Fran Beaubien

Fran Beaubien and Sparrow Taranov both live at Humpback Bay on Porcher Island. They recorded this conversation in January, 2006.

The Clayoquot

Sparrow: The Clayoquot was owned by Richard Roberts; he is the one that named it that. Previous to that it was called the Western Princess. It was a packer that fished for BC Packers and who knows who else. It was 86 feet long wood packer. It had the wheelhouse on the stern with a large back deck behind, which had been removed by Richard to repair... and never was repaired. The front section had two large holds plus a forecastle. It was converted to a live aboard. There are an awful lot of stories about that boat.

Fran: It was really fast. That was one of the things I noticed when I would get rides to town, how fast it was. For such a large boat it would just slip along, even in really rough weather. And it had kind of a nice motion. It wouldn't even appear to be working and it would be going 10 or 12 knots. I use to love to watch it in action.

Sparrow: I think I recall one time Richard put it up to 18 knots - and it could have gone faster. But he didn't really want to make it any faster because it was an old boat and it really shook and shimmied if you really revved the engine. He did that because old Herb Chandler was sick and we needed to get him to Prince Rupert really fast. Richard was an everything kind of guy. He was a shipwright, he was a mechanic, oh, absolutely everything that needed doing with boats he could do. And do well.

Fran: He did believe in taking chances. Caution was not something that was close to his nature.

Emergency Repairs in Isabella Chuck

Fran: One of my favourite stories was the one when he had a couple of guys out of town, and they were partying hearty. But they had channel 16 on. They heard, out of their party noise, activity on channel 16, and they started listening. It was a horrible, horrible night - it was a southeast gale, it was black and rainy and windy. It was just ugly. They started listening to what was going on. It turned out a sailboat had gone around outside of Chismore Passage into a place that was marked as an anchorage, but really wasn't a good anchorage in a southeast. When the wind started to come up, they had started to drag anchor. They ended up getting their anchor in the wheel, I believe - the line in the wheel. So they were really in trouble. So Richard and his buddies decide, well, they are going to go and help. So they fire up, they throw off the lines, and they head out. And when they get over there, it turns out that the Coast Guard had come too. But because these guys were in shallow water and close to the rocks and stuff, the Coast Guard couldn't get in close to them. So they are kind of standing off.

Sparrow: The way I heard that story is the Coast Guard - this is the one where the sailboat and the bowsprit had to be replaced? The Coast Guard tried to pull them off or get in near them with their runabout and actually went up on another rock. So it was standing off alright, but it was high and dry.

Fran: I might have heard that, but I don't remember that. So then, Richard and his guys...

Sparrow: So Richard, Laura Moore and the crew that they were partying with were in Isabella Chuck - which is the area between Humpback Bay and Hunts Inlet - and this is where they are originating from.

Fran: Which is on the north side of Porcher. Chismore Pass is on the east side of Porcher - between Porcher and the mainland. So anyway, they take off and head off into the storm. They are still partying, they've got the music going and the beer is flowing and they are off and running. And you have to remember - as Sparrow mentioned before - there is no stern deck on the Clayoquot. It's all been ripped off and all you've got is your beams and your bulwarks. Keep this in mind. They are about to go over and try to take somebody in tow, working from a back deck that does not exist. So they go around and they come out of the darkness. The people on the sailboat, they said from their perspective, they see this black boat - it isn't really black - but in the dark it looked black. They see this black boat appear out of the night, you know, with lights shining and music blaring and these wild men on deck who make a pass. They make arrangements for floating the line down to them. They get taken in tow. They get pulled off where they are aground - they actually cut their anchor loose and leave it behind. They put a buoy on it, didn't they?

Sparrow: I don't recall. In all of this, the bowsprit of the sail boat had been badly damaged.

Fran : From where they were they had been able to see the lights of the superport and Prince Rupert off in the distance in one direction and the Coast Guard vessel which was not rescuing them off to the other side. So anyway, they finally get taken in tow, they get pulled off from being aground. And they head out expecting that they are going to go to Rupert. What happens is this black vessel with these wild men with the music blaring heads towards Rupert in the beginning, then turns left and heads off into the night. And they do not have a clue where they are going - they are nervous. Well, Richard is not likely to go to town when Isabella Chuck is just around the corner there, and it's a whole lot closer. So he tells the Coast Guard, OK we've got them in tow, you guys can stand down and he takes them into Isabella Chuck, where they actually ended up being very happy. Richard had a lot of tools and stuff on the Clayoquot and a lot of ability and they were able to completely rebuild the bowstem.

Sparrow: Well for the next four days, what happened is they all partied together. And while they were partying, they went out and found a nice yellow cedar with a good bend in it. Sometimes when trees overhang the water they get this really nice bend, and that is what you want in a bowstem. You want a good strong bend that is already in place. So they cut this down, they cut it to shape. Richard planed it and fit it all together and put a whole new bowstem in. In four days. Of course you are never supposed to put green wood into a boat, but whatever. They were partying the whole time. So they were extremely happy when they left. They were Americans, on their way home to Washington from Alaska. They used to, every couple of years after that, they use to stop by.

