Raft is one of the simplest kinds of watercraft. It may be made of logs lashed together with ropes, or of any other material that floats. Rafts are usually square or rectangular. Poles, paddles, or sails can be used to help propel a raft across the water. Sometimes river and ocean currents alone move a raft to its destination. Most modern rafts used for recreational purposes are inflatable and are made of nylon fabric coated with a synthetic rubber called neoprene (see Rafting ).
Early people built rafts of logs, bundles of reeds, or inflated animal skins lashed together with vines or twisted animal hides. Such rafts provided a means of using the currents of waterways for transportation. A raft drifting with a river’s current could carry passengers and goods downstream to the sea. For this reason, ancient seaports were frequently located at the mouths of rivers, where they could easily receive goods from areas farther inland. During the 1800’s, flatboats (large rafts) served as an important means of transportation on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers (see Flatboat ).
In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl of Norway and five companions drifted on the balsa-wood raft Kon-Tiki for about 4,300 nautical miles (7,960 kilometers). They sailed from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in the central Pacific (see Heyerdahl, Thor ). In 1963 and 1964, 70-year-old William Willis of the United States sailed sailed for 10,850 nautical miles (20,090 kilometers) on the Age Unlimited, a steel pontoon raft. He went from Peru to Australia—with a stop in the Samoa Islands for repairs—in 204 days.
