BOAT FOR HARVESTING CLAMS from the bays and basins of coastal waters must have a hull with a shallow draft; a deck that is flat and unobstructed; a cabin; and a hold.  Those are the essentials (and they also apply to boats for harvesting scallops or oysters).
    The expanse of unobstructed deck should extend entirely around the boat so that the clamdigger can work from every side, manipulating the tongs or rake on the bottom to dislodge and raise the clams.  There can be no railing of the type that would prevent passengers from falling overboard or against which romantics could lean when murmuring sweet nothings and watching the moonlight play on the rippling water, since such a railing would impede the digger’s action, but there should be a low rail, just a strip of wood running around the perimeter of the deck to prevent the harvested clams from slipping off the deck and into the water.
    The cabin should be small.  It must provide protection from the elements, but it must not be comfortable, for if it is comfortable, the digger who has retreated to it for shelter from the heat o’ the summer sun or the stinging bite of winter’s icy blasts may be unwilling to leave it and return to the work, which is tiring and tiresome; or, having in his cozy cabin a place to think, he may conclude that he’s a lonely mite in a world that cares not one whit what becomes of him and fall into inconsolable despair, making him emotionally incapable of returning to the work or, finding the cabin such a comfy place to relax, he may invite women aboard, and they will probably distract him from the work; and this is a boat that is made for work.
    There should be a hold, where the clams can be put out of the summer sun so that they don’t get steamed before they reach the table.  The hold isn’t strictly required, though; the captain of a very small clam boat (who is captain and crew in one handy package), having no hold, is likely to keep the clams cool by throwing buckets of bay water over them now and then.
    The simplest way to provide the essentials of a clam boat is to build a scow, a rectangular flat-bottomed boat with sloping ends.  Add a shack as a cabin, and you’ve got a clam boat.  It’s not hard to build such a boat, nor is it expensive.  A person can build one of these clam boats in his back yard, and many have.  You could.  It does the job, and it’s cheap, but it’s a graceless thing.  Even if the builder gives the various rectangles the classic proportions of the golden section, the result is still a stack of boxes.