175K views · 1.6K reactions | This "Throwback Thursday" we're looking back 10 years, to the time John Akers showed the Kentucky Afield how to build a wooden flat-bottomed boat! | Kentucky Afield | Facebook

The McKenzie Drift Boat Story: Most people don’t know the drift boat was born right here on the McKenzie River. Back in the early 1900s, guides were rowing scows, flat-bottomed freight boats built to haul cargo. They were heavy, hard to row, and clumsy in the rapids. By the 1920s, local guides like John and Roy West, and later Veltie Pruitt, started experimenting with smaller and lighter boats. For the first time, boats were being built for this river, not just borrowed from somewhere else. In t

The NJ Garvey flat-bottomed boat was named after Jarvis (Gervas) Pharo who settled in West Creek, New Jersey, in the early 1700’s. He brought with him a design for a “Punt Boat,” a long, narrow, shallow-draft boat that eventually became the “Garvey”. The original Garveys were between 14-30 feet. Garveys were originally made of native Atlantic White Cedar. They are a flat bottomed scow type of boat that became the workboat of the clammer and crabber. Over the years, boat builders made modificatio