This is a wonderful opportunity to own an historical, masterfully crafted canoe. The Hiawatha canoe has a classic shape with a long nose profile. The strongly recurved stems give these canoes a long water line for good tracking, but a much shorter out of the water length. The canoe is 18 feet measured from the longest part of the recurved stems, but only about 16’7″ as measured from the ends of the gunwales.
The Hiawatha has a flat bottom for shallow draft and stability, tumblehome for ease of paddling, and a fine entry with gradually rising sheers. The full-size half ribs make the bottom of the canoe very tough, and the hull resistant to punctures when canoeing in shallows where underwater obstacles or snags may occur. These canoes track well, and make fine lake, and slow-moving water canoes.
Features include:
- Traditional wood and canvas construction
- Full size half ribs, providing a very durable bottom
- Strongly recurved stem/long nose profile, giving the canoe a long bearing length on the water, improves tracking
- Double stems, the additional outside stems provide strength and a visual accent
- Gradual rising sheer line, this makes for a higher sheer line at the quarters of the canoe, the place most vulnerable to shipping water in large vessels
This Hiawatha canoe is built on an old original Thompson Brothers Hiawatha canoe form. Thompson Brothers Boat Manufacturing Company, of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was a very large and well-respected builder of wooden boats. The eighteen-foot Hiawatha first appeared in catalogs in 1922, and continued to appear in catalogs until 1943.