Paul Edwards
Paul Edwards is a Prince Rupert fisherman. He spoke with Sparrow
Taranov on January 23, 2006.
Paul: There haven't been any wooden boats of
any decent build since the 1980s. I think the art of cutting the wood, and the
shipwrights - I think it is sort of lost. I don't even know any small mills to
do it. It's hard to find the trees, that you can get that kind of wood
from.
Sparrow: Nice straight cedar and fir.
Paul: Even in the old days, for cutting a mast,
a guy needs to walk around in the woods for a quite a while to find it. You
know, straight, no knots, that kind of thing. I mean it's just aluminum,
fiberglass and steel taking over. I think its becoming a lost art, to tell you
the truth.
Sparrow: Yes, there's not many. Are there any
wood boats under construction right now? I can't think of who you could go to
for building in wood.
Paul: I think around Victoria, they are working
on wood boats, not so much building as rebuilding of boats. So they might have
a better idea, but basically all of Prince Rupert, Ucluelet, and Port Albion -
anywhere there was a ways or there was a shipwright. Those days, even here, we
had Wahl's and we had quite a few boats built here. I don't know if there is
anywhere that anyone could train to build a wooden boat anymore. The
shipwrights I know that were trained in wood are getting pretty old. If you
want to get a boat re-caulked or whatever, you have a hard job finding a person
who knows how to do it.
Sparrow: You said you had a boat when you
were...
Paul: Yeah, I started of with a gillnetter a 36
footer - it was wood, the Lord John. Then I had a 42 footer, still
around here actually, the Laurel Ann. I had that 'til '87. Then I went
to steel after that.
Sparrow: A lot less work. You don't have to
spend all your summer fixing between fishing, or all your winter.
Paul: I did actually have a wooden boat - the
Karavac - but it was built back east. Wood boats that were built back
east used white pine and oak, so it was really poor quality wood. Boats back
then were built to last ten years; they were basically throwaway boats. They
should never have been brought out here, in my opinion. The white pine is
really full of knots and had lots of problems.
Sparrow: The style is different too. I don't
know why they are so different; I assume it is different weather.
Paul: Different uses too. They don't use much
rigging back east because of the ice conditions. It is probably more to do with
the sea conditions than the weather conditions, and what they are using them
for. What looks like an ugly boat to us, back east looks nice. And they look at
our boats out here and they think it's an ugly boat - but we think it looks
good. It's in the eyes of the beholder.
Sparrow: How about any fixing, repairing
boats?
Paul: I have had wooden boats and there is
always re-caulking, and of course now there is re-fastening. Most of the wooden
boats now are old enough that they all have to be re-fastened. The insurance
companies are mostly demanding it. My dad has a 42 foot Wahl boat, the Ocean
Foam. It was all re-fastened and re-caulked 3 or 4 years ago. Like I said
it is getting harder and harder to find people that do it. Pretty much you go
to Victoria or Vancouver to do it, I think. I know one fellow in Queen
Charlotte Islands had to take his boat to Vancouver to get re-caulked and
re-fastened. So we are probably down to a handful of shipwrights.
