A boat is a watercraft of any size designed to float or plane, to provide passage across water. Usually this water will be inland (lakes) or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is a vessel small enough to be carried aboard another vessel (a ship). Another less restrictive definition is a vessel that can be lifted out of the water. Strictly speaking and uniquely a submarine is a boat as defined by the Royal Navy. Some boats too large for the naval definition include the Great Lakes freighter, riverboat, narrow boat and ferryboat. The term armed boat, used primarily by English speaking naval forces, referred to any boat carrying either a cannon or armed occupants, such as marines.
Read more about Boat: History, Types, Parts and Terminology, Building Materials, Propulsion, Buoyancy
Famous quotes containing the word boat:
“We can never see Christianity from the catechism:Mfrom the pastures, from a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood- birds we possibly may.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The boat is made of dry reeds, and a monkey is steering it.”
—Punjabi proverb, trans. by Gurinder Singh Mann.
“The utmost familiarity with dead streams, or with the ocean, would not prepare a man for this peculiar navigation; and the most skillful boatman anywhere else would here be obliged to take out his boat and carry round a hundred times, still with great risk, as well as delay, where the practiced batteau-man poles up with comparative ease and safety.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)