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A balangay, or barangay, is a type of lashed-lug boat built by joining planks edge-to-edge using pins, dowels, and fiber lashings. They are found throughout the Philippines and were used largely as trading ships up until the colonial era. The oldest known balangay are the eleven Butuan boats, which have been carbon-dated individually from 689 to 988 CE and were recovered from several sites in Butuan, Agusan del Norte. (2025). 9789400777460 ISBN 9789400777460 The Butuan boats are the single largest concentration of lashed-lug boat remains of the Austronesian boatbuilding traditions. They are found in association with large amounts of trade goods from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and as far as Persia, indicating they traded as far as the Middle East.
Balangay were the first wooden watercraft excavated in Southeast Asia. Balangay are celebrated annually in the Balanghai Festival of Butuan.
The term was also used by the Tagalog people people to refer to the smallest discrete political units, which came to be the term used for native villages under the Spanish colonial period. citing The name of the boat was usually Hispanicized in Spanish and American records as barangayan (plural: barangayanes) to distinguish them from the political unit.
Among the Ibanag people of Northern Luzon, balangay were known as barangay, a term sometimes extended to the crew. Large vessels were called biray or biwong.
In the Visayas and Mindanao, there are multiple names for balangay-type boats, including baloto (not to be confused with the balutu), baroto, biray, lapid, tilimbao (or tinimbao). Cargo-carrying versions of balangay with high sides and no outriggers (which necessitated the use of long instead of paddles) were also known as bidok, birok, or biroko (also spelled biroco) in the Visayas. The karakoa, a large Visayan warship, was also a type of balangay.
In Tagalog people regions, the balangay or barangay has the same functions as in the southern islands but differ in that it is constructed through the Sewn boat technique, rather than through dowels.
In the province of Cagayan in Northern Luzon, the balangay of the Ibanag people were predominantly used within the Cagayan River system, but were also sometimes used as coastal trade ships, reaching as far as the Ilocos Region. They were mainly used as cargo and fishing ships and differed from other balangay in being much smaller with a shallower draft.
Notable leaders of these defense squadrons include Don Pedro Estevan, a principalía of Tabaco, Albay; and Julián Bermejo, an Augustinians friar who commanded ten balangay and established an alarm system using a line of small relay forts in southern Cebu. They were responsible for several major naval victories against Moro raiders from the late 18th to the early 19th centuries. The most significant was the Battle of Tabogon Bay (modern Tabgon, Caramoan) in 1818, where the combined fleets of Estevan and Don José Blanco defeated around forty Moro warships led by Prince Nune, the son of a sultan from Mindanao. Nune escaped, but hundreds of Moro raiders died in the skirmish and around a thousand more were stranded and hunted down in the mountains of Caramoan. The 1818 victory led to increased usage of defense fleets and the reduction of Moro raids to only sporadic attacks on isolated fishermen or smaller villages until their eventual suppression in 1896.
The balangay's keel is built first. Like most Austronesian ships (and in contrast to western ships), the keel is basically a dugout canoe (a bangka) made from a single log. The keel is also known as a baroto which is the origin of one of the alternative names for balangay in the Visayas. The Butuan balangay boats differ from later balangay designs in that they do not have a true keel. Instead, they have a central plank fitted with three parallel lines of thin lugs which serve as additional attachment points for lashings.
The outer shell of the hull is built first by fitting on each side of the keel edge-to-edge (to a total of six or more). The shaping of these strakes into the appropriate curvature ( lubag) requires a skilled pandáy. They are locked in place with wooden or pins () around long slotted into holes drilled into the edges of the strakes. Some sections may necessitate the use of two or more planks for each strake. These are attached end-to-end using hooked . Once the hull is assembled, it is left to season for a month or two.
