Cargo vessel
Scale: Unknown. A model of a cargo boat of a type used in Jessore, India, made entirely in wood with organic material fittings. The hull is carved from wood and is coated in a thin layer of plaster which has been painted off-white below the waterline and dark brown above. The hull shape is flat bottomed and double ended and very broad in beam with raised bulwarks. The stern appears to have a part missing. The deck area is completely uninterrupted apart from a single post just aft of amidships that passes through the deck and up through the cabin roofs. Just inside the bulwarks are a number of posts spaced at regular intervals, to which are fixed woven fibre panels. The panels form the sides of a large cabin, open at the back, with a pitched thatched roof. The side posts extend upwards through the thatched roof and are used to support and secure a flat roof above the thatched roof. The flat roof is made from wooden poles that have been laid longitudinally over transverse poles and tied together. This upper wooden roof is in two sections, the aft section being roughly rectangular and the forward section being trapezium shaped. At the bow there is a decorative panel with a rounded top and a floral circular motif. The bow is raised and terminates in a truncated bowsprit, triangular in section. The model is equipped with a large triangular rudder lashed to a stern rail, two oars (one broken).
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