Preserving the past

LEWISPORTE -

The cultural history of this province is tied to the North Atlantic and the boats people built to work and travel on the water.

The wooden boats in particular were built and used in various forms by the early Aboriginal People, settlers and on up through our history until the time of fiberglass boats.

With that change came the eventual phasing out of wooden boats for the most part. Drive through any rural community in this province and you will find wooden boats hauled up on shore or in someone's garden - a far cry from their heyday.

The Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador, based in Winterton, is striving to collect and catalogue a history of wooden boats in this province. It's not just photos and information about the boats either. Detailed measurements are being collected as well and turned into a final product that will enable boat builders/enthusiasts to actually go access the lines plans to build their own wooden boat that is entrenched with so much history and heritage.

Bruce Whitelaw, chair of the Wooden Boat Museum and Jerome Canning, master boat builder at the Wooden Boat Museum, were in Lewisporte to measure a boat to be included in this project.

On the invitation of Barry Porter of By The Bay Museum, the men spent a couple of days measuring and collecting information on the motorboat located behind the Museum.

"What we are doing is lifting the lines," Mr. Whitelaw explained. "This means we are capturing the three-dimensional shape of that hull.

"We take 'a million measurements' and I go off with those 'million measurements' and create a naval architects drawing of the shape of that boat. We call that a lines plan. So if anyone ever wanted to replicate, duplicate or compare one boat to the other, that lines plan allows them to gain all kinds of information."

Mr. Whitelaw said a lot of the wooden boats that remain in existence in the province were built in a traditional way of just getting out there and building a boat from knowledge passed down through generations of boat builders. In most cases there were no actual lines plans.

That's why it's so important to get this information on paper now.

"It's a treat to have this happen," said Mr. Porter. "Two years ago she (motorboat) was rotting on a beach and we were lucky enough to have it moved here and we are slowly preserving it."

Mr. Whitelaw added, "These boats get left on the beach to die or someone comes along and cuts it up for firewood.

"So all this past history and lore of the province kind of floats away. Some people see no reason to preserve it, but there are a lot of people who are interested, partly because they are romantic, but partly because these boats are so much a part of the heritage of every Newfoundlander."

He added that it is not only a way to preserve the heritage of these boats, but also honour the people who created and worked from these boats.

"The boats are such a physical representation of all those skills and knowledge," Mr. Whitelaw said. "But it's the guy who was not a trained naval architect and often not a trained boat builder, but learned the knowledge and handiskills to create that boat and went out and earned a living in that boat for 30 years. That deserves to be honoured."

Mr. Porter noted that the boat at By the Bay Museum sailed on the edge of the North Atlantic for years from Black Island to Exploits to Twillingate. It was built by John Dorey on Black Island in the 1950's and was sold to Harry Stride of Lewisporte in the 1970's. It provided a means of making a living on the water, taking people to the hospital, transporting groceries, etc.

"It was a lifeline and it took a good boat builder for the boat to hold up to all that," he said.

Plans

With all the measurements completed on the motorboat, Mr. Whitelaw will enter that data into a computer program that will create a three-dimensional rendering of the boat which can then be used to create a traditional lines plan. Some basic construction drawings will also be created which will show the framing, planking, seating and other features for this particular boat. Included with the measurements will be a number of photographs that will give people a vision of what a particular portion of the boat looks like and to put the details in the plan into perspective.

As a boat builder himself, Mr. Canning and people with similar interests are especially interested in this project.

"We always have people looking for plans," he said. "This summer we had workshops at the Museum and nine to 10 people came out every Saturday to learn the fundamentals of building a boat and everyone was looking for plans."

That information, when completed, will be shared through the Wooden Boat Museum with anyone who would like to access it. A pamphlet will be developed on each boat that is measured that will include the technical information, along with a history of the boat to include who made it, what it was used for, etc.

"None of these boats were built just from fun," said Mr. Whitelaw, "There was always a life behind it."

The hope is to eventually compile a wooden boat field guide of boats from across the province.

The Wooden Boat Museum welcomes anyone with a wooden boat they think would be of interest to be measured to contact them. They also encourage people who are interested in doing measurements themselves and contributing to the project to contact the Museum and they will try to arrange for people to be trained on how to carry out this process in their own neck of the woods.

The contact information for the Wooden Boat museum is (709) 583-2070 or visit their website at www.woodenboatnl.com.