SMALL SAILBOATS
By Ernie Walsh
In Merasheen, in just about every direction we looked, we saw salt water and boats. As children, we all had small toy boats to sail, starting with floating them in a wash pan, in a wash tub, in water in ditches and brooks, and later being old and big enough to play in the landwash, we sailed our boats in the harbour's salt water. The first small model sailing schooner that I played with was the one my brother Ron owned. She was about a foot and a half long, painted green with a copper-colour bottom, ballasted with lead poured in holes bored in her bottom for ballast and rigged with two spars, a jib, jumbo, foresail and mainsail. She was about twenty years old when I was old enough to sail her back and forth to each other across our area of the harbour. Other times, we'd make our own rough and ready boats from pieces of board, chopped pointed at the stem, hammer an old piece of iron hoop in the bottom for a rudder, put in a spar and a square sail, and they would go wherever the wind blew them. A lot of these boats would drift down from Big Merasheen.
My brother, John, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in May 1949, or about one month after Newfoundland joined Confederation with Canada. He trained in Trenton, Ontario, and that winter was stationed in Moncton, New Brunswick, where he spent some of his free time building a model sailboat. I did not know anything about it until this large wooden box, about five feet long by eighteen inches wide and high came in the Spring by the coastal steamer, "Home" addressed personally to me, Master Ernest Walsh. Inside was the new sailboat. She was the same rig as my brother Ron's boat but much larger. She measured three feet three inches from stem to stern. She had a nine inch jib boom and was built hollow or open below deck with enough space to put three dry cell batteries for running a small motor, if required. She was already named "The Miss Joan," after John's fiancée, Joan Furlotte. When my brother, Denis, came home that summer, we rigged her out and began sailing her. We soon found she had a bit too much sail area for her narrow width and thin hull, so we would have to load her almost full of ballast rocks and then - boy, could she ever sail! Denis, Freddy, and I would have a set of oars each in our dory, and it took all our time to try and keep up with the Miss Joan or to head her off from going ashore or under a wharf or flake. Sometimes, we couldn't catch her and she'd sail into something and a few times, before we got to her, her decks would be awash. The salt water would leak in through her deck hatches, causing her to sink to the bottom, and we'd have to creep her with lines and hooks.
Freddy and I got great enjoyment also from the large wooden shipping box. We placed it on the head of the flake, put a long plank across the front and a shorter one to the rear, added a tail, a windjack propeller, guns and bombs, thereby creating a number one fighter airplane. We would sit in it for hours and throw rocks over the flake for bombs and make big splashes in the water. (Some days, Freddy and I would get hands full of fine fresh salt from the bologna boxes and hide behind the fish boxes on the flake and throw the salt at the small sea birds, terns and bull birds. We knew that if the fresh salt should land on the birds‘ tails, they would quickly become tame and be our pets. I guess we were poor shots as none of the birds ever came ashore to us tame, but we did hear that Rod Pomroy got one when the wind changed suddenly one day towards Big Merasheen. OK, I'm off course - back to sailing.)
The Miss Joan took a lot of seamanship to sail, so Freddy and I kept hinting to Denis that we both needed two new smaller sailboats to sail. The next rainy day, Denis picked out a nice junk of wood with no knots and began chopping out a sailboat for me. The hull was shaped, the keel nailed to the bottom, an iron bolt for ballast attached, and the spars placed. We then took the boat to mom to take measurements, cut out the cloth sails and sew the edges. Riggings, jib boom, rudder and paint acquired, and she was ready for launching. Freddy ran across to the other side of the harbour and waited by Mr. Pad Houlihan's wharf for her arrival. When Denis set the sails and rudder first, she sailed off smartly, went about a hundred feet or so, slowed down, bobbed in the wind, turned and came back under Uncle Jack Hann's wharf. He reset the sails and, on her maiden voyage, she went right across the harbour to under Mr. Mac Best's stage. She sailed beautifully, and we were well pleased. We spent the rest of the evening sailing my new boat. I felt some good! Before Freddy went home for supper, Denis told him he would make his sailboat tomorrow.
Denis, being a quick learner, made Freddy's boat a bit smaller but left a lot more wood on her hull and downsized her sails to match. As a result, Freddy's boat could sail faster than mine and, in a squall of wind, she was like a duck and could she ever go to the windward! We raced the two boats back and forth across the harbour all the next day. During the building of -the sailboats and our sailing them, there would be about a dozen or so other young fellows hanging around and saying, "Denis, can you make one for me?" He made another for his Godchild, Tony Hann. Louis Ennis, our cousin, was about six years old at the time and used to be hanging around the store and as each one was being made, Louis would say, "Who are you making that one for?“ We'd tell him. Next day when Denis started yet another boat, of course, Louis would ask the same question, and we'd come up with someone else's name and not his. When that sailboat was completed and painted, Denis passed her to Louis, saying, "This one's for you." Well, was he ever happy and excited and immediately ran off with his new sailboat to show his mother and father!
We poured small lead anchors and made small killicks, and Freddy and I would moor our sailboats inside the wharf and along by our stage when we were not using them. Our next best past time in the summer was playing kat, softball and going swimming in to Roache's and Murray's ponds. When we'd return two or three hours later, almost without fail, our sailboats would be missing and the anchors dragged. We would then have to get in the dory and row all over the harbour looking for them. We'd find them high and dry in the beach, bobbing under a flake or stage or hooked up somewhere, usually with the jib boom or spar cracked off. As mentioned, this pattern went on the whole summer or until we hauled up the sailboats. It used to make us some mad, as we couldn't catch the pirates. It remained a mystery to me for over twenty-five years.
While going to the 1980 Reunion on the M.V. Hopedale, I was having a great conversation with Loretta and Leonard Fulford when, out of the blue, Leonard started telling me about our small sailboats Freddy and I had. He said he and his brother Wayne were about five or six years old, and they would hide under Mr. Mac Best's stage and watch Freddy and me sail our boats. When we'd moor them, they would watch us going off with our swimming gear or ball and bat and then creep around the shore under Mr. Pat Houlihan's, Jack Barry's and Walsh's flakes and buildings where they could not be seen, then hook in our sailboats and let them free to sail in the breeze as they were built to do. We all had a great laugh over it.