Building a barca from scratch

We don’t know exactly what kind of boats the Spaniards built at the Bay of Horses or how they did it. The vessels were all wrecked and lost on the coast of Texas two months later. According to Cabeza de Vaca, it seemed impossible to build boats “…because we did not know how to make them, nor had we any tools, iron, forges, oakum, pitch, or rigging. In the end, out of all the many things that would be needed, we had none, nor did anyone know anything about their fabrication.” That is bound to be an exaggeration. Any such expedition into an unknown wilderness at that time would have had enough means and talent to at least build rafts for river crossings, fortifications if necessary, and even crude shelters for a settlement, as originally planned. Not to mention, the soldiers and horsemen had to maintain their fighting gear. Building boats was a new challenge, but building other items of wood and metal would have been routine.

   Functionally, these barcas were probably a much-simplified version of the Spanish bergantín, a type of coastal vessel that would have been very familiar to explorers of that period. Nautical historian Steve Harris has proposed and modeled their most likely design, based on the resources and talents they had available, the capabilities they needed for sailing and rowing them, and the advice of other nautical experts on Spanish boats of that period (The Narváez Expedition Barca, 2019. Nautical Research Journal, 64 (3): 209-224.) We do know that the five boats were crowded with 242 men, their gear, and food, and they sat very low in the water. Days later, they raised the sides somewhat with planks salvaged from native canoes.

   The historical illustration in the previous post shows them building planked vessels, and that would not be unrealistic even under primitive conditions. Builders in the Middle Ages commonly used the technique of “riving” planks out of logs with hand tools. At St. Marks in 1528, they had virgin long-leaf pines that grew over 100 feet tall and up to three feet in diameter, far up the trunks. Long planks about 3 inches thick could be split from those logs with simple wooden mallets and wedges. There are plenty of videos online that illustrate the method.