof cockpit cover into his 14ft single lug sail (which doubled as a camping tent) Rothian sailing Canoe in 1867. He used this to cross the English Channel and travel along the Rhône from Lyon to Marseille and the Mediterranean. Another inspired by the movement, Warrington Baden-Powell introduced a keel and ballast to the first of his lug yawl Nautilus series of sailing canoes, which helped guide the direction towards sailing performance bias over paddling. The design was further developed by working with Dixon-Kemp (e.g. a foot operated rudder was soon introduced) and publicised in the Manual of Yacht and Boat sailing, first published in 1878, which has a Sailing Canoe chapter.
Clubs were also formed on the Clyde and Humber, and each of the three clubs tended to develop their own versions of boats, often influenced by the local sea/weather conditions and requirements of their members.
Interest was also gathering outside of the UK. MacGregor was invited to participate in Emperor Napoléon III’s 1867 International Exposition in Paris, and travelled there in a new boat built for the event. The Emperor subsequently ordered a boat and gave it to the Prince Imperial, who became a member of the Royal Canoe Club and named it “Rhône”.
In the US, a Nautilus design boat was built locally for a member of the New York Canoe Club in 1870, and in 1886 the Royal Canoe Club were challenged to race for the New York Canoe Club International Cup (which is still held today, the second oldest sailing race after the America’s cup). Baden-Powell and Walter Stewart contested in their Nautilus and Pearl design boats, but could not compete successfully against the Americans in their lighter, purpose bult racing boats, with the inaugural event won by C. Bowyer Vaux in Lassie.
This event also encouraged greater participation in Canada, with a number of Canadians taking part (and later, winning). In 1887, Paul Butler started to introduce long lasting innovations into his designs, including bulkheads, self-draining cockpits, hollow spars, clutch cleats for sail handling lines, and a cross sliding deck seat to enable the sailor to hike further out and continue sailing in stronger winds with more canvas.
The boats were developing at a very fast pace, and towards the end of the century designs had already started to move in two broadly different directions: either lighter, faster more complicated and difficult to sail racing designs, or larger heavier ballasted keel boats more suited to cruising (they were becoming small yachts). In both cases they were also becoming more expensive, and moving away from the original requirement of being easily transported, hauled in and out of river banks and simple cruising. The 1920-1930s saw the introduction of planing dinghies, which moved designs even farther away from the original concepts at an even faster pace, and with the impact of the two world wars, almost entirely quashed interest in the sailing canoe. The exception was the International Canoe one-design which raced from the 1960s (with majority of participants coming from the US, Sweden, UK, and Australia) and continues to be developed and raced today internationally. However, these wild racing rockets with sliding seat “plank”, fractional sloop rigs and asymmetric spinnakers planing at 18 knots are a far cry from the Rob Roy!
The end of the twentieth century started to see renewed interest in the original style sailing canoe designs, updated with modern construction techniques and materials. Solway Dory was founded in 1981 and started building a range of sailing canoes in the UK from 14-16 feet, and formed the Open Canoe Sailing Group. In Switzerland, Bootsbaugarage are building the Hugh Horton designed 15 foot Bufflehead. A number of plans and plywood kits are also available for sailing canoes, including Ian Oughtred’s Wee Rob (12 – 16 feet), the Australian Michael Storer designed Viola 14, and the Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC) 17 foot Wanderlust with a Hobie mirage [pedal] drive to back up the yawl rig. In 2016, two Wanderlusts completed a 1,000 mile journey along the Intracoastal Waterway from Norfolk to Miami.
After 160 years, with design evolution taking boats in a very different direction from the originals, recent years have seen those early designs being re-visited and re-worked into small, lightweight and simple boats for a growing group of people that understand how practical and fun sailing canoes are for exploring rivers, lakes and coastal waters, near and far.