A boat is a watercraft designed to float or plane on, and provide transport over water. Usually this water will be inland (lakes) or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were historically designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is something small enough to be carried aboard another vessel (a ship). Some boats too large for the naval definition include the Great Lakes freighter, riverboat, narrowboat and ferryboat. Modern submarines can also be called boats, despite their underwater capabilities and size. This may be because the first submarines could be carried by a ship and were not capable of making independent offshore passages. Boats may be used by the military or other government interests, or for research or commercial purposes; but regardless of size, a vessel in private, non-commercial usage is almost certainly a boat. The roughly horizontal, but cambered structures spanning

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