The Shantyboat

A shantyboat is a small crude houseboat. There is a long history of people building and living in shantyboats, the obvious choice for itinerant workers, miners, dockworkers, and displaced agricultural workers.

In 2012,  I started creating my own shantyboat, largely from recycled materials. I built it from scratch and documented my progress online in a shantyboat build blog.

This is what kind of trouble you get in when you allow yourself to dream.

The hull is a flat-bottom barge designed by Glen L. Witt who used modern materials to adapt plans that have been around for 200 years, not too dissimilar from the boat that Harlan and Anna Hubbard made along the banks of the Ohio river in the 50s.

The cabin is a gabled corrugated tin roof shanty with a small loft up in the gables.

The shantyboat grew from a vague notion to a full-blown scheme. This is what kind of trouble you get in when you allow yourself to dream. Schemes turned into plans which turned into action.

Every weekend for several years, I was out in my friend’s barnyard in the cold or in the heat working on the shantyboat.

The frame is built with kiln-dried Douglas Fir. The hull is fiberglass over plywood. A whole community of friends helped flip the boat over after the hull was completed.

After the laborious hull, the cabin came together much faster and used more traditional framing.

While the hull was new lumber, the framing and the siding for the cabin was all reclaimed lumber from the dump or from clearing old sheds and chicken coops for people.

The shantyboat nears completion.

Inside the tiny shantyboat it was surprisingly comfortable. There were lots of windows for light and airflow, a sizable bed in the gable loft, a comfy couch, lots of bookshelves, a large worktable, a small but serviceable galley, and a bucket shitter in the head. All the comforts of home.

The entire build process is covered in excruciating and sometimes entertaining detail. Read on.

Explore the shantyboat build→