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| by Mark
Steele - Auckland, New Zealand
Of sea dragons,
spook sailed scows,
phantom windlers and
a South Seas schooner!
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I’m setting the scene to commence this column,
with a photograph of four sailing models utterly motionless
on a misty Auckland pond, those who sail them waiting
for a wind to rise from the south east. Time to just
wait, time to ponder, time to fictionalize, time to
imagine what eels, what whopper fish life, what dragons
even, might be on the prowl below ? Time to recall
albeit briefly, the crewman on watch on this boat
I photographed in Wellington harbour, who had claimed
he saw `a sea mansta’ so large that its head
had peered over the rusty ship’s top deck one
night in 1989 in the Pacific! “Eet say `ello
an freyken me !” he told the Captain !
My friend David Large, artist, ship modeller and
man of the sea in Eagle, Idaho is into dragons and
believes that somewhere, perhaps down in the dark
abyss of one of the oceans of the world a real dragon
exists. It is no wonder that his website is called
Sea Dragon Marine Art Studio. Perhaps
others may support that belief of his, but can any
of us rule it out with absolute certainty ? .As he
says, `if men and children can’t have something
like dragons to believe in, all of the mystery of
life has gone.’ (I’ll have myself believing
that now, for since I am from Guyana., formerly British
Guiana, something out there in the murky waters of
the Atlantic must have been seen by someone at some
time to have inspired this postage stamp !
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Dragon
of the depths
beyond the bar
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Then there are people who have owned and sailed real
sailing ships who testify to weird sightings and sounds
aboard at sea, usually under the mantle of darkness,
and are convinced that some vessels are indeed spirit-inhabited
. One whom I read about got rid of an old sailing
barge he had restored, because he was convinced it
was haunted, selling it as fast as he could, resident
ghosts and all.
My friend Paul Titchener in New Zealand (along with
several old fishermen) have all seen what they believe
was the old trading scow Herald (below left)
lost at sea in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf, suddenly
appear out of an early morning mist with not a sign
of any crew, and sail across the bows of a yacht that
Paul and another were aboard. Is it all fact or fiction
or a mixture of both, and is it true or false that
a demon eel has slithered up and over a small 12”model
sailboat on one occasion, seemingly intent on sinking
the model under a small bridge that spans the lake
where the Ancient Mariners model yacht group
sail in Auckland ? Fiction, I hear you yell, - aghh,
but can you be sure of that ?
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What about the mysterious pond boat sailor and his
little boat in the fog at Clapham pond in the UK as
seen and snapped by Mike Kemp ? Never mind whether
he made the model himself, the question is, whether
the sailor was a free spirit windler from the other
world back for a sail, or just an ageing but very
much alive London pensioner ? We don’t know
for sure do we ? I tell you one thing, I’d swear
that the photograph of him that I have, has progressively
got darker and darker, and the background fog much
more foggy with the passing of the years.
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Back
for a Sail |
Some lighthouses are also said to be possessed by
evil spirits, but I do know of one magnificent lighthouse,
this one a model and not in any way `possessed’
in that sense, that is testimony to the skills of
Auckland model ship builder and sailor, Murray White.
This replica of Auckland’s Bean Rock
sits in his garden beneath the trees and shrubbery,
survives Auckland’s teeming rain and summer
sun, and reminds him of the day when he and another
were young men and climbed the structure just to say
that they both had enjoyed a pee over it’s side
from the very top ! Such are the joys of the days
of our youth, when dragons and spooks never entered
our minds, and fear hardly ever existed.
The
unspooked little lighthouse |
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I’ve got a special feeling for schooners, (I
think one or two readers might have suspected that
by now), and here I am fessing up’ to readers
of Duckworks. I already have two model schooners and
certainly don’t need another, but having said
that, I think I have fallen in love with Ancient
Mariner, Derek Nicholson’s South Seas schooner
model, Tiare Taporo (`Flower of the lime’
in the language of Tahiti), the real boat built in
Auckland, New Zealand by Charles Bailey Jnr and trialled
in the Hauraki Gulf there in 1913 (see the first photograph
below).
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Clifford Hawkins knew her well (and took the first
two photos of the vessel below) as well as this photograph
of her under sail (above left) which he hand-coloured.
It was from his line drawings that Derek built what
is indeed a superb model that from the time he launched
it sailed very well. It is an absolutely delightful
sight on the water that evokes great nostalgia of
that period when sailing ships took cargo and before
engines replaced sails. Derek’s model is built
on temporary frames and scarped keel, stem and stern
post was planked in kauri. Has a kauri deck and brass
fittings made as near as possible to the original
. He spent approximately 6,ooo hours over eight months
on the 1300 mm long model which weighs three and three
quarter kilograms.
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I share with you (below), a photograph that I managed
to be in the right place, well positioned at a good
level and at the right time to capture twenty-two
one metre yachts at Quarry Lake on Auckland’s
north shore some years back. Capturing so many model
yachts sailing in the same direction and all (but
one about to peel off) on the same tack doesn’t
occur often believe me. I was ever so lucky !
Mike Mayhew of Waverley Models in the West Country
of Great Britain has produced a lovely little 35”
overall model hull that he had long ago told me about.
Since the introduction in the year 2000, the Y2K
hull has been in great demand with over 900 purchased,
and boats of a variety of styles have been appearing.
Fifty eight UK Pounds ex Britain gets you one of them,
hull and drawings plus instruction book and full size
templates, and I have found it quite amazing how many
different styles of boats using these hulls have been
built, fishing boats, private yachts, sloops, a schooner
and wait for it… a colourful Chinese junk.
Using a GRP hull is not everyone's `ideal’
but it sure gets you on the water in a much shorter
period of time than if you were to plank on frame
a hull in wood.`Horses for courses’ I guess.
I know this is not a sailing ship, and
I don’t intend to change the column to include
non-sailing boats in the future. I use the photo above
of the one and the same Mike Mayhew and his paddle
steamer Waverley purely to illustrate what
a 13 foot long model looks like. This is Big, Huge,
Humungas, Grande, even “Bigpela bot” in
the pidgin English lingo of Papua New Guinea, and
“lang-lang bote” if a native of the writer’s
mythical `somewhere my brother’ island of Ghobadi
Bhaba.
Home and
moored |
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A nice poem is always good for the soul, this one
courtesy of Jeremy Eisler that I spied on Duckworks
in the September letters bag.
Sailing
A sunset sail to greet the moon
The bow wave sings a silvered tune
A glass of wine, the evening breeze
And we incline to take our ease
Motionless yet still we move
No goals, no cares, nothing to prove
No trace remains to show we passed
‘Til time compels us home at last
Jeremy Eisler
By the way, according to Dilbert’s
rules, we humans should not meddle in the affairs
of dragons, because we are crunchy and taste good
with ketchup (tomato sauce)!
Previous Columns by Mark Steele:
Articles by Mark Steele:
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