Clinker (boat Building)

Clinker (boat Building)

Clinker building is a method of constructing hulls of boats and ships by fixing wooden planks and, in the early nineteenth century, iron plates to each other so that the planks overlap along their edges. The overlapping joint is called a land. In any but a very small boat, the individual planks will also be joined end to end; the whole length of one of these composite planks is a strake. The technique developed in northern Europe and was successfully used by the Vikings and typical for the Hanseatic cog. The construction method is known in some places as lapstrake.

Examples of clinker-built boats, and which are directly descended from those of the Viking shipbuilders, are the traditional round-bottomed Thames skiffs, built of mahogany, which can still be seen on the River Thames in England, and the larger, (originally) cargo-carrying Norfolk wherries.