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THE VOYAGE OF
ERASMUS: Ottawa to the Arctic
To All Friends,
This is the story many of you have been
asking us to write. It has taken us almost 20 years to get around
to it, but here it is as a downloadable eBook. In its more than 170 pages
it includes over
90 photos and charts, some hyperlinks and video. It is a PDF,
and best seen on a laptop or desktop computer screen with a free
Adobe Reader (https://get.adobe.com/reader/).
You can see a description and the Table of
Contents, the Foreword by Roy MacSkimming and a sample chapter by clicking the link below.
http://www.arctickayaks.com/Erasmus/book1/erasmus1.htm
The
Canadian Museum of Civilization (formerly National Museum of Man)
has
a rich collection of native craft. Included
are over 50 kayaks - beginning with those
collected in the western arctic by the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-1917.
While working at the Museum of Man,
traditional kayaks became my main
focus of study. I traveled widely, visiting
museums around the world with important kayak collections. I became
adept at crawling around in cramped storage rooms taking lines
off rare specimens. Plans were drafted from these lines to allow reproduction of
authentic Arctic kayaks.
Kayak Plans
Plans of the kayaks listed
below (except for
DWZ N/N) are available
from the Canadian
Museum of Civilization. For a full description of highlighted items, click on the
collection number below.
All plans include a set of full-size cross-sections. In addition there
are
plan
views, table of offsets, construction details, etc. The reference
number is the
museum catalogue number of the kayak. Museum names
and even
city and
country names have changed in some cases. Only the
original names
appear
on the plans.
To get the free
PDF Acrobat
Reader for viewing the Lines,
click here:
The lines (PDF) files will take from 10
seconds up to several minutes long, depending on the number of figures for each
kayak. Most only have 1 figure each. On the
Adobe toolbar, "Show/Hide Navigation Pane", shows the contents of the figures.
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