Alan,
I am far from being an expert, but with a branch of my family coming originally from a town in South Devon and therefore having spent many days in my youth during holidays with family members and people who actually earned a living from the sea, I do think that you need to be a little careful with what you do and it does warrent some extra research if you are looking to be acxcurate.
Whist it could be fair to say that pleasure craft may well have been quite similar in appearence and construction, working boats in those days were craftsmen built and followed age old construvtion methods that were best suited to the purposes that were specifically needed. As these designs were based upon similar lines and taking note that we were a sea going nation, those designs were drawn from genrations of experience and would have been very different from boats built in other countries. There were many varieties of fishing boat from cocklers, to line and drift fishing vessels, all of which drew on the experience of years of skill and experience.
There were also many vessels such as Thames Barges, those that worked the East Anglian waterways as well as paddle craft, again drawing from sometimes hundreds of years of evolution, of the boat buliders craft.
I believe that there was not too much of buying abroad, when we had such a huge industry of boat builders in this country and placing boats alongside others from other cultures, there would have been many differences in the outward appearence as well as in construction methods. With regard to this it would be fair to say that even moving around our coastline you would see that boats were very different as the area and sea conditions changed as well as the very different methods of fishing that were in use by different communities and fleets.
I feel that if you want to be accurate to the historical events that some greater research is required, before spending your money.
I hope that this nis understandable and is not too rambling and helps you in your project.
John[:::]
