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Una, from Dixon Kemp’s legendary Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailing
Steve Taylor was kind enough to alert me to this one – a readable pdf of a charming little book of 1868 about a canal and sea trip by an example of the Una boat, which was then fashionable in the UK.
http://www.weyandarun.co.uk/thames.pdf
Dixon Kemp describes the Una boat here: http://www.friend.ly.net/~dadadata/kemp/dictUV.html
The scans of the engravings including the author JB Dashwood’s Una boat are unclear, so I’ve included a scan of the original Una boat from Dixon Kemp’s Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailing. The original Una boat was an imported North American cat boat of the era, with a centreboard, characteristic widish beam and a single gaff-rigged mast and sail. Cat boats were originally working fishing boats, but they have long been adopted for pleasure boating, and so have evolved in many ways in the intervening 140 years. They are still an interesting type, particularly for sheltered coastal cruising.
In searching the web for references, I found this online account of sailing small boats of the 19th century: http://www.thamessailingclub.co.uk/…/Our_History.pdf
There were just a few copies of Dixon Kemp’s Manual available at ABE when I looked, and several copies of his other classics also. Check now: