My reading of the short article and poem from The Rudder which Rurudyne provided the link to is that the article uses "buckeye" for the boats which are today called "bugeyes", not two different types of boats. From the article:
As for the proper name, Buckeye is correct,
The accompanying poem is about the difference in opinion of the correct name, buckeye vs bugeye and includes a reference to Thomas Fleming Day, editor of
The Rudder and designer of the Sea Bird, and his insistence on the use of "buckeye" rather than "bugeye":
For he always spelt it buckeye
but the end of the poem indicates that those who built and sailed the boats called them bugeyes, not buckeyes, despite what the editor of
The Rudder considered to be correct.
And the editor may spell it buckeye if he will;
And we cannot call him down,
Though his spelling gives us pain,
But you bet our boat's a bugeye just the same.
Appendix I in
Chesapeake Bay Log Canoes and Bugeyes by M. V. Brewington is
Origin of the Word "Bugeye", and several of the scenarios discussed include the name "bugeye" originating as a corruption of "buckeye". At the end of the appendix Brewington says:
But the name was never standardized. "Buckeye" seems to the older in print; but in speech the Baymen always use "bugeye." The former word, however, is only two years older than the latter as far as it can be traced in written records. Actually it may the younger since the man who prepared the Coast and Geodetic Survey may very possible have corrupted the Marylanders' spoken "bugeye" into "buckeye".
