Going the distance
Now 95, Jack Taylor is one of the few surviving boatbuilders to have begun his apprenticeship prior to WWII. He’s witnessed everything from adzing kauri planks to vacuum-bagging carbon fibre.
Born in 1921 to John and Isabella in the dark years after WWI, Taylor couldn’t wait to leave school and start work.
“I loved boats and always wanted to be a boatbuilder. So I approached all the boatbuilders around the reclamation area (now Westhaven) and got an apprenticeship with Lidgard Bros,” the spritely Taylor recalls.
It was 1936 and the Lidgard brothers – Roy, Fred and Mike – operated their boatbuilding yard from Hamer St, Auckland. In those days a boatbuilding apprenticeship was five years of hands-on experience, with little in the way of formal training. At Lidgard’s each apprentice would be allocated to a qualified boatbuilder, and after six months allocated to another.
“They’d each do the same job differently, it was up to you to figure out which way was the quickest.”
Besides boatbuilding, Taylor had to learn how to get along with others.
“Some boatbuilders were very cantankerous, you’d have to be careful not to offend them or they wouldn’t tell you anything.”
Besides the Lidgard brothers themselves, Taylor remembers Len Bell, Cyril Freeman, Ponty Jones and Doug Rogers as being particularly good tradesmen.
Taylor started on 15 shillings a week which, after paying for board, tools and a Farmer’s department store bicycle, left him just enough to buy kauri to build himself a Z Class.
“I’d buy a couple of gunwales one week, a couple of planks the next, and wheel them home on my bike.”
In those days nearly all pleasure boats were hauled out for the winter and the Lidgard yard was a popular hard stand. Apart from the big winch on the slipway, moving the boats around the yard was all done by hand with wedges and greased ways, teaching Taylor invaluable tricks about moving boats around on land.
“We pulled then out on Anzac Day and put them back on Labour Day. It was dangerous work. You had to be careful.”
Besides the haul-out and busy slipway, Taylor helped build yachts, launches, fishing boats, as well as alterations.
“There was this craze for lengthening launches, we did one after another. And all by eye, everything was by eye in those days.”
Lidgard’s yard shed only had limited headroom so after a hull was finished it was moved outside so the decks and cabins could be fitted.
Taylor eventually launched his Z Class, the first of six he’d build and, after teaching himself to sail, started racing with the Manukau Boating Club. He was good enough to be selected twice to represent Manakau in the inter-provincial Cornwall Cup.
But both times the Cup was contested in Wellington and as Taylor and his crew Peter Howard were on the light side, they struggled against the locals in the heavier Wellington conditions.
Boatbuilding was considered an essential industry during WWII and the Government Wartime Manpower Commission established Associated Boatbuilders, bringing together Col Wild, Bill Coldrey, Alec Collings, Roy Lidgard and Sam Ford to build four 34m Fairmile motor launches for the war effort.
Taylor helped build these boats, powered by twin V12 Hall-
Scott Defender petrol engines. The launches had been designed in England for pre-fabrication, and to this day Taylor questions some of the design thinking.
“I could never understand why they carried 3,000 gallons of aircraft-grade petrol in a ½-inch thick wooden boat going to war.”
He had a break from boatbuilding for around 12 months to serve onboard the Union Company freighter Matua on her regular voyages to the Pacific Islands.
After WWII, the Lidgard brothers opened another yard at Smelting House Bay on Kawau Island. Taylor worked there for a year, commuting back to Auckland for the weekends in Fred Lidgard’s launch, the Matariki.
“We’d knock off lunchtime Friday and motor back to Auckland, then go back [to Kawau] Sunday afternoon.”
Lidgard’s built all manner of boats on at Kawau – yachts, launches, ferries and the first three Flying 15s built in New Zealand. One Lidgard boatbuilder, Sam Mason, would later become a New Zealand Flying 15 Champion.
After this period, Taylor joined Collings and Bell under Alex Collings for a year, before going out on his own to build clinker dinghies in Onehunga.
