by Antony Sluce

The Sixareen and her Racing Descendants, by Charles Sandison

Published by the Shetland Times Ltd., Lerwick, price £3 incl. p & p, this book is a reprint of a book first published in 1954. It contains 53 pages with 3 sets of lines and 8 photographs, some historical and some modern. The sixareens were large (30 feet overall) double-ended open boats used for fishing up to 40 miles offshore from the Shetland Isles. They were the culmination of hundreds of years of development of the Viking boats. Their form was fixed by about 1830 and continued unchanged until the turn of the century when the more powerful luggers from Scotland replaced them. The book outlines this historical development. The level of detail, particularly constructional details, is less than the level in E Marsh’s Inshore Craft of Britain, chapter 2 volume 1.

The seamanship displayed by the fishermen was considerable. It is difficult to draw any lessons for the dinghy cruising person who is usually operating undermanned by comparison and with different margins of safety. The most fascinating chapters for me were the ones on the racing boats developed from the sixareens. The racing dinghies have departed from the original proportions. This departure has been a pulling out of the ends and so getting more lift into the bow and stern. The other way of making the bow and stern more buoyant is to make them fuller, but this makes the boat slower. C Sandison has designed and raced a number of these dinghies and carried out some interesting speed trials on different points of sailing.

The author makes great claims for the seaworthiness of the sixareen. I feel this is a little over stated: the seaworthiness was in the skill of the fishermen, and extensive modification is needed to make them truly seaworthy. Shackleton, in his fantastic 800 mile passage in a 22 foot double-ender, achieved this by decking her in, leaving a small cockpit, and adding 2 tons of ballast plus 6 crew and their stores for 6 weeks. This highlights one of the advantages of the double-ender. They can be loaded down with very little effect on their performance — the ideal situation for a fisherman who has a bumper catch. When rowing a transom-sterned boat, it stops dead between each stroke if the transom is immersed too deeply, whereas the double-ender keeps moving. The other major advantage to the fisherman was the ease of construction and maintenance.

There is little discussion of rudders, except to describe the very simple method of shipping and unshipping the rudder at sea. I am surprised they could control the boats given the area of the rudders shown. There does appear to be an area of balancing rudder, which should make them more efficient, but they do look small. The racing dinghies have areas more in line with what I have found necessary. As the owner of a double-ender, I found the book most interesting, but perhaps it is of less interest to the general boat owner.