Céline Regnard

 

     For nearly 150 years the word "pointu" (pointed) has meant a small fishing boat of the type that has been used for thousands of years on the Mediterranean. The term in fact is not Provencal at all. It was used for the first time in Toulon by sailors in the navy to distinguish their own flat-sterned jolly boats from the local skiffs which were pointed at both ends. The word was then passed on by Jules Vence in his book Construction et manœuvre des bateaux et embarcations à voilure latine, pêche-batelage-pilotage-plaisance, published in 1897. In reality this rather sweeping generic term can be applied to a great variety of small craft with oars, sometimes also with lateen sails, such as the rafiau (called thus by the Breton sailors because of their inelegant shape) gourses, barquettes but also the famous mourre de pouar (whose cutwater or forward curve looks like a "pig's snout", but using Provencal) the bateau-pilotte or the beet.

Their shape is adapted to the sailing conditions in the Mediterranean, where storms are violent and sudden and, as far as the French coast is concerned, where the Mistral is the dominant wind and whips up the sea with steep waves. Robust, the pointus behave well whether the sea comes from ahead or astern. Adapted to fishing with a trammel net (the net sweeping the bottom), they belong to the same family of boats as galleys and tartanes. This type of boat, usually 6 metres long (18 foot), although there are 8 metre pointus, is made right across the Mediterranean, but with local variants, each one passed down by generations of marine carpenters from Catalonia, Liguria, Naples or Sicily. They always used local woods, but in varying ways according to their quality. The pointu is rigged with a lateen sail, showing its Arab influence. The self-supporting mast is the same length as the boat, the yard a little longer so the sail is about 20 square metres. The fishermen use the sail and the oars to get from the harbour to where they want to fish and later to get them back again. Most pointu were equipped with an engine from the 1920's. The pointu, as a fishing boat, had already been used and adapted for generations when it had its heyday between 1850 and 1930, when the sail was replaced by the motor and the fishing industry was at its height. In 1926 in the Var, there were 663 pointus shared by 1,600 fishermen. The catches then were very large: 22 tons of fish were landed at Toulon and La Seyne that year. At the same period the pointus, sailed either by fishermen or sportsmen, used to took part in regattas. The best known is the one in the Toulon roads organised by the sailing associations of Toulon and La Seyne. In Provence fishing is thought of as showing that the land and the sea are open to everyone. Many Italian fishermen, who since the 18th century had sailed up and down the Provencal coast, close to the shore, progressively cast their anchors in the little coastal harbours, and that even though a law of 1888 reserved coastal fishing for the French.  

In Marseille the sea-going professions belonged largely to the "Napolitans", most, but not all, of whom came from southern Italy and who lived in Le Panier. After the Algerian and Tunisian decolonisations, many fishing bosses, often Pieds-Noirs, settled in Provence. Like coastal fishing itself, use of the pointu declined during the second half of the 20th century, until it virtually disappeared. Today it's as a kind of Mediterranean, working class heritage that the little boat is being re-born, thanks to clubs which renovate old boats. In 2005 from Port Vendre to Menton there were 10,000 pointus, of which 200 had lateen sails. The amateurs and boat-lovers meet every year at St Tropez for a competition of Lateen Rigs, an international regatta for the pointus to race each other in the gulf.

  

Bibliography:

Daniel Faget, Marseille et la mer. Hommes et environnement marin (XVIIIe - XXe siècles), Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011

Pierre Blasi et André Daries, Et voguent barquettes et pointus, Aix-en-Provence, Edisud, 1999

« Le pointu », Les carnets du patrimoine n°4, 2007, Conseil Général du Var