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  A brief history of the Periauger

Coastal Carolina is made up of a network of sounds, small islands and inland waterways.  During the period of colonial settlement, roads were few, poorly built, and rarely maintained.  These inland waterways were the main highways for trade and communication, however, they were too shallow for ocean-going vessels to get far inland.  Smaller, shallow-draft vessels were developed to transport cargo on the inland streams.   The periauger was the most typical of these workboats used by the colonists.

Periauger is a generic term for a split dugout cypress log with a plank keel inserted in the center, sometimes with an upper strake added to increase freeboard.  It was propelled by oars or was sailed and had two masts which could be stepped when not rowing.  Some could carry large cargoes and travel up small streams and rivers where deeper draft vessels could not.

Native Americans originally developed dugout canoes as swift and convenient transportation.  Many historians claim periaugers were an English adaptation of Indian dugout canoes.  Research shows that by the 1740s, Europeans were plying the southeastern waterways in a variety of vessels including native canoes, sloops, schooners, and periaugers. Michael Alford, former Curator of Maritime Research at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, provides another convincing argument for the origin of the periauger.  Alford found that pre-colonial English watercraft was all basic, single-log, pond craft, and he suggests a French origin.  French Huguenots, arriving in South Carolina as early as 1680, were building split-dugout canoes in 1700.  Many came from east of Bayonne where there is a tradition of split-dugouts on the River L'Adour.

Regardless of their historical origin, periaugers were significant to colonial settlement.  The importance of periaugers in coastal Carolina can be seen in their inclusion on the 1733 Mosely Map where Core Sound is noted as passable for periaugers.   Periaugers are also described in the 1709 diaries of John Lawson:

“As we row'd up the [Santee] River, we found the Land toward the Mouth, and for sixteen Miles up it, scarce any Thing but Swamp and Percoarson, Affording vast Ciprus-Trees, of which the French make Canoes, that will carry fifty or sixty Barrels. After the tree is moulded and dug, they saw them into two Pieces, and so put a Plank between, and a small keel, to preserve them from the Oyster Banks....They carry two Masts, and Bermuda Sails, which makes them very handy and fit for their Purpose.”

The striking void in periauger research is the absence of physical evidence.  No underwater archaelogy has produced ship remains matching descriptions of colonial periaugers.   The boat was so ordinary and commonplace that no one thought to preserve them for posterity.  Subsequently, the construction techniques, once common in the Southeast, are virtually unknown today. The Periauger construction will provide a means to relearn this significant form of traditional boatbuilding.

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