At the time he was seriously involved in racing X Class yachts against the likes of Chris Robertson and Jim Young. Young, in fact, had only recently returned from serving with the J-force in Japan and asked Taylor for a job. Instead, at Taylor’s suggestion, they formed an informal “bush” partnership.
Operating out of rented premises, the pair worked together for two years until Young left to open his own waterfront yard at Northcote. They remain good friends to this day.
Besides clinker dinghies, Taylor built a few launches and yachts up to 12m in length, some of which he designed himself. But while he was a skilled and fast boatbuilder, like most of his contemporaries he lacked the financial nous necessary for profitability.
“I was no good with finances, no boatbuilder was. If we’d had accountants doing all the paper work properly we’d all have made money.”
Seeking more money, Taylor worked with Charlie Hardman for a couple of years building houses and, after marriage to Merle (nee Slight) in 1951, the couple moved into one he’d built at Cockle Bay. It was there the couple had the first of their four sons.
Not long after moving to Cockle Bay, Joe Cole, who with George Howarth owned Kia Ora Fisheries, asked Taylor to repair a damaged fishing boat. This project led to Taylor being offered a full-time job looking after Kia Ora’s fleet of wooden fishing boats. Now with family responsibilities, having a regular pay packet was a welcome change.
“Best thing I ever did. I loved going to work and couldn’t wait ‘till Monday,” he recalls.
In his 20-plus years with Kia Ora Fisheries, Taylor only missed a total of three days work, and that only after suffering concussion after falling off a wharf.
Cole was a warm, generous employer. Not having children of his own, he took a shine to the Taylor family, giving their
Best thing I ever did. I loved going to work and couldn’t wait ‘till Monday...
children Christmas and birthday presents, a box of firecrackers for Guy Fawkes night and lots of fish.
“Joe treated me like royalty and there was never any shortage of fish.”
Besides all the usual maintenance on the fishing fleet, Taylor was on call when things went wrong. One of the more difficult tasks he undertook was rescuing the 16m trawler Silver Spray, which her skipper had grounded on a beach in Doubtless Bay. Driven up above the high-water mark, Silver Spray needed both garboard planks replaced before she could be refloated.
The canny Taylor arranged for a local a bulldozer to create a sand wall each side of the trawler so it could be tipped up enough to enable him to crawl beneath the hull and replace the garboard planks. It was three weeks hard work, but he made the hull watertight then arranged for a passing Sanford trawler to haul Silver Spray off the beach back into the water.
By now he’d became an active member of the Howick Sailing Club and would eventually build over 100 dinghies for fellow club members – Zeddies, Arrows, Moths, Flying Ants, Cherubs and the odd clinker dinghy.
As detailed in this column two months ago, in 1966 Taylor built the late Geoff Entrican-designed 3.6m skiff
Pink Panther in which they competed in the 1967 Interdominions in Sydney. He also built the first Mk II Moth in Howick, kick-starting the class there.
Around this time he became a boatbuilding instructor at Auckland Technical Institute and an examiner for the national boatbuilding exams, roles he thoroughly enjoyed.
After Cole died in the early 1970s, Taylor left Kia Ora Fisheries to take up a foreman position at Shipbuilders. Besides maintenance he oversaw the building of new steel and timber fishing boats.
He retired from Shipbuilders around 1979 and decided to set up as a marine surveyor. His friend Harry Pope was also a surveyor and, as a courtesy, Taylor informed Pope of his plans, the latter responding by suggesting the pair team up.
Taylor took surveying seriously: “You have to be very careful, a mistake can cost you a lot of money.”
While he retired from formal surveying around 1990, he continued helping other boaties and building dinghies, and to this day remains keenly interested in boating.
Listening to Taylor describing his apprenticeship years and working conditions was a timely reminder just how far boatbuilding has come in since those PRE-WWII years.
In the current euphoria surrounding this country’s boatbuilding it would be remiss not to acknowledge the previous generations of boatbuilders who laid the foundation stones of hard work, skill and innovation that today have helped make the New Zealand boatbuilding industry one of the world’s finest.