In July 1874, Nathaniel H. Bishop set off from Quebec on a canoe voyage to the Gulf of Mexico. He had an 18 ft sailing canoe, solidly clinker-built, weighing about the same as a Wayfarer dinghy hull, and for that reason he had to take along a man as crew to help manhandle it. On reaching Troy on the upper waters of the Hudson River, near Albany, he decided to make a change to a 'light weight' canoe made mainly of paper by a firm of boatbuilders called Waters (appropriate name!) of that town.

The model Bishop chose was of English 'Nautilus' type, 14 ft long by 28 inches beam, 9 inches depth amidships, with high sheer ends 23 inches at the bow and 20 at the stern. It was constructed of laminated strips of heavy manila paper laid over a light wooden frame to a thickness of one-eighth of an inch, and was fitted with detachable steel outriggers. It weighed 58 lbs, about double that of my 14 ft 6 in. Kayel marine ply canoe. With it came a pair of oars and a double paddle. There was also a mast and sail which he soon abandoned.

I quote now from a book, 'On the River', edited by W M Teller, which summarises a number of early North American canoe and small boat voyagers' accounts of their travels on both fresh and salt water. Two of the cited authors, the writer Henry Thoreau and the artist Frederick Remington, are well known in other connections.

How the layers of paper were bonded in a waterproof way in those days is not stated. Presumably it was not with ordinary gelatin glue, though that can be hardened with alum or with formalin. It might have been with a casein-lime mixture on the lines, I believe, of the old 'Casco'. A recipe for 'marine' glue in a how-to-do-it book of 1848 instances rubber dissolved in light naphtha and with shellac added. Anyway, the hull, made to a smooth finish and varnished with shellac, proved to be very strong and resisted hard groundings on sharp stones as well as capsizes and other mishaps.

As made in Troy, the canoe was undecked save at bow and stern, but Bishop rowed and paddled it 250 miles by busy water via New York to Philadelphia where he obtained a canvas deck-cover which buttoned on round the gunwales. From Philadelphia he travelled by sea, crossing open bays and weaving in and out of the swampy islands which fringe much of the seaboard of the USA. Sometimes he lost his way in these reedy channels where it was often impossible to gain access to a bit of terra firma to camp for the night. On one such evening occasion there was a spooky encounter with a phantom ship that appeared and disappeared in the mist when he wanted to reach it and tie up alongside.

The ship was real enough: the spooky disappearances were caused by the tide at times silently carrying him back faster than he could paddle forward. Finally he made it and was welcomed on board. In the northern waters he was worried a bit by schools of overfriendly porpoises, but as he got further south, and especially when crossing the Florida peninsular, tempting camping sites proved to be shared by large alligators. There was also danger from aggressive, deadly-poisonous water-moccasin snakes that not only swam but could drop into the canoe from branches overhead.

Bishop carried in the canoe a store of 'condensed' food sufficient for a month and, like Rob Roy Macgregor, he wore a suit. He recounts how, after being capsized and driven ashore by the breaking waves he had to strip on the cold, gale-swept beach of Delaware Bay and change into a reserve flannel suit from the waterproof kitbag when that was washed ashore with the rest of the gear. These days, high-tech sports clothing is deemed essential, but much was achieved without that. Looking again at photos of a folding-canoe trip I did with a student party in the lochs, and offshore up the coast of the western Highlands in 1939, I see that while we males wore shorts, the half-dozen women for the most part wore their skirts of the day. In 'On the River' there is a 1905 photo of two ladies with a taste for shooting rapids. They are launching their 'Indian' style canoe, both in full, ankle-length dresses.