The Mtepe, sewn boats of the Swahili people, East Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, southern Somalia and Mozambique).

Pictured: A detailed model Mtepe from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, a half sized replica from the House of Wonders Museum in Stone Town, Zanzibar, and a rare photograph of an Mtepe in Zanzibar, c. 1890.

Sewn boats, were first mentioned in descriptions of the East African coast in the first century work, “Periplus of the Erythraean Sea”. Exactly which type of boat being referenced here is not certain though.

By the mid 1st millennium AD, the Swahili had branched off from other Sabaki speakers (Bantu groups settling the coastal regions), and settled on the coast and islands off the East African Coast as the preeminent maritime culture of the region, becoming an important link in the lucrative Indian Ocean trade, interacting heavily with Somali, Yemeni, Omani, Persian, Indian, Southeast Asian and even Chinese traders, as well as mainland African groups, Malagasy and Comorians. Swahili traders and fishermen used a variety of boats, ranging from simple dugout canoes, common across the world, to outriggers inspired by their Austronesian contacts, and dhows, which plied the Indian Ocean between Africa, Arabia, Persia and South-Asia, making use of the annual monsoon winds. The mtepe, however, was unique to the Swahili.

The mtepe was the quintessential Swahili sailboat made from planks sewn together with chords, and used wooden pegs instead of nails. It featured a rectangular sail of woven coconut fibre or palm leaf, and could have a small thatched roof for shelter in the back. They could vary significantly in size, from c. 12 meters, to 30 meters, with a reported tonnage of 12 to 186 tons. They transported everything from mangrove poles and firewood, to farm produce, pottery, including porcelain, cattle, salt, iron, gold, ivory, a variety of other luxury products and even slaves.

Exactly how far back this specific type of sewn boat goes, is not known. “The earliest mention of the name (as “mutepis”) is in a Portuguese description of ships from the Lamu archipelago written in 1661“, though mtepe’s were probably being built long before that. It is distinct from the dhow, which uses triangular sails, and the beden, another type of sewn sailboat used off the coasts of Somalia and southern Arabia.

Mtepe’s could sail long distance and were fast, but were relatively leaky, requiring constant bailing of water, and would thus have stayed relatively close to the coastline.

“The mtepe (plural mitepe) has been described succinctly as “a broad and shallow vessel coming to a point at both ends, with a long projecting prow shaped like a camel’s head, a forward raking mast, and a large square mat sail”. It has probably been written about more than any other boat on the Swahili coast. The reason for all this attention is that the mtepe, or rather a modified version of it known in the literature as the dau la mtepe, was the last sewn boat to be made and sailed by Swahili speakers. This was in the 1930s.

Here is Chittick on the difference between the two types:

“The mtepe proper was distinguished notably by the prominent long curved beak-like prow, held by some to represent a camel’s head [...]. This is the original type, built primarily if not exclusively in the Lamu archipelago (Faza especially) and the islands off the Somali coast [...]. The dau la mtepe, on the other hand, has a normal type of raking stern, and the bow is straight and more angled than that of the mtepe, without the ornamental prow of the latter, in place of which is a thin bowsprit. The stern and stem were built up with a series of V-shaped hooks, a unique mode of construction.”

The ornamentation of the mtepe was especially distinctive: it had geometric oculi, pairs of eyes, on both the bow and stern, three small flagpoles on top of the prow, an amulet hanging from it, and a pair of coir twine tassels further back, referred to as the ndevu or “beard”. The decoration of the dau la mtepe was less elaborate, but the method of sewing and pegging were similar, as was the palm-leaf sail and rigging.”

-“Sewn Boats of the Swahili Coast, The Mtepe and the Dau Reconsidered”, by Martin Walsh