Watercraft
Water vehicles are vehicles that are intended for locomotion on or in the water. Most essential distinction, with also legal consequences, is the type of drive that is roughly classified in the order of their emergence:
- Muscle- powered vehicles
- Vehicles under sail; wind-driven
- Engine driven vehicles.
With some exceptions, such as hovercraft and hydrofoil boats, is the necessary lift at Mechan. powered vehicles produced by the Archimedean principle.
The term watercraft serves as a summary category for a variety of boat and ship types. Most vessels are referred to as boat, raft or boat. Although most ships are larger than many boats, the distinction between these two categories is not always a matter of size.
- A rule says " a boat fit on a ship, but a ship never on a boat ". In fact, most ships are large enough to carry their own boats, such as lifeboats or dinghies.
- Often there are rules which limit the size (or the number of poles ) define which distinguish one ship from a boat.
- All underwater vehicles are called submarine " boats ".
According to the statutes of the International Maritime Organization a watercraft is one that if it can not move more than two feet above the water. According to this definition would, for example, in ground effect vehicles, but not to be flying boats or ships as transport flight watercraft.
Prehistory
Vessels were required for crossing straits, rivers and lakes, but also in the propagation of the people living along coasts, rivers and about to reach islands, but also for fishing in inland waters and in the sea.
Homo erectus some 850,000 years ago, colonized the Indonesian island of Flores, which was in the last million years never accessible by road, and developed on the island to Homo floresiensis. The required crossing the Lombok Strait is considered the first successful use of watercraft on a sea distance of several kilometers ( by the genus Homo ).
Homo sapiens has constructed ocean-going vessels at least 45,000 years ago and successfully used for passages of about 100 km away without sight of land in the settlement Sahuls (New Guinea and Australia ) and up to remote islands of Melanesia. The first types are rafts of bamboo, as the drive means Rowing, Punting ( in shallow water ), wind insertions ( palm leaf mats ) and along floating companion suspected. These vessels evolved from previously developed marine vessels for the offshore and coastal distant fishing.
With rafts also the country distant islands of the Mediterranean (Crete, Malta, Cyprus) were inhabited from the 9th millennium BC.
With the invention of the ax the building of dugouts made of logs was possible. From about 6000 BC such craft in Central Europe are demonstrated.
Watercraft from over frames made of wood and bone taut skins sewn together, was originally brought to the Stone Age in North America. The colonization of Arctic areas, particularly where water prey for the hunter offered, demanded high quality boats such as the Baidarka on the Aleutian Islands, kayaking and Umiak in Greenland. Such boats have a frame of wood and / or bone and are covered with animal skins.
To seagoing outrigger canoes and the necessary navigational skills were the western Pacific around a thousand years ago developed.
Dugouts were planked over the development by attaching boards, so that forms emerged as the pirogue. The case developed techniques of fastening and sealing enabled the planked vessels for the transport in the sea until the advent of iron ships predominant.
Examples of watercraft
Boats
- Outrigger boat
- Banana boat
- Concrete boat
- Dugout
- Electric boat
- Faltboat
- Wooden boat
- Yawl
- Jollenkreuzer
- Kayak
- Motorboat
- Canoe
- Lifeboat
- Rowing boat
- Speedboat
- Reed Boat
- Dinghy
- Speedboat
- Sailboat
- Speed boat
- Airboat
- Pedal boat
- Tandem Airfoil Flairboat
- Submarine
- Yacht
Ship
- Yacht
- Cargo ship (eg container ship )
- Research vessel
- Training ship
- Sailing ship
- Junk
- Catamaran
- Trimaran
- Air cushion vehicle ( hovercraft )
- Hydrofoil
- Gleitflächenboot
- Galley
- Hydrocopter
Other
- Amphibious vehicle
- Watercraft
- Liferaft
- Surfboard
- Scow
- Kitesurfer
- Aquascooter