Scaffies (Skaffies) & the McIntosh Boat & Shipbuilders of Portessie ...
The typical herring lugger was the Buckie boat, variously called a scaffie, scaffa, or scaith. Length of keel was 32ft to 33ft, but a curved stem and a sternpost raking at 45deg increased the overall length to 41ft, beam was 13ft, and depth 4ft 9in.
Our Fishing Heritage - Electric Scotland
On several occasions boats were swamped at sea or wrecked on shore with the loss of all on board, but the loss of a whole village fleet and all its men, must have devastated the tiny community of Stotfield in 1806.
Lossiefowk Archive
Up to the 1800's most of the fishing boats were the 'Scaffie' types, clinker built, ranging from 25-35ft long. Some were half decked, and the newer ones whole decked. A few boats of the 'Fifie' type were also amongst the fleet, but were never popular with the Lossiemouth fishermen.
Scottish Fisheries Museum - Developments in Boat Design
Zulu and Fifie sailing boats The design of sailing boats continued to be developed and refined throughout the 1800s when the main types were the Scaffie, Fifie and Zulu on the east coast and the Loch Fyne Skiff in the Clyde area.
HistoryShelf.org: the Silver Darlings - Scran
Skaffies (sometimes spelled scaffie) were small clinker-built boats. They had a curved stem (bow) and steeply sloped stern (back). They were rigged boats with a tall dipping lugsail. In good weather they were easy to manoeuvre but in bad weather they tended to be unsteady.
Fifie and Scaffie design boats were the usual kind of fishing boat in use round the coast of Scotland until experiments which took place in the latter part of the 19th century to find a more suitable fishing boat for the conditions that existed round …
The Stotfield fishing disaster | On this day in Scotland
The entire fleet was lost, along with all the men of working age, in a storm on Christmas Day 1806. Stotfield’s tiny fleet comprised just three boats at the time. Each of them was very basic, was rowed by hand, and lacked a deck.
The Scaffie and the Fifie were the two most popular east coast fishing boat designs in the second half of the 19th century.
‘SCAFFIE’ Type Sail Herring Drifter, circa 1800
<p>Associated mainly with the Moray Firth coast, ‘SCAFFIES’ were the first of the classic trio of sail drifters. Open decked and lightly built for operation from beaches, ‘SCAFFIES’ were vulnerable in bad weather. Some were large, with crews of up to six.</p>
National Museums of Scotland - Model, of scaffie fishing boat
A scaffie was a traditional Scottish fishing boat. Used for herring, it was introduced in the mid 19th century into the Moray Firth. This wooden model, built to a scale of 1:24, represents a typical scaffie from around 1885.