DOROTHY JAMISON
Observers at 2013 unveiling of the hull restoration.
This rescue begins with a dream.
Three friends, all sailors, had visions of creating a shipwreck museum in Eagle Harbor, Michigan. Mark Rowe is a shipwreck diver, Dave Thomas, a retired U.S. Coast Guard master chief, and the late George Hite was a retired Target executive who spent summers sailing on Lake Superior. He’d log 2,500 miles in a single season on the Big Lake.
EUGENE JOHNSON
The 26-foot surfboat is one of three rescue craft at the Eagle Harbor Life Saving Museum
This dauntless trio were trustees with the Keweenaw County Historical Society, which operates and maintains 11 museums. Dave was the KCHS president in the year 2000 when they began to realize their dream.
The KCHS was negotiating with the state of Michigan to lease the former Coast Guard rescue station’s three-bay boathouse at Eagle Harbor. The state acquired the boathouse in 1950 when the station closed. Fort Wilkins State Park managed the facility and used it for storage.
Then Bud Williams happened along. Bud was executive director of Wheaton College’s Honey Rock Camp at Three Lakes, Wisconsin. He had visited the Keweenaw and learned of the historical society’s plans to open a lifesaving station museum. (The three friends had abandoned the idea of a shipwreck museum because, of course, one already existed at Whitefish Point.)
Honey Rock Camp had a 26-foot, Type-H pulling, sailing surfboat just like one that had served at Eagle Harbor. But … it needed work. These surfboats, which could be propelled with oars and a masted sail, were the workhorses of lifesaving stations from 1917 to the 1960s.
Bud asked Wheaton College to give the boat to the KCHS to display and demonstrate. In 2001, the college agreed, and Bud delivered the boat to Mark in June of 2002.
Things were coming together.
In 2005, the state of Michigan agreed to lease the Coast Guard rescue station’s boathouse to the KCHS to establish a museum, and the Eagle Harbor Life Saving Museum opened in 2006 on the Keweenaw County Historical Society’s 25th anniversary.
The Project Gift
Honey Rock Camp had stored the surfboat for some 20 years. The camp acquired the boat around 1950 and used it to teach teamwork and leadership. Wheaton College students raced the surfboat on the Eagle River, Wisconsin, chain of lakes; and, they would take it from Bayfield out to the Apostle Islands on camping trips.
SANDY DHUYVETTER
Shipwright George Powell
Campers named the boat Viking on one side of the hull and High Road on the other side, paying homage to its noble purpose and heritage. The lap-strake hull design dates back to Norse longboats.
The boat’s esteemed life at Honey Rock Camp was cut short during a trip to the Apostle Islands. The crew had to beach the surfboat on Bass Island when a thunderstorm blew in. The raging surf pounded the boat against a rocky shore, breaking ribs and smashing hull planks.
A local fisherman pulled the boat from the rocky shoreline when the storm abated. A boat shop in Bayfield did a quick field repair, but Viking-High Road still leaked.
It became the KCHS’s challenge. “The pulling surfboat gave our historical society a chance to do its first true restoration,” said Mark.
No one knew the full extent of work needed until they opened her up.
Round 1, Hull Restoration
In 2007, Mark asked shipwright David Dean to take a look at the boat and consider restoring it. David operates ShadeTree Restoration Co., Suttons Bay, Michigan. He had built a replica of the Type-H pulling surfboat for the Whitefish Point Shipwreck Museum.
David agreed to take on the project, and the KCHS Board of Trustees gave him the green light. He picked up the surfboat in 2008. As work proceeded, he found more structural damage below deck than he anticipated. David said the project would take more money. Work paused as the KCHS raised funds.
GEORGE POWELL
The restoration process included building a “shoe” to protect the keel. Shoe slats were steamed and bent to match the contour of the keel.
Some 70 ribs had to be replaced, forcing David, as he explained, to rebuild the boat from the outside in. Normally, it is the other way around, as a boat is built upward from the keel – that bottom centerline in the hull. In this case, David used the hull planking to repair and replace the ribs, which meant he had to lift the boat and brace the hull into its original shape as he fit ribs into the hull.
As the boat was taken apart, each hull plank and frame piece was labeled.
“Each part was inspected, repaired or replaced, and then primed for reinstallation,” David explained. The goal was to preserve as much as possible of the original boat.
As work proceeded, David stripped away layers of paint on the hull concealing the name Whitefish Point, where the surfboat served from 1931 to 1947 when the rescue station there closed. That station took part in the rescue of a lot of shipwreck crews.
