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“You name it, we build it’
Vessel construction is a time honoured skill in
Newfoundland. With the vast majority of the population earning their
living from the sea, the evolution of a boat building industry was as
natural as breathing. Schooners, jackboats, skiffs and punts were as
essential to our fathers as cars and trucks are today. And while the
need for vessels may have diminished somewhat over the years,
shipwrights are still active in numerous communities around the Island.
Gordon Pittman of Rocky Harbour has had a long
association with boatbuilding. “I’ve been at it about 12 years on my
own,” he revealed, “but I’ve been working around the boatbuilding
industry fir a long time. I’ve built 25 longliners. All I had when I
started was a saw mill, a plane, a hammer, an axe, and a power saw.”
Today, Gordon has a lot more invested than that. When
Decks Awash visited his boatyard, he and his men were engaged in
finishing a 45 foot longliner, and Gordon told us that it was the fifth
small vessel they had built this winter.
“I keep going all the time, he said. “I’ve built a
lot of small boats in the last three or four years…trap boats and
lobster boats. There have been times in the last two or three years when
I haven’t had any men employed. Last summer I spent most of my time
repairing boats in Port Saunders.”
When the yard is not operating, it makes a difference
to Rocky Harbour. Presently Mr. Pitman has four men employed, and that
figure may rise to 8 or 10 men when the yard is really busy. With the
present staff, the yard puts about $5,000 a month into the local economy
in the form of wages and benefits, with money spent for supplies and the
like, providing additional benefits to Rocky Harbour.
The longliner now under construction departs somewhat
from the traditional design. Forty-five-footers usually have a 12 foot
beam but this one has swelled to 15 feet, and Gordon expects that this
will help overcome one of the worst defects of the traditional
design…the tendency of the boat to roll like a barrel.
“This boat, being 15 foot on the beam, is more
stable,” he explained. “Finished and fitted out, she’ll be worth about
$80,000. That’s a lot of money for Government to spend on a boat, but if
the man who gets her can make $11,000 a year each for himself and three
other men, I figure it’s worth it. Government spends money on things a
lot worse than boats.”
Those three additional feet also make another
important difference to the vessel, in terms of working area. The
afterdeck resembles a small soccer field, rather than a narrow alley.
The foredeck is broad, a considerable advantage when working less than
ideal sea conditions. In many ways, this boat reminds one visually of
the Nova Scotia Cape Islanders, which many fishermen feel is a far
better design.
Decks Awash asked Mr. Pittman if he felt that his
boats were as good as a Cape Islander of comparable size. “This boat is
a better boat,” he replied. “The Nova Scotia boats don’t have the same
strength. They are more stable on the water, but you can’t hurt this
boat in the sea. The Newfoundland boat has inflexible sawn timbers,
while the Nova Scotia boats use steamed timbers. If you get out in the
sea with steamed timbers you boat will go and come like a dog’s stomach.
Out boats are heavier planked, too.”
While many Newfoundland shipyards tend to stick to
the usual run of fishing boats, Mr. Pittman isn’t reluctant to try new
designs. He recently built a Cape Islander for the Fisheries Loan Board,
and says that he is ready to build them for anyone who wants one. And
out behind the shed sits his own boat…a beautiful 40 foot sailing
schooner, which he “plans to sail myself some day, if I can ever afford
to get her finished.”
She’s not the first sailing vessel he has built. In
fact, his biggest boat built was a 60 foot schooner, called the ‘Sea
Dream 11,’ which was constructed for a gentleman in the area. She’s made
a successful voyage south, and pictures of her under sail show her to be
as pretty a ship as you want to see. He’s also built a 28-footer for a
customer, but Mr. Pittman does not see too much hope of being able to
penetrate the lucrative American and Canadian yacht market.
“We’re too far away from the American market. To
build a schooner type, with a three sail rig, would take about three
months, with two or three men and myself. We have the skills. All you
want is the money to work with. If a man comes and wants a boat for
$25,000 or $30,000, you can’t give him a really good boat for that.”
Decks Awash asked Gordon what a fully rigged 32 foot
mahogany hulled vessel with a well finished interior and engine would
cost his to build, and he reckoned about $45,000. That figure would
place the boat in a poor competitive position when compared with the
cost of the modern, low maintenance fiberglass yachts.
While the scattered yacht contract may help the yard
fill up the slow times, their bread and butter is still the fishing
boat. And the coming of Gros Morne Park has created some additional
problems of the yard.
“Some of the plank I have on this boat is from Nova
Scotia,” Gordon commented. “It’s just as cheap to get the wood from Nova
Scotia as it is to go in the woods, cut it, haul it and saw it. I prefer
to use Newfoundland spruce if I could get it but you can’t go where you
like and cut wood. We made one hell of a mess letting the Park come
here. You’re like a hangman all the time… they won’t give people a
permit to cut, so you’d have to sneak wood out of the forest.”
Other problems plague the shipyard. For example,
there’s no wharf in the community as the Government is in the process of
rebuilding it. When it comes time to launch the longliner, probably she
will have to be taken to Norris Point…. Some seven or eight mile away…to
be fitted out, and that’s a royal nuisance. The addition of a good
shipway might attract a lot of ship repair business, and help bridge the
yard over the slack times that all yards experience between major jobs.
But between the longliners, smaller boats, and the
scattered sail boat, it seems likely that Pittman’s yard will be able to
keep turning over a productive dollar for some time to come.
“I’m not using up tax money here,” says Gordon
Pittman. “I know most of the money comes from the Loan Board, but the
man getting his boat has to make his downpayment, and pay that loan off.
He’ll be producing jobs and money, because he’ll be catching fish.
Something like the Park is only using up tax money. They’ll never get
back what they spent.”
Decks Awash
Volume 6, NO. 5, August 1977
Page 32
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