Here is an interesting article i found the other night.
Gives a general description of the way things have evolved over the years regarding the way boats are and have been built.

thought some of yall may enjoy it.

http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Art ... unfat.html

I knew Albert latiolais (gooyou) and his brother Darrow. Helped them build a few "put puts" and those single piston make or break engines. I travelled once to Pierre part to meet Mr billot and to learn about his boat building methods. He is was a decedent of the Houma Indian tribe. His hands drawfted mine when we shook hands. They're all gone now. Fortunately some of what they knew was passed on to me and others so future generations would know how these beautiful vessels were built. This was one of the reasons I started teaching wooden boatbuildig at ULL a few years ago... To pass along my knowlege to others. I could go on for pages about these characters.

My grandfather WIlmer Blancard, Sr. was not commercially known as the latiolas, but he built many more swamp skiffs, flatbottoms and pirogues in his day, also houses. A blanchard pirogue was the shit in the day of wood pirogues, in the day of the Catahoula pirogue races, thats all there was, till the latiolas built custom narrow pirogues just for racing. I have a hand drawn diagram of a Blanchard pirogue buld somewheres, I need to find that. Remember the GooYou craft aluminum flats, they are still around to this day. I believe he put a rake on the stern for boat to plane on, his design and it worked.