What is a Gundalow ?
A gundalow is a shallow drafted type of cargo ship, once common
in the Gulf of Maine’s rivers and estuaries, that reached it’s
highest state of evolution in the Great Bay of New Hampshire and
Maine in the late 1800’s.
The Piscataqua region gundalow began as a simple undecked barge,
first appearing in the mid 1600s. They were poled or rowed with long
sweeps (oars). By the 1700s gundalows were partially decked and often
had square-rigged sails. The 19th century saw the final development
of the vessel into a fully decked flat-bottomed cargo carrier with
a cabin and lateen sail that could be lowered to “shoot” under
bridges. The sail acted as an ‘auxiliary engine’ since
gundalows depended on the tides to take them upriver on the rising
tide and downriver on the falling tide.
 Carrying
up to 50 tons of cargo and sometimes measuring more than 70 feet
long and 19 feet wide, gundalows were the equivalent of today’s
tractor-trailer rigs. These gundalows, the large ones drawing only
4 feet of water when fully loaded, had a spoon-bow, a round stern
and a stump mast to carry the 70’yard of it’s massive
lateen sail. A leeboard, eliminating the need for a keel, and a rudder
rigged to a wheel by drum and tackle completed the picture.
Gundalows were used to carry freight between ocean going schooners,
which could not navigate the shallow rivers in the area, and the
growing towns in the region.  Cotton,
the raw material for the factories producing cloth, spices and other
goods from around the world were transported from the schooners to
area businesses.
Farm produce, lumber and locally produced factory goods were transported
to schooners in deep water on gundalows.Gundalows carried bricks
from local brickyards to build the giant mill buildings found on
the banks of area rivers. Granite for mill building foundations,
cordwood, and later coal to power area mills, was also carried on
gundalows.
Built from wood lot timber, a gundalow needed no specialized knowledge
to construct, and most salt-water farmers, fishermen or traders simply
built their own. The Fanny M., launched from Adam’s Point in
Durham, NH in 1886 by Captain Edward H. Adams, was the last gundalow
to operate commercially in the area.
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