The Story of the Boat Sheds in Hunts Inlet

Fran: Back to the Clayoquot - most of our best stories are Clayoquot stories.

Sparrow: Well, part of that is because of the people. Richard was an eccentric in some ways. He did a lot of things differently than most people. As such, things didn't always go exactly as planned. So sometimes he had some good stories.

Fran: When he was still living in Isabella Chuck, he had put a grid in a narrow spot there, and when he wanted to clean the bottom and bottom paint he just put the Clayoquot on the grid. Of course the tide goes out and he did the bottom. Well one day, the skiff comes zooming in to Hunts Inlet - and the tide had only got part way up the estuary. And the skiff comes zooming in with only one person in it - I get the binoculars and 'Oh, it's Laura, what's she doing?' And she's running up the beach and we can hear she's shouting. So we think, 'Hmm, this is not good.' So we start going up the beach to meet her - it was Steve and Denny and I - we all rush up the beach and meet her. As we get closer we can see that she is practically hysterical. She's saying 'You've gotta come, you've gotta come and help, you've gotta come.' We're like 'Laura, what happened?' 'The Clayoquot fell over!' It's like 'What!? The Clayoquot... 'Well, they'd evidently had it on the grid and the tide was starting to come up. And the Clayoquot had... I was never sure exactly what had happened... but he always put stuff on deck to make it lean against the posts. But for some reason or other it had shifted to the other side, which of course had no supports. And it went 'clonk' over on one side. Of course they were terribly concerned because the tide was coming in. If the tide came in over the deck before the boat actually floated, you could be in trouble.

Sparrow: Very serious trouble.

Fran: Yes, so they all ran down there. I stayed home - to keep the home fires burning, so to speak. And Steve and Denny jumped in the skiff with Laura and they zoomed off to do... I'm not sure what. But obviously it was successful because the boat floated.

Sparrow: Out of that Richard learned that when that boat is put on its side, it will actually float back upright with the tide. Which was a good thing to know. And as a result of that learning experience, he decided from then on to actually put the boat on the beach. Just lean it over on its side. There's this place at the head of Hunt's Inlet that's a nice gradual slope gravel beach. You want gravel because you don't want anything too hard obviously - you've got an awful lot of weight being placed on the side of the boat. So, after that, whenever he needed to scrape the bottom, paint the bottom, work on the bottom he would put it up at the head of Hunts Inlet on one tide, on one side. He would paint the outside, the part you could get at - and it was an awful day's paint job let me tell you - then you would float it, turn it over and do the other side. After doing this for several years you could see that every year, it would get a little bit more of a warp in the keel when you laid it on its side. So you lay it on its side and the boat would bend with gravity - well, down. Then you lay it on its other side and it would bend the other way - which, of course, made for a few more leaks and you would have to do a little bit more caulking. So by the end, pretty much the last time we laid it on its side, it had - you looked at the bow and you could see a 5 foot warp looking down the keel. It had this major bend. It was quite significant. When you think of it, it is like a 10 foot bend over all, over 86 feet. So it was becoming a problem, so that was why there were major efforts on our part to build a large ways in Hunts Inlet. At this point, Richard owns an area in Hunt's Inlet and he already had a boat shed which was just a shed - nothing else at that point. So we built a large ways that could take the Clayoquot. I'm not exactly certain on the lengths, but it was about 70 feet long by 40 feet wide. You don't need to have it as long as the boat is, because with the curve of a boat, the ends don't need to be on the ways. The first time we used it, of course, it was like 'Oh my God is everything going to hold together?' It was a very large undertaking. It was a steel ways and we had to pour cement. Richard and Steve, who helped him, did an awful lot of welding. It took all of one winter to build, basically. There was some preparation, the preceding years as well. The first time we put it up, everyone in Hunts got together and we did it on the tide. We just used it like a grid basically, the first time. We didn't really want to use the winch the very first time because we weren't completely sure that it could take the weight of the Clayoquot. Which is good because it turns out that the wheels couldn't - half the wheels busted. But anyways, it just settled straight down, there was no issues. Anyways, that was an awful lot of painting. We probably had a party of twelve people when we used to paint it on the beach. After we got a spray painter it was a lot quicker.

