Gurnard (Poon)

[Anatol]

Ship type. Wooden cargo ship of the Zeeland and South Holland rivers, which is related to the Tjalk and the Otter. Also called a Zeeland gurnard, gurnard ship, or gurnard barge. [Images] A Brabant gurnard also seems to exist, which was probably slightly smaller.
It is a ship with rounded shapes, a straight, slightly sloping stern beam, and a curved stem beam. Here too, one finds ships with a very wide bottom, wider at the bilges than at the stern beams. The most striking feature of many of the later-built ships is that the stem beam curves backward above the sledges and ends in a sharp point. Often, the gurnards also had sledges against the stern beam. They were sturdily built ships.
The gurnard was built in shipyards in Brabant and Zeeland, as well as in South Holland. They emerged during the seventeenth century and disappeared during the nineteenth. A few iron-built barges have survived.
The old wooden barges were generally quite short with a fixed mast positioned somewhat forward. The longer (slender) model emerged in the 19th century.
P.J.V.M. Sopers depicts the ship as a round-bottomed ship, clearly wider at the top than below. Ir. E. van Konijnenburg also depicts a ship with beautiful, rounded bilges, but this one has inward-sloping sides, so it is wider at the bottom. E.W. Petrejus also mentions the "short-curved, angular bilges, the inward-sloping sides, which made the ship narrower at the top than at bottom" as an important characteristic. He calls them swift, well-defended ships. Others, however, consider the ships less swift.
The width and slope of the bulwark are not consistent across all ships designated as Poon. G.J. Schutten notes that on small Poon, the bulwark does not follow the line of the ship towards the aft, but tapers so much that it stops at the stern. These ships would not have had a pavilion, and the smallest ones would not have had a cabin either. The smallest ones were steered from a cockpit/bolle stable. Several old photos also show 'ponen' with quite varying appearances.
For example, an old advertisement also mentions a state-of-the-art poon barge. Whether this was a state-of-the-art pavilion poon without a pavilion, or whether there were any other differences, I don't know.
Nederland 2025; 1,0.
Source: https://www.debinnenvaart.nl/binnenvaar ... rd=pk#poon.