Traditional raft, from 1884 edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Children successfully test their raft, in Brixham harbour, south Devon, England. The raft is made from wooden poles, rope and blue barrels.

A raft is any flat floating structure for travel over water. It is the most basic of boat design, characterized by the absence of a hull. Instead, rafts are kept afloat using any combination of buoyant materials such as wood, sealed barrels, or inflated air chambers. Traditional or primitive rafts are constructed of wood or reeds. Modern rafts may also use pontoons, drums, or extruded polystyrene blocks. Inflatable rafts use durable, multi-layered rubberized fabrics. Depending on its use and size, it may have a superstructure, masts, or rudders. Image File history File links Huckleberry Finn and Jim, on their raft, from the 1884 edition. ... Image File history File links Huckleberry Finn and Jim, on their raft, from the 1884 edition. ... Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) by Mark Twain is commonly accounted as one of the first Great American Novels. ... Image File history File links Raft-brixham-750pix. ... Image File history File links Raft-brixham-750pix. ... For other uses, see Boat (disambiguation). ... A hull is the body or frame of a ship or boat. ... For other uses, see Wood (disambiguation). ... This article is about common reed. ... A pontoon boat, like this small pleasure boat, typically floats and balances by means of two pontoons mounted lengthwise. ... For other kinds of drums, see drum (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Polystyrene (disambiguation). ... // Sociological concept In social sciences, superstructure is the set of socio-psychological feedback loops that maintain a coherent and meaningful structure in a given society, or part thereof. ...

Timber rafting is used by the logging industry for the transportation of logs, by tying them together into rafts, and drifting or pulling them down a river. This method was very common up until the middle of the 20th century but is now used only rarely. Timber rafting is arguably the second cheapest method of transportation of timber, next after log driving. ... Logging is the process in which trees are cut down usually as part of a timber harvest which is good for the environment. ...

The type of raft used for recreational rafting is almost exclusively an inflatable boat, manufactured of flexible materials for use on whitewater. Rafting in Brazil. ... Two inflatable boats at Horsea Island, England. ... Whitewater is formed in a rapid, when a rivers gradient drops enough to form a bubbly, or aerated and unstable current; the frothy water appears white. ...

Ratis is a Latin word meaning a raft-like vessel composed of fastened logs, generally without a keel. [1] For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ... Vessel can refer to any of the following: Objects Vessel (French vaissel, from a rare Latin vascellum, diminuitive of vas, vase, or urn), a word of somewhat wide application for many objects, the meaning common to them being capacity to hold or contain something. ... Timber in storage for later processing at a sawmill Lumber or Timber is a term used to describe wood, either standing or that has been processed for use—from the time trees are felled, to its end product as a material suitable for industrial use—as structural material for construction... For other uses, see Keel (disambiguation). ...

See also

• Lifeboat
• Raft of the Medusa
• Thor Heyerdahl
• Raft by Stephen Baxter

The Raft of the Medusa is the name applied to an infamous catastrophic shipwreck of the French ship Medusa in 1816 in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Africa. ... Thor Heyerdahl Thor Heyerdahl (October 6, 1914 Larvik, Norway – April 18, 2002 Colla Micheri, Italy) was a Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a scientific background in zoology and geography. ... Raft is a 1991 science fiction book by author Stephen Baxter. ... Stephen Baxter (born in Liverpool, 13 November 1957) is a British hard science fiction author. ...

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: raft

• World of Boats at Eyemouth ~ Australian Reed Raft
  
• Homemade Raft Plans and Photos of Rafts
• Neutrino Raft - vessels made from scrap