50 Years and Counting
Dear Editors,
Congratulations on 50 years of publishing! I was on my way to the British Virgin Islands in 1975, as master, after God, of a very low-reality-quotient scheme to buy the Alden schooner TIKI. The father of one of my crew said, “Buying a big old wooden boat, eh? Read this,” and passed across a magazine turned out in Maine by a guy whose office phone was nailed to a tree at the end of the driveway.
“Huzzah,” I said. “Someone besides John Gardner in National Fisherman is writing about boats. I’ll give a read….”
So here we are, many miles under the keels, many bronze screws driven, many gallons of epoxy and red lead smeared, with WoodenBoat a valued and trusted companion along the way.
Many thanks to founder Jon Wilson, you, and all the others of our beyond-eccentric community who have refused to let the craft age out.
Brad Glidden
Southport, Maine; Cocoa, Florida;
and St. Thomas, British Virgin Islands
Thames Skiffs
Matt,
I really enjoyed “The Thames Skiff” by Tom Pamperin in WB No. 299 but thought the bibliography did not do justice to the magazine or to Peter H. Spectre.
In 1968, as a 21-year-old, I worked as a summer student near Nashville, Tennessee, and then circumnavigated the bulk of North America by Greyhound. In the course of that journey I found Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and there purchased my first edition of WoodenBoat. There was no color photography, and it was stapled, not book-bound. Life, impecunity, and the vagaries of magazine distribution meant that I could not collect many of the early editions, but in the 1980s I was able occasionally to buy WoodenBoat here in England. One purchase was No. 74, January/February 1987, which I particularly value and have in front of me as I type. In this issue, Peter Spectre described in the most eloquent prose his September 1986 holiday rowing from Oxford to Hampton Court in a traditional Thames Skiff; he also gave some history of the Thames.
In 1990, I was able to live the dream and hire a skiff from the same boatyard (Constables Boatyard) and, like Peter, had to row my wife all the way, she having, in the first 100 yards, demonstrated that she had no intention of learning to row in a straight line. That week ranks as one of the main highlights of my life.
So please draw the attention of those readers interested in the Thames and Thames skiffs to:
“English River Skiffs,” by Percy W. Blandford (WB No. 30)
“A Week Along the Thames,” by Peter H. Spectre (WB No. 74)
“Freeman of the Thames: A Conversation with Stan Peasley,” by Peter H. Spectre (WB No. 125).
Derrick Ardron
Via email
Refastening Revisited
Dear Jan Adkins,
In the Skills 101 article on refastening (WB No. 299) there is an omission of two tools that can be of great assistance in this often-frustrating task. One is called a “snake tongue” and is hand-made from a large screwdriver. The tip of the screwdriver is filed to two points on a bevel, which engages the slot of the reluctant screw. If the slot of the screw strips while trying to remove the screw with a regular screwdriver due to dezincification, the points of the snake tongue can be lined up with the slot and driven with a hammer. This forces the two points past the open end of the slot and in most cases the screw will withdraw. An adjustable wrench can be put on the square shaft of the screwdriver to provide additional torque.
If the head of a screw twists off and leaves the shank in the wood you can extract the shank using “Unscrew Ums” available from McFeely. They are a clever tool patented by Tom Jannke in Gales Ferry, Connecticut. Tom files the end of a roll pin in such a way that when it is chucked into a drill and run in reverse the roll pin bores around the shank of the screw until it grabs onto the screw and withdraws what’s left of the screw tip.
Rick Waters
Noank, Connecticut
Canadian Canoe Museum
Dear Editors,
I visited the Canadian Canoe Museum in 2023 in its former location and it was an interesting display of the story of canoes as a commercial, as well as recreational, means of travel. I am sure the new location will do the job better, as confirmed by Harvey Golden’s review of the institution (WB No. 300), but there is no reference in the article as to how to connect in any way with the CCM in Peterborough, Ontario.
David Gray
Via email
With apologies for the omission, here is the web address for the Canadian Canoe Museum: www.canoemuseum.ca
—Eds.
DOROTHY, Redux
Dear Matt;
Your article on the lovely English yacht DOROTHY in WB No. 299 is great. However, I do not believe that this boat is the DOROTHY built in 1894 at Linton Hope’s yard at Greenhithe, England. As the person in charge of the volunteer crew at Ladysmith, British Columbia, that has completed the Canadian DOROTHY’s refit over the past 26 months (WB No. 296), I am very familiar with her hull shape and dimensions.
The DOROTHY in your article is 3′ longer on deck than Hope’s 1894 drawings, has a narrower stern with a transom, and a knuckle on the bow that are not consistent with Hope’s drawing. Also, she was clearly built with a full external ballast keel, which fairs beautifully into the hull and has a deep bilge. The 1894 DOROTHY was designed as a centerboard gunter sloop, and that boat was converted to a yawl in 1901. There is no record in Lloyd’s Register of Yachts of it ever losing its centerboard. Our DOROTHY first appears as VIOLA II in the 1897 register and became DOROTHY in 1898; she remained in the register until 1912. A note is added in 1903 that she had the centerboard removed and with Linton Hope’s assistance a design for a false keel with her lead forward was added. This was bolted on to her existing hull with no other alterations and so she still has her very shallow bilge with only 3″ under the cabin sole to the top of the keel.
The 1894 DOROTHY built for E. Gould had a London Registry, O.N. 102895. The difference in Lloyds Register measurements between the 1894 DOROTHY and ours is easily explained. For reasons unknown, W.H. Langley, the first owner of our DOROTHY, did not have her measured for a Ships Registry certificate, and when he applied to Lloyds Register in 1896 he used her overall length, her beam, and her draft. In 1937, he was required to have her registered and she was properly measured. Her length between perpendiculars is 24.3′, beam 8′, depth in hold 3.5′, with a gross register tonnage of 5.89. Her Thames tonnage by formula is 5.45. Her Thames tonnage using the 30′ length is 7.48. The Lloyds published figure for Thames tonnage seems to avoid fractions and thus is rounded down or up as appropriate. These figures are in the same ballpark as the 1894 DOROTHY, given that her builder, J.J. Robinson, built from Dixon Kemp’s drawing with no offsets or construction plan, since Langley was loathe to pay 15 guineas for the full set of plans.
However, I believe the English DOROTHY is very similar to a Linton Hope design published in Hope’s 1902 book Small Yacht Construction. This design has many similarities to the boat in your article: the slight knuckle at the top of the stem, the long counter ending in a small transom (the 1894 DOROTHY and ours have no transom), the high-arched cabin top, and the hull framed and planked down to the top of the lead keel. The biggest difference is that in this design the boat has a beam of 6′ rather than the 7′7″ detailed in a recent brokerage advertisement.
Robert Lawson
Ladysmith, British Columbia, Canada
Mistaken Identities
Matt,
I really enjoyed WB No. 300! Here’s a minor correction to the last page and the cover caption: The Herreshoff 121⁄2 in both images is not SEAL. I’ve spent the past few years working on SEAL during WoodenBoat School’s Alumni Week, so I’m familiar with her Bristol beige, not varnished, seats. Plus, last time I was at WoodenBoat School SEAL was on land for recaulking.
Steve Brookman
Blue Hill, Maine
Well, this is embarrassing. And true. In a late-deadline lapse, I misidentified that boat. She’s DOVEKIE, not SEAL.
—MPM
In the Relaunchings department of WB No. 300, on page 83, Bob Boyden of Foster, Rhode Island, donor of the large pine trees used in the restoration of Mystic Seaport Museum’s 35′ New Haven Oyster Sharpie, was mistakenly identified as Boy Boyden.
—Eds. 