sambula

Updated: June 16, 2025

'In the island of Sambula we found almadies or canoas, which are made of one piece of wood, digged out like a trough, but of a good proportion, being about eight yards long and one in breadth, having a beak-head and a stern very proportionably made, and on the outside artificially carved, and painted red and blue. Neither almadie nor canoa is, of course, an African word.

William Charles Henry Wood - Elizabethan Sea Dogs