Whitefish Point sits just 35 nautical miles northwest from the Soo Locks. Wrecks occur there due to traffic congestion, fog, snow squalls, forest-fire smoke, underwater shoals, and just plain bad weather and high seas. That stretch of Lake Superior from the point to Munising is called the Shipwreck Coast for good reason; of 550 known major wrecks on the bottom of the Lake, at least 200 are located here, the museum there notes.
Ironically, David found himself working on the very boat of which he had built the replica for the museum at Whitefish Point. He also found the name “Little Willie Krahling” signed in pencil under a gunwale. An ancestry search confirmed Willie Krahling worked at the Coast Guard yard and apparently signed one of his masterpieces.
Repairing just the hull took David 10 weeks. In addition to the framework, he rebuilt a centerboard trunk (wooden slot) and two self-draining trunks, deck slots that extend through the hull on each side of the centerboard.
In 2013, the KCHS again had to halt restoration, as money was needed to work on the Life Saving Museum. The surfboat came home to Eagle Harbor in time for a 2013 grand opening of the Life Saving Museum.
Round 2, Deck Restoration
Restoration resumed in March 2017 on the surfboat’s interior, this time with shipwright George Powell of Powell and Crisp Planksters LLC, also in Suttons Bay.
George had worked mostly on wooden boats since 1975. He partnered with Howard Crisp in the year 2000. Crisp has since retired. George’s job was to rebuild the deck and put the boat back together.
“One big job we didn’t anticipate was installing some 40 sister ribs to bridge upper and lower parts inside the hull,” said George. “Then, I was convinced we had a good foundation to complete the decking, and side and end air tanks.” Unfortunately, Honey Rock Camp had cut hatches in the tops of air cases to stow camping gear. The air tanks were meant to remain sealed for floatation should the surfboat capsize. The tank tops were replaced with new continuous clear cypress pieces.
Lead-based paint on the deck boards had to be removed. George figured the safest way to do that was to cut a quarter inch off from the painted side with a bandsaw. He lost a quarter-inch thickness, which he replaced with quarter-inch plywood underlay.
Another difficult job was fitting deck boards around the two drain and centerboard trunks and fitting the boards flush with the hull. The deck forms a water-tight seal for the bilge below. Deck boards were cut to fit around ribs and beveled to match the hull contour.
GEORGE POWELL
Original deck boards were removed and surfaces sawn off to remove decades of paint. Here the boards are reassembled. A few had to be replaced with cypress wood.
Before he could put the surfboat back together, George built four thwarts (seats), eight rowing foot cleats, two towing posts and a steering horse (for the steering oar). He built a sacrificial keel shoe to protect the keel when the surfboat is beached, and he edged bottom planks with oak to protect the soft cypress wood. He also replaced a section of the oak gunwale.
To finish the restoration, all the bronze hardware had to be reinstalled: cleats, three scuttle hatches, two pumps, drains, vents, and deck braces. A few pieces were missing and needed to be manufactured, such as the wood pump handles.
The boat has two pumps – one to drain the bilge and one to fill and drain a 30-gallon ballast tank. The pump handle’s bronze castings were missing. George created replacements and installed missing ‘leathers’ with synthetic rubber to make the pumps work again.
“We couldn’t have undertaken this project without the approval and backing of the KCHS Board of Trustees, nor without generous donations from KCHS members, non-members, and grants,” said diver Mark Rowe. Donors names are recognized at the museum.
Mark and then-KCHS President Virginia Jamison wrote grant applications. The Keweenaw National Historical Park advisory commission previewed them before submission. The Stephen Leuthold Foundation responded with several grants, as did local and area businesses and individuals. Also, descendants of some 400 men who served in the U.S. Coast Guard at Eagle Harbor and Portage Stations gave generously, due to ancestral-research contacts made by KCHS Maritime Committee Member Barb Koski.
The museum’s pulling surfboat still needs a few accessories: oars, mast and sail rig, a rudder for sailing and canvas and cork sponsons (fenders) that fit around the boat just below the guard rails.
Soon, the rescue boat once again will ply the cold, clear waters of Lake Superior. In fact, we hope you’ll be able to visit this historic and heroic working boat this summer.
The Life Saving Museum at Eagle Harbor Marina is scheduled to open for self-guided tours June 14, 2020 and an open house is set for August 8, but check keweenawhistory.org for date changes.
Eugene Johnson lives in Eagle Harbor, Michigan, and is a member of the Keweenaw County Historical Society. He’s a retired writer-editor and a U.S. Coast Guard veteran.