Sneakbox

A sneakbox is a small boat that can be sailed, rowed, poled or sculled. It is predominantly associated with the Barnegat Bay in New Jersey, just as the canoe-like Delaware Ducker is associated with the New Jersey marshes along the Delaware River near Philadelphia.

Railbird skiffs and -like sneakboxes are other American hunting-boat types. Typically, they were all used for hunting waterfowl and marsh birds but also have been used by trappers.

As with most American small craft, its origin is not well documented. It is generally accepted that Captain Hazelton Seaman invented the first sneakbox about 1836, in West Creek, New Jersey.

It was usually built of Atlantic white cedar wood, known by many as Jersey cedar, which was once plentiful throughout the mid-Atlantic states.

It was conceived as a low-profile, lightweight, seaworthy hunting craft that one man could easily handle in any of the weather conditions likely to be encountered in the Jersey marshes.

The first printed description appeared in Forest and Stream on April 3, 1874 in a short letter from Robert B. White. White included a rough dimensional drawing that is recognizably a sneakbox.

The caption indicates:

The thing with the U-shaped cutout represents the folding wooden oarlock used.

It was the 1879 book Four Months in a Sneak Box by Nathaniel H. Bishop that put this small boat on the map. Bishop went down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and eastward along the Gulf Coast into Florida in Centennial Republic, his sneakbox. It was something of a stunt in commemoration of the nation's 100th anniversary.

Nevertheless, Four Months is one of the first small-boat camp-cruising narratives published in America, where the author was not an explorer or adventurer, but simply a sportsman or boating enthusiast.

An e-book is here: Four Months in a Sneak-Box: A boat voyage of 2600 miles down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and along the Gulf of Mexico.

Bishop was born in Medford, Mass. He had an adventurous streak, and at 17 worked his way south from Massachusetts on a sailing ship, then hiked across South America. This is the subject of his first book (1869) The Pampas and Andes: A Thousand Miles' Walk Across South America.

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Wikipedia