Page 6. MAINE COASTAL NEWS March 2012 GIFFY FULL TALKS ABOUT SOME OLD TIME BOATBUILDERS Part II
BROOKLIN – Documenting maritime his- tory, and especially the boatbuilders, has become almost an obsession. It is relatively easy to document what is taking place in the yards along the Maine Coast today, but un- fortunately there is a problem when you try to go back before the 1950s. So when I get a chance to find out about boatbuilders before that time, out comes the tape deck. One per- son with a wealth of information on boatbuilders is Giffy Full and this is the sec- ond and final part of an interview done this past fall.
In the last issue Giffy discussed working with Sonny Hodgdon and told a number of stories about working there. He added, “One of the things Sonny liked to do was practical jokes. Elliott Winslow, later on Winslow Towboat Co., but when I knew him he had a passenger boat, ARGO. He never got married until he was 55. He and his bride, Marjorie, went off to Montréal on their honeymoon. Well ARGO back then had a fairly big smoke- stack and when they came back there was a baby carriage hanging off the stack. Sonny had gone around and found a big old wicker baby carriage and hung that up on the stack. The other thing that Sonny used to do was go out and buy a few extra Christmas trees and put them on boat’s masts. BALMY DAYS laid there in the winter time and once in a while Charlie Wade used her for towing work. They also used her as a pilot boat, and took Elliott Winslow out into the Sheepscot River to bring ships up to the power plant. Any how, at Christmas time Sonny but Christmas trees on some of the boat. Well one day after Christmas in comes Charlie Laven into the shop. It was snowing and cold so he came in there to get warmed up, and see what was going on. He says to Sonny “Well, I see the
poor old BALMY DAYS she didn’t get any Christmas tree. Sonny says “I’ll fix his wagon.” About a week or 10 days after Christ- mas, Sonny takes the big yard panel truck and he goes around and collects Christmas trees. I mean a truckload of Christmas trees. There was no place on BALMY DAYS that didn’t have a Christmas tree on it, mast, rigging. There were Christmas trees everywhere.” When asked if he knew Harvey Gamage, Giffy said he had seen them but he didn’t know him.
What about Norman Hodgdon? “I’ve been in his shop, but I didn’t really know him,” said Giffy. “I went in there to see him when he built a boat called PUFFIN. She was a Ken Smith designed boat. I also know that after the war Samples built a run of powerboats, called Sample 42s. He is the same guy that designed the Grand Banks 30.” Another yard that Giffy had some expe- rience with was Wayfarer Marine. He said, “The last yacht I ran I had her over there. I knew Mac and I had been in and out of there while cruising on the coast. I would go in there for supplies and tie up there once in a while. Mac ran the place. The lady that owned the last yacht I ran was very particular. That boat meant an awful lot to her. Anything that the boat might need I was to get it. I went over there and had a new deck put in her. I went over there when we decided to replace the deck. I had all the teak put away, all the fastenings put away, everything put away separate to do the next fall. When the season was over I took her in there and they put a new deck in her, and I worked with them. I also had fun with them too. They were a nice bunch of people and everybody was on good terms. They had an excellent crew, you couldn’t want a better crew. There were some real nice joiners there that could do anything.
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I took the boat into the yard on a Friday and I had got myself some special tools and I decided I was going to have the deck already to come out. It only took me two days to do it. I took every bung out of the deck fasten- ings. I did it very easily by taking a stainless steel screw, cutting the head off, and putting it in an electric drill. The minute that self tapping stainless steel screw hit the deck fastening the bung just flies out. I had them all out in one day and then on Sunday I had a power impact wrench and I would say in about, it wasn’t full day, I had every single screw out of the deck. Well, Monday morning we hauled her out, took the rig out, took her up and put her in the building. The boys came up to start on her and they were going to start sawing the deck out. I said you don’t have to saw the deck out. They said what do you mean? We’ve got the saws out, we’re going to cut it out. The deck is already to come out. What are you talking about? You want to see it come out? I stepped down in the sail locker and took a 10 pound maul and went boom, two or three planks popped up. They just picked them up. We just took the teak and threw it down on the floor. Some of it was brittle after 35 years of service, a lot of it splintered and broke. We hadn’t finished taking it out when a young man came in and said what are you doing with this teak decking? I said were taking it to the dump. He said can I have it? I said you can take. He took it all away, ran it through a thickness planer and put it down as an overlaid deck on a boat he was building. If he had come in first thing in the morning I would not have allowed a piece of it to get broken. A little bit careless on my part. “In that same time frame, my brother and I had a boat built at Cranberry Island,” said Full, “so I got to know Junior Miller and those guys at Southwest Boat. Once in a while we would get something done there for the boat we were building on Cranberry Island. Red McAllister was the builder. Very good builder, no question about it. They built seven of those boats. What had transpired was we had the plans for this boat all done and we were hoping Bobby Rich was going to build it and he wanted to. But he finally told us there was no way he could build it. He just couldn’t possibly have it done for the follow- ing year. We knew we needed the boat and so he said why don’t you go over and get hold of this fellow over to Cranberry Island. He’s
a good builder and he just finished a mail boat [ISLAND QUEEN]. I got over there and saw the mail boat and I looked at the quality of the work and it was fine. My experience of having those boats built on Cranberry Island was a lovely one. Again the boat was built with a small crew of only three men and they did a very good job on everything. The people on Cranberry Island were great, all of them. There was one old-timers and I can’t remem- ber his name now. Years ago he had been an engineer on a big yacht and of course he had a lot of stories. My brother and I had to do a lot of the mechanical work on the boat and this old-timer came down every day. He spent two or three hours there or more, and he was always bringing down a tool. It was just an excellent experience. As a result of this they built seven boats, all off the same set of moulds.
This was a Miles Fitch design, but Giffy did the conceptual drawings. He added, “I drew two boats. One I decided was too big. I did another one and Miles Fitch picked up on it quick. I did a layout for it. They’d were wonderful boats, good sea boats. That first boat I had working all the way down to the Chesapeake Bay. That was a contract for the Army Engineers down there doing core samples for dredging the canal. That was the winter they had a terrible freeze up. They shut the canal down I think about four weeks. Two or three shut right down. The ice was 14 inches thick.
Giffy knew and number of Beals Island/ Jonesport builders. He said that he knew of Will Frost, but never met him. He also knew of the Lowells, but again never met them. However, Giffy did know Harold Gower. He explained, “There was a terrific man up there, his word was solid gold, and that was Harold Gower. A man in Marblehead, who fished out of the little power dory for years, had made enough money and he needed a better new boat. He wanted to have one built Maine. Of course this man didn’t drive so we got some- body to take him up there. He met Harold Gower and Harold was going to build him a boat. A bank in Marblehead was going to put up some of the money, and said they were going to have to have a contract for the boat. So he called up Harold Gower and said he had to have a contract for the boat. Harold sent
Continued on Page 19.
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