Watercraft

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Watercraft is the generic term for a vehicle that travels exclusively or predominantly on or in waters. Counterparts are the land vehicles and the aircraft.

General
Watercraft participate in water transport. The main use is the movement of persons (passenger transport) or freight (freight transport) on or in waters. Inland waters (rivers, canals and lakes) and the high seas are considered as waters for vessels. Apart from exceptions such as air cushion boats and hydrofoils, the necessary lift in mechanically operated vehicles is generated by the Archimedean principle.

According to the statutes of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a watercraft is one if it cannot move higher than two meters above the water. According to this definition, ground-effect vehicles, for example, but not flying boats or commercial aircraft, would be considered as vessels.

Species
The relationship between infrastructure, mode of transport and means of transport for watercraft is given in the following table:

A mixed form between land vehicles and water vehicles is the amphibious vehicle.

According to the type of propulsion, the watercraft can be divided as follows:
muscle powered vessels;
only downstream steered and possibly upstream rope pulled (e.g. rafts, treidels);
cross-river ferries;
craft under sail; wind powered;
machinery-operated vessels.
The form of propulsion also has shipping consequences.

Overview of watercraft

History

Watercraft were necessary for crossing straits, rivers and lakes, but also for spreading humans along coasts, over rivers and reaching islands, but also for fishing in inland waters and in the sea.

Homo erectus colonized about 850,000 years ago the Indonesian island of Flores, which was never reachable by land in the last million years, and developed on the island to Homo floresiensis. The required crossing of the Lombok Strait is considered the first successful use of watercraft over a sea distance of several kilometers (by the genus Homo).

Homo sapiens designed ocean-grade vessels at least 45,000 years ago and successfully used passages about 100 kilometres away without land sight in the settlement of Sahul (New Guinea and Australia) and distant islands of Melanesia. The first types suspected are rafts made of bamboo, rudders, stakens (in shallow water), wind accumulation points (palm leaf mats) and longitudinally floating companions. These vessels were created from previously developed marine vessels for near-coastal and offshore fishing.

With rafts, from the 9th millennium BC, the distant islands of the Mediterranean Sea (Crete, Mal)