You will see them in many small harbours and havens. Earnest, elderly men working on even older wooden boats, usually though not always, sailing yachts or even working vessels twice or three times as old as themselves.
To the casual eye, they don’t seem to make much progress. There they are week after week, working away with rarely any company, wielding tools that also look dangerously past their best, retrieved from the back of a van or a battered hatchback parked nearby.
The boat is often covered or half covered by a disreputable tarpaulin, so it’s hard to see her shape and lines. If you do, then out of the water the effect is not flattering. The solid keel gives an unfortunate impression of dumpiness; like a sea-bird’s lack of presence on land.
But these elderly men, and they nearly always are elderly men, possess a resolution and a determination that is beyond admiration. And to a man, they are romantics. At some point they fell hopelessly in love with the vessel for which they are now giving their all to recall to life.
They know every knot in every plank; every piece of rot that needs to be removed; how the new deck planking should be laid – like this, not like that because that builds in a weakness. The top-mast is sprung, I need to fashion a new one and I have a tree reserved for me in a wood, forty miles away. I can’t afford to transport it at the moment, but I will find a way.
Naturally, they can see and understand the work that has been done by others before them. Admire the quality of much of it and, probably, curse those who have not understood, could not feel what was right and, in their blindness, made the current job so much more difficult.
They will know who built the vessel, possibly who designed it if it’s a yacht. So of course they are aware of the particular design traits, their advantages and, whisper it softly, perhaps some inherent problems.
Almost certainly they will also know who owned it previously. Perhaps the first owner was a wealthy yachtsman who only had it for a few years, maybe pre-war. Then, as so often, a subsequent owner might be a retired Royal Navy officer with a ‘good war’ record. Finally came the dreamers; those who believed that without money or skill they could transform their cheaply bought and now unwanted mucky duck back into the swan she once was. But they couldn’t.
Our present owners’ may be romantics, but they are not dreamers. As well as determination they do have the skill. The skill to understand what particular wood is needed to do each particular job and how to form it.
Weeks if not months of searching might be required before a suitable source of the right timber is found. The tools may be old but they are familiar and well maintained. To hold them is to understand just a part of what this work is about; the application of years of acquired expertise. But if new skills are required, then diligently they will be learned.
Slowly and so carefully the replacement timbers are laid in or the old ones patiently preserved. Whatever is done is done in total sympathy with what has gone before. No jarring newness but a gradual bringing back to life of something that has become so central to their world.
They know what they do and take pride in it. Usually taciturn, because they assume others do not or cannot understand. But if asked an intelligent question, then quite suddenly words fall over each other as they seek to explain. Excitement takes hold as they speak of small triumphs achieved and obstacles overcome. Phones appear with endless photographs of the new ribs, the material used for caulking (guaranteed never to leak!) the hopeless botch that someone had made of the transom and how they replaced it, etc, etc.
These elderly men are intending to restore their vessels such that if they are properly maintained they will last another fifty years. That is probably at least a hundred and fifty years longer than anyone ever expected them to last when they were first built.
They know that their own time will be, has to be, limited with the vessel on which they are spending untold hours of their old age. But they believe that there is honesty, integrity and a beauty in what they are doing. And the results of their labour are beautiful because, like so many great craftsmen, they have become artists.
The art they produce is not obvious, or flashy, nor does it possess contemporary style. Rather it has a timeless subtlety that comes from being allied to function. Their boats are indeed beautiful and when, finally, they once again take to the water that beauty becomes apparent to anyone with eyes to see.
Of course, the men themselves will doubtless tell you that, ‘given time,’ they could have done a better job with the stern lockers, or that the main halyard really should be made of better stuff. But watch them closely. Just see how they stand when they think no one is noticing and quietly look at the object of their affections.
This too is a tradition. In his book The Merchant Schooners, Basil Greenhill recalls how, a hundred years ago or more, Captain Charles Lamey of the ketch Hobah would sit looking at his ship after he had brought her into harbour. When his son asked him what he was doing, he would simply reply, ‘I’m just looking at the Hobah, son, I’m just looking at the Hobah.’
What genuinely worries them of course is the fear that their knowledge will die with them. That after their generation has passed there will be no one with the skill to maintain their boat or others like her. But beauty is self-evident and happily there are those today who do understand and appreciate. What’s more not all of them are old men, indeed some are young women.
Look out for them in small havens and harbours; ask them what they are doing. They will likely reply, “Oh, I’m just looking at the…”
So Let us find the means to ensure that their work has not been in vain and, above all, let these elderly men know that in a noisy inattentive world, their quiet dogged labour has been noticed, its value recognised and the achievement celebrated.
Not, of course, that they would want any fuss.
Jon Bell, Exeter Quay – 2025
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