From carpenter to crew
Yellowknife woodworker builds replica of HMS Terror in England
Beth Brown
Northern News Services
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A miniature model of the ill-fated HMS Terror, from the 1845 Franklin Expedition, was recently built in Dorset, England.
Carson McLean, centre, poses with his grandmother Mickey Brown, left, and fellow classmate and boat owner John Lloyd-Davies post with a boat in Lyme Regis, U.K. The Yellowknife carpenter worked on the build for a daysailer modelled after HMS Terror from the Franklin Expedition. - photo courtesy of Carson McLean |
It's construction was overlooked by an emblem of the Canadian Arctic - the NWT flag.
"While I was at school I hung it up in the workshop," said Carson McLean.
The 24-year-old lifelong Yellowknifer returned in July from completing a boat building, maintenance and support course at the Lyme Regis Boat Building Academy in West Dorset, England. McLean is a journeyman carpenter and has worked for both Dovetail Contracting and Ideal Woodworking here in Yellowknife.
The 11 students on the 38-week course built five boats, including a traditional flat-keeled beer beach boat, an international sailing canoe, a single masted catboat, a rowing dinghy called a Guillemot and a 20-foot daysailer modelled after the HMS Terror.
"I thought it was really cool," said McLean, "I'm back where they built the original, and then I'm from where it sank ... It really hit home."
The original Terror, which sank while exploring the Northwest Passage during a Royal Navy expedition, was built in Topsham, England, roughly 45 kilometres away from the Lyme Regis Boat Building Academy. The vessel measured 31 metres along the length of its deck, and was slightly smaller than its sister ship HMS Erebus, the wreck of which was located in 2014.
The site of the wreckage of HMS Terror is believed to be in the Queen Maud Gulf, near the southeastern corner of Victoria Island, Nunavut. This summer's search for the original Terror, led by Parks Canada, is currently underway.
The daysailer McLean worked on was a design by Paul Gartside Ltd., a small custom boat building shop in Shelburne, N.S. It was the first time the design had been built.
While the boat, built of western red cedar, was inspired by the 19th century vessel, it wasn't built with traditional methods.
Without access to modern glues, specialized sealants and paints to make the vessel waterproof, McLean says builders of that time period would have used cotton and lead putty to fill the joints between the wood pieces.
"Now we use epoxy for everything," said McLean.
The boat building course focused on traditional small craft, and is considered a kick start for students wanting to enter the marine construction industry. Most of the students were new to woodworking, but longtime enthusiasts for boats. McLean was directly the opposite.
"I went in not knowing anything about boats," he said. "I had to even learn starboard and port."
Students learned methods of both traditional and modern wooden boat building, including the foundations of joinery, how to build oars and paddles, work with fiberglass, construct engine beds, do finishing coating, and vessel lofting - which is essentially making a full-scale blueprint, like a sewing pattern, only for a boat.
"We draw all the waterlines, the body lines, the profile lines," said McLean. "From the body plan we could get all the molds."
Some build styles he learned are called clinker, cold molding and cedar strip.
Clinker is a plank-on-plank method where the edges of the wood pieces are beveled, so they fit together and are held with copper nails. As for cold molding he said, "it's like glorified plywood," where thin strips of wood veneer are layered over each other diagonally to create a water tight and light-weight hull.
Cedar strip was the technique used to build the daysailer HMS Terror, using one-inch strips of cedar with joints that work like laminate click flooring.
"You have the molds upside-down and then you would bend each (strip) around and click it into the next one, kind of like Lego," said McLean. "You put glue in between each joint and nail it to the molds to keep the form until the glue sets."
On graduation day, students launched the new boats in Lyme Regis Harbour, known as the Cobb, which empties into the English Channel. Each new boat owner was given a bottle of bubbly to celebrate their launch, though the Terror crew chose not to christen their ship with the bottle, so as to avoid damaging the new paint job.
At the risk of getting seasick, McLean chose to sail on the Terror for its maiden voyage. This was not only the boat he had finished the class working on, but also the most Canadian, having been designed in the Maritimes to resemble a vessel connected with the North.
"It just seemed right," said McLean.
The woodworker says the course was partially an opportunity to spend time overseas, but the end goal for his new skillset is compatible with his future plans in Yellowknife.
"I want to build a boat and live by the lake," he said.
While McLean believes he still needs a ton of practice, he said his new training would also be applicable to restorations.
And, he's thinking about getting into building canoes or kayaks - two other forms of vessels traditional to the Canadian North.