Fran: You just passed over that shed in Hunt's Inlet, like it was nothing, but that's a whole story in itself too. That actually came from one of the Skeena River canneries. They were closing down the cannery and they opened it up for people to come in and get stuff. People had been going and getting all kinds of lumber and beams and roofing and stuff. And Richard wanted to go over and see what was there. He stopped by here and asked Steve if he wanted to go over. They were going to go over for the afternoon. They were going to check out what was there. So Steve said, yeah sure he would go. So they took off. Well, they didn't come back for three days. The way I heard the story was that they got over there and they scrounged and there was this shed. And they were like, gosh this is a good shed and we don't want to take it apart. Sure there's lots of tin and stuff here, but it is way more valuable as a shed, but how can you take it? So they put their minds together, and what they did was - of course because Richard lived on his boat he had all of his tools and everything - they got out there with their chainsaws at low tide and starting bucking the bottom of the pilings. They chose the ones they thought were crucial to support the building, and left them, but they left as few as possible. They bucked the bottoms of all the rest of the pilings and they tied on to the building - not exactly sure how, but they figured something out - and when the tide came in, they took the Clayoquot and basically pulled the building over. So all the pilings just sort of angled over, because there weren't all the bracings and everything was gone, so over it went. And they just towed this whole building out. Now when I say shed, I don't mean little shed. I mean this was a building, like 100 feet by 200 feet or something. This was the kind of building that was associated with boatsheds, where you actually took some boats inside to work on them. I mean this was a huge building and they just towed it out. They called me when they were part way home and I ran out to pick Steve up. And this building was floating right at floor level. The floor was somewhat awash but not unduly. I mean there was enough wood in the beams and the floorboards and everything so the rest of it is afloat. So I took Steve home and Richard and Laura and the Clayoquot continued on around the corner into Hunts Inlet. Of course, then they had the adventure of getting it back up and getting pilings under it and jacking it up. That's a whole story I don't know much about.

Sparrow: Oh, they put all kinds of just everything, pieces of stumps, firewood ends, everything, underneath this thing. And then jacked a little bit here, put a little bit more shimming under there. Anyways, they kind of got it in place. And it lasted that way for a few years, at which point it was obvious that proper pilings needed to be put under this building. And it needed to be raised a little bit more because on a really big tide it would get a little wet. There was all kinds of stuff in it by this point. So it was actually a very big project one winter to put pilings all throughout underneath this and jack it up. On either side of this building, eventually, two ways were put in. A smaller one that you could put boats indoors and a larger one for the Clayoquot. The smaller one - at that point, he had the Silver Gull and then he got the Nordfjord. The Nordfjord was a 42 foot troller, the Silver Gull was a 32 foot. They could both go in, provided the masts were unstepped, into the smaller ways. That's the story of the boat sheds in Hunts Inlet.

Boneyards

Fran: When we first got to Humpback, one of the things that caught your eye immediately here was that there was a bunch of old boats that were put up high and dry. And the most spectacular one was an old sternwheeler, a river boat. Mostly all that was left was the frame and some of the deck.

Sparrow: How big was it? Well, it is all cut into three pieces now.

Fran: Well actually I think it was about 150 feet. But the story that we heard about how it ended up here was that Peterson which was the guy who took up the pre-emption here - he was the homesteader - bought it. And they were evidently decommissioning it. They had decided it wasn't in good enough shape to fix so he bought it and brought it in here. He lived on it while he started clearing the land and stuff. So once he had a place to live on shore, probably a small log building of some kind, he started dismantling the superstructure for the dimensional lumber, and using it to finish out the various things that he was building. Basically - this is what we heard - he dismantled the superstructure and used the materials on the various buildings here on the farm. When we got here all that was there was the deck. The deck was still intact when we got here.

Sparrow: It was not uncommon to use boats past their floating stage. Often - or it used to be often - when a boat was retired you salvaged everything thing you could off of it. Including its wood, if it had good wood; especially the gumwood. Because gumwood has been traditionally kind of expensive to get and it is a really hard wood that is used often like sheeting on the bow for protection if you hit logs or rocks. And also runners along the side of the boat so that when you're rubbing against another boat or the dock, the gumwood takes the abrasion.

Fran: Humpback Bay was a pretty popular place for bringing boats in to die. On the far side you can see places... well, not so much anymore. But what there would be, there would be the engine block and the keel and some of the ribs - like an old ribcage of some dead animal just slowly subsiding into the mud.

Sparrow: Well we've got some more modern boats that have been set on the mud here to die, recently. There's two old wooden gillnetters...

Fran: Actually the Iceland was a troller. Off the west coast of the Charlottes.

Sparrow: It was a nice boat at one point.

Fran: Oh it was beautiful. Deep hull, and fine entry, it would have been a lovely boat when it was in its prime. Sorry to see it die.

Fixing Up an Old Rowboat

Sparrow: Well, there was that one rowboat in Hunts Inlet, do you remember the double ender troller that was lifted right up into the net loft? He was repairing the keel on it - never did get that keel finished before he died. That apparently was one of a fleet of trollers that worked out of Hunt's Inlet. That is what they did - they just trolled with two people. It was set up with two stations for people to row. It had long sleek lines - it would have just glided through the water. The one skiff we fixed up, we took it out of this falling down house between the Government dock and the cove in Hunt's. It's probably all gone now; I think they've built something in there since. You recall there was a structure in there, about 20 feet off the path in amongst the trees? In there was a pair of wooden skis and the rowboat that I have. We took it out - it had some serious rot - the roof had just caved in. Old Jock helped me fix it up. He was a bit of a carpenter. He helped me put in a few planks and put in a sister keel - an inside keel that goes along with the outside keel. And I think we had to replace a couple of ribs as well, paint it all up. Put a steel runner along the keel, so you could beach it without too serious a problem.

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