After building wooden ships for the last 5000 (yes five thousand) years, the historic Beypore shipyards in Kerala are about to close down. The orders for their specialty of making Uru (also known as dhow), a traditional Arabian wooden trading vessel has ended. The last of the Beypore constructed ships was floated away in 2003.
It was known, that Beypore was a regular source of ships for the Middle East for 1500 years from 500 AD. But its fame as the shipbuilding centre since 3000 BC, the age of the ancient Mesopotamian Sumerian civilisation was brought to light by Captain Iwata, founder member of the Association of Sumerian ships in Japan. In 1990 he researched and found the picture of a ship preserved in cuneiform tablet in the Louvre museum of Paris. It had all the attributes to a Beypore built ship, down to the wooden nails and coir lashed planks. He came to Beypore and had a 300-ton wooden ship built named as Ki-en-gir (ancient name for Sumeria).