Gordie Breckon was having the Northern Husky built on the dyke at Annacis Slough in New Westminster. She was to be a 41' troller. Even today, over forty years later, the smell of yellow cedar will send me back to that boat shop. The shop had two marine ways, a small machine shop, and another building for the storage of big balks of timber. Three shipwrights worked there, one being the owner, and they took on all aspects of the work - new construction and re-building and repairs. The standard, at that time for fishboats, was wooden construction with a few built with fibreglass and aluminum still a few years away. In defence of wooden construction, the Northern Husky is still fishing for the Breckon family in the Gulf of Alaska.
The shipwrights didn't mind, or at least overlooked, that the owner would help where possible and I helped the owner. I wasn't new to construction as dad was a carpenter and we had built houses together since I was in my early teens. At the boat yard, I would be sent to pick up parts in Vancouver or New Westminster, or sand and scrape or whatever. This was all over-time as I was either at school or working at the railway, but it was an education of a different sort. As at the railroad, the men here left a person to learn from doing it themselves. This boat was being done to a standard of finish that was not the norm in those days. A work boat would more or less have a ladder that led to the bunks in the foc'sle but Gordie would spend the summer with his family aboard so he wanted a proper stairway that had to curve at the bottom. This, out of the ordinary, caused eyebrows to rise a little bit with the shipwrights as did the crowsnest barrel that was mounted high in the mast for the young boys to climb to.
There is really nothing else like the smell of a boat yard. Yellow and red cedar, strongly aromatic, for planking. Oak for ribs and backbone. Teak or mahogany for interior finery. A caulking (pronounced corking) team came in to make the hull watertight. They pounded in a thick strand of cotton batting between the planks followed by a string of oakum (tarred hemp). The caulking and the caulking process, tightened the hull into a single unit rather than just a collection of sticks fastened together. The installation of engine and shafts was contracted to mechanical outfits as was the electrical.
The electrical wiring of boats was being done by two electricians who were working for the B.C. Telephone Company as well. I looked kind of handy so they invited me to work with them, for money. The first boat that I was sent to do on my own was also a wooden troller that this old gent was building really beside a ditch that opened up onto the Fraser River. I was happily stringing wire, boring through beams where necessary, and bored through the main bulkhead beam aft of the wheelhouse and much to my later dismay, bored clean through the main instrument cable from the radar array. I reported this to my boss and I went to finish up another boat and never did hear how things were patched up. To this day, I never bore through anything without seeing what's on the other side.
The Northern Husky was launched into the river and left at the dock to "take up", that is to let the planks swell and it was no surprise when she leaked a cup full of water and was tight. The ship inspector from the Department of Transport came to measure the hull, figure out the tonnage, and to check for stability. This consisted of a number of us standing at the same gunwale and then running to the centreline. The resultant rocking was then timed to see whether the hull was "tender" or not. She had a good underwater shape, wasn't tender, and only a small amount of ballast was needed to make her ride on her designed waterline.
Trollers, unlike gill netters which caught fish in nets, caught fish by pulling six long lines that had numerous lures, through the water. The lines were spread out to the side of the boat by troll poles, which were hinged out from the beam of the boat. The poles had a bell at the tip which alerted the crew to a fish on. Powered reels, or gurdies, hauled the line in so that the fish could be gotten off. Troll fish is gutted and cleaned and iced right away so it is extremely fresh when brought to market. Nowadays, the fish is no longer iced but is, I think, frozen at sea.
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