After the wood is seasoned, the hull is taken apart once again and checked. It is then reassembled in a stage known as sugi ("matching"). This involves fitting the strakes back together. Once fitted, the space between the strakes is run through with a spoon-like implement called a lokob. This creates a space with an even thickness in between the two strakes. The space is then filled with fine palm fibers called baruk or barok and with resin-based pastes. The dowels are also further secured by drilling holes into them through the planks with the help of marks inscribed beforehand. Counter pegs called pamuta are then hammered into these holes. The second stage is known as os-os or us-us, which involves lashing the planks very tightly to wooden ribs ( agar) with fiber or rattan ropes. The ropes are tied to holes bored diagonally into lugs ( tambuko), which are rectangular or rounded protrusions on the inner surface of the planks. The tambuko occur at even distances corresponding to six dowel hole groupings. Wedges are then driven in the space between the ribs and the planks, drawing the lashings even tighter as the distance between them is increased. Thwarts are then placed across the hull which are also lashed to corresponding tambuko on each side and covered with removable decking. Once completed, the hull usually measures around long and wide.Hontiveros, G. 2004 Butuan of a Thousand Years.
The masts and outriggers ( katig or kate) of the balangay boats were not preserved, which is why modern reconstructions tend to omit the latter. However, as with later balangay designs described by Spanish explorers, they are believed to possess large outriggers which would be necessary for them to carry sails without capsizing. Outriggers dramatically increased stability and sail power without significant increase in weight. Outriggers in large war balangay designs also supported paddling and fighting platforms known as the daramba and the burulan, respectively.
Similar traditional ship-building techniques are still preserved by Sama-Bajau boat makers in Sibutu Island in Tawi-Tawi.
Seven of the eleven balangays discovered ( Butuan Boats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9) have been excavated or are being excavated by the National Museum. Only three of which ( Butuan Boats 1, 2, and 5) have been fully recovered and displayed. The wood used for the boats come from a variety of tree species, all of which are indigenous to the Philippines and neighboring regions in Southeast Asia. They were originally radiocarbon dated in the 1970s and 1980s, but the results (ranging from the 4th century CE to the 13th century CE) were too disparate for one site. More modern methods using accelerator mass spectrometry carbon-14 dating yielded more reliable results ranging from the 7th to 10th centuries CE.
The excavation of the Butuan Boats have faced major challenges. Having originally been discovered by treasure hunters, the early excavations of the site in the 1970s and 1980s suffered from poor written and photographic documentation and conservation measures. Excavation on Butuan Boats 5 and 9 have been suspended due to their poor conditions which necessitates further study on how to recover them without damage. As of 2022, the rest of the ships which are yet to be excavated, remain in their original waterlogged condition which is proven to be the best way to preserve the said artifacts.
The Butuan boats are the single largest concentration of lashed-lug boat remains of the Austronesian boatbuilding traditions. Similar shipwrecks found elsewhere in Southeast Asia include the Pontian boat () of Malaysia. The Butuan boats were found in association with large amounts of trade goods from China, Cambodia, Thailand (Haripunjaya and Satingpra), Vietnam, and as far as Persia, indicating they traded as far as the Middle East.
House Bill 6366 proposes that the Balangay should be the National Boat of the Philippines.
The Balangays, named Diwata ng Lahi, Masawa Hong Butuan, and Sama Tawi-Tawi,"'DIWATA NG LAHI' Finally Arrives in Butuan." City Government of Butuan. www.butuan.gov.ph. n.d. Web. December 13, 2014. navigated without the use of modern instruments, and only through the skills and traditional methods of the Filipino Sama people. They journeyed from Manila Bay to the southern tip of Sulu, stopping off at numerous Philippine cities along the way to promote the project. The journey around the country covered a distance of 2,108 nautical miles or 3,908 kilometers.
The second leg of the voyage (2010–2011) saw the balangay boats navigate around South East Asia – Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand and up to the territorial waters of Vietnam before heading back to the Philippines.
The balangay was navigated by the old method used by the ancient mariners – steering by the Sun, the stars, the wind, cloud formations, wave patterns and bird migrations. Valdez and his team relied on the natural navigational instincts of the Badjao. Apart from the Badjao, Ivatan people are also experts in using the boat. The organisers say that the voyage "aims to bring us back to the greatness of our ancestors and how colonialism robbed these away from us and produced the Filipino today".
In 2019, the Balangay Voyage team announced two more balangay ( Lahi ng Maharlika and Sultan sin Sulu) will set sail on December 14, 2019, from Palawan to Butuan, then to Mactan to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Mactan. The two boats will be temporarily renamed Raya Kolambu and Raya Siyagu.
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