Shantyboats

Article by Bryan Lowe

Our dinner of chicken and dumplings in a carrot, shallot, and rosemary sauce had really hit the spot, and the aroma of fresh blackberry cobbler simmering on the portable stove up front made our wait for dessert seem especially long despite our already full bellies. It had been a warm day, maybe even hot by Seattle standards, so our little bend in the river felt wonderfully calm and cool—and we were alone.

I’d tied up my little home-built boat, an Escargot designed by Phil Theil, beneath a tree that tumbled out over the bank of the river, its branches a few feet above the water. As the tide began to rise and the river backed up against the rising wall of saltwater, our eighteen by six-foot home on the water began to ascend into the branches. Before we knew it we were practically one with the tree, one with the nature all around, as we nestled into the bright green foliage with the birds in the branches singing about us. This would be our home for the night, aboard our cozy shantyboat on a quiet river in western Washington.

The idea of getting away from it all to some quiet place on the water can be found in the heart of almost every boater, and for more and more people that dream is coming true aboard a shantyboat. But what is a shantyboat? Its origin isn’t exactly clear, nor is its meaning. Many dictionaries don’t even consider it worthy of definition. But like so many things of this sort, we all seem to know a shantyboat when we see one. Shanty implies a crudely built hut or shack, often occupied by someone truly at the end of their rope, a description also apt for those who took to shanties on the water—or shantyboats, as they came to be known sometime early in the last century. Their peak seems to have come during the Great Depression, when perhaps thousands of shantyboats were pressed into service as homes of last resort, homes that were really nothing more than shacks on the water.