Intangible heritage in the maritime realm: The pedagogy of functional preservation

The preservation and maintenance of locally built, handcrafted vessels is costly and time consuming, with skills of construction and operation both esoteric and rare. Functionally, such craft may be unable to fulfil their original missions to fish, carry cargo, or serve as a platform for other maritime trade. With modernization, the loss of local vessels is imminent, as are the skills, songs, work ethic and stories associated with them. This paper provides a conceptual framework for describing this quickly changing cultural dynamic, focusing on how vessel-related cultural knowledge in Croatia is preserved and transformed through various types of educational and interpretive practices.