Building Wooden Spars: Old Skills In Modern Times
he men are bent to their task, which is noisy, dusty and difficult. They wear face masks and ear protection, as carpenters are wont to do when they get down to the business of planing and sanding. They are engaged in an ancient art: building a mast from wood, much as it has been done since the wind first propelled ships.
In today’s age of composite everything, this effort might seem silly, but if you think for a moment, it’s part of our heritage, part of who we were and who we’ve become. Sadly, sailing has lost most of its relevance for commerce, warfare and government-sponsored exploration, yet here I was, in a shed near the U.S. Navy base in Newport, Rhode Island, witnessing a new stick taking shape the old-fashioned way. Sure, the tools and techniques are more refined these days, and masts are hollow. Glues are no longer cooked from hide, and the means of protecting the wood are much better. But the essence of process and principle has not changed. Neither has the material, which is carbon matter of the organic variety.
“Yeah, it’s 1830s fish-boat technology,” jokes Bill Flaherty as he pulls off his protective gear. Flaherty is a spar builder in the employ of Jim Thompson, who runs a marine carpentry business at Newport Shipyard. “It’s a glued version of a tree trunk.”
This mast is made from Douglas fir and started out as a long octagon that was shaped by gluing eight staves together with bird’s mouth joints, then whittled to a round shape. Relatively speaking, this 43-foot spar is a simple one. It’s the mizzenmast for Starbound, a 72-footer that’s loosely based on Joshua Slocum’s Spray and was built in 1950 in Maine. Starbound sailed around the world twice and is being restored to serve with SALTY, which stands for Seamanship and Leadership Training for Youths. SALTY is a charitable organization based in Warwick, Rhode Island, that helps youth organizations introduce members to sailing and teach them about the region’s maritime heritage.
Preserving maritime heritage is also at the heart of the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend, Washington. For some time, the Maritime Center has resided in a LEEDcertified facility that is, among other things, home to a large, modern and well- lit boat shop where Douglas Jones and Robert D’Arcy toil in much the same way as the mizzen mates in Newport. Jones is a shipwright and spar builder who moved to town from San Diego, and D’Arcy, who is from Providence, Rhode Island, learned the craft at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. He is the captain and caretaker of the 1907 BB Crowninshield schooner Martha, the town’s signature vessel, which is docked outside the Maritime Center.
Jones and D’Arcy landed the job of building a new mast for the 63-foot cutter Orient, a Sparkman & Stephens design launched in 1938 in Hong Kong. In the ’ 50s she gained fame as a formidable racing yacht on the West Coast under the ownership of Tim Mosely, an entrepreneur with a design and engineering background who came up with the world’s first two-speed winch that was chic, effective and reliable. It was the kind of kit that made others jealous.