The history of the coracle is about fishing and not water transport apart from a few exceptions. At the time of writing "experts" say that the wild Atlantic salmon may be extinct by the year 2020. The blame has been placed at the feet of pollution, over fishing , obstacles to migration, captive salmon farms, and what will probably prove to be the greatest threat climate change.

Before the industrial revolution and rivers used as sewers Britain had many salmon rivers including the Thames a river that is now attracting salmon because of many years spent on a clean up. Today coracle fishing is still practiced on three rivers in Wales, the Towy,Taf and Teifi.

The earliest record we have of coracles is from Julius Caesar who while fighting in Spain in 49bc ordered his troops to make wickerwork boats covered with hides of a type he had seen in Britain some years previously. Some historians now believe he was referring to a sea going craft. Later in 1188 Gerald de Barry while visiting Wales gave the best description of coracles but he did not record exactly where this was.

In the year 1360 in the rule of Edward the third it was written by Froissart about the invasion army from England to France carrying a baggage train of more than six thousand carts in which small boats of boiled leather were crewed by three men who rowed and fished. Later in the time of Henry the 5th, Holinshead records in his chronicle of plans for another expedition to France (invasion) in 1414 of the provision of " boats to pass over rivers covered with leather".

Post Card - 12th Century Welsh House

In Wales a collection of writings (The Mabinogion) dating from before the thirteenth century there are references to a " leather bag" boat. In the fourteen hundreds the Gododdin poem reads "He would kill a fish in his coracle". Later poems in the next century recall a coracle covered in a black skin from a black bullock and waterproofed with tallow cake. The page on coracle types has more information on individual rivers.