As a sailing craft, the Humber keel is probably directly descended from the Viking long ship: the word keel is derived from the Anglo-Saxon for a single masted, square rigged ship, ceol. Thirteenth century keels have been excavated, and keels appear as a distinct class of ship in York Corporation’s Tudor records.
From the end of the seventeenth century, the industrial revolution’s rapid expansion of the canal and canalised river systems of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, gave the keel a natural home
Bluff-bowed and strongly built to stand the heavy cross currents and short swell of the Humber, but with a shallow enough draught to work its feeder rivers and canals, keels’ roomy holds were a cheap, efficient way of meeting new demands for rapid transport of bulk produce and goods.

Keel

Keels were tiller steered, and their dimensions- typically between 57 and 68 feet long and 14’6” to 16’6” feet wide & were determined by the lock size on the waterway they were intended to trade.

Early hulls were timber-built, by the nineteenth century almost all in carvel planked oak, on oak frames and oak stem and stern posts, with  pine decks. Later, iron & steel keels like Comrade, simply followed the same design.

The high coamings over the hold were covered by wooden hatches, in turn covered by tarpaulins. Narrow side decks connected the short fore- and afterdecks The skipper’s cabin was under the afterdeck and the mate’s under the fore.

The single mast was stepped in a lutchet, braced to the main beam at deck level by shrouds, and secured at the keelson. It carried a square white mainsail, hoist to the main yard and a topsail hoist to the topsail yard.

Sails were controlled by rollers, braces, sheets and tacks. Oak or pitch pine lee boards, an airfoil type section about twelve feet long, hung by chain forward of amidships to be raised and lowered to ensure a firmer grip on the water.