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Northumberland Strait boat was variously described as a "wedge boat", "narrow plank boat", or "edge nailed boat". These craft were built around, and fished, the Gulf of St. Lawrence from Canso Strait to northern New Brunswick, and off the coasts of Prince Edward Island. They differed from the Atlantic and Fundy coast power boats in both hull design and construction.
This region is characterized by shallow waters and short, choppy but violent seas that freeze in the winter. Wooden vessels hereabouts only fished a summer season, and until about twenty-five years ago, few were fitted with any form of deckhouse or shelter. Atlantic and Fundy coast boats started to fit various forms of weather protection during the 1930s. The Northumberland Strait boats widely diverged from their cousins in their hull shape. They had a much sharper bow, with continuous long keels, and lacked the characteristic Cape Islander forward kick-up towards the bow. These seasonal boats were only hauled once a year and fished lines of lobster traps, so they were not required to turn as quickly as the single-buoy trap boats found elsewhere. The most noticeable difference, however, lay in the very radical and pronounced flare of the bow sections. This flare served to toss aside the choppy seas before they could drench people in the open cockpit. The flare also made a useful wide oval fore deck.
But it was in the method of construction that these craft differed radically from the Cape Island type boat. They were built of many very slender planks that were little more than double their thickness. The narrow planks were attached to each other with box nails driven through pre-drilled holes within the thickness of the planks. There was no caulking between each pair of planks, and the finished hull presented a fair, smooth, almost yacht-like appearance. A number of reasons have been postulated for this type of hull construction, but no single reason has been accepted as definitive. Whatever the reasons for the narrow planking, the method prevailed during the period of the wooden, powered fishing boat round the Northumberland shore.