A Tribute to Excellence...

Some time between now and June, when you open your billfold and find only a small white ticket for the “Launching - Sea Explorer Ship Nauset,” you must be happy that you have helped the Orleans Rotary Club in its search for the golden fleece. For the club, sponsor of the Orleans Sea Scouts, is collecting funds through the sale of tickets to pay the final bills for the new ketch the boys have built. Her launching will be an event more history making in its way than the sailing of the Mayflower II, which is only retracing the Pilgrims’ journey, while the SES Nauset is charting a new course in history.

NOTHING LIKE THIS has happened before in the annals of scouting, - or any other annals. Over a period of two and a half years, with the generous support of the community, the scouts themselves have built a centerboard auxiliary ketch, 42’ 10” long, 10’ 3” wide, that will sleep nine below decks, sail with a dozen or more, that has four working sails (mainsail, jib, staysail, and mizzen sail), and will give the scouts sailing experience and coastwise cruising. The boat will belong to the Cape Cod Council, Boy Scouts of America, on permanent loan to the Orleans Sea Scouts who will keep her in Arey’s Pond where they have a 50’ X 20’ boathouse given them by Sidney Winslow Jr. last year.

More than most, this has been a community project, reaching out far beyond the regular scouting program for its support. Gifts of money and material have helped substantially, and the boys have raised more than $1,800 from paper drives. When the final $2,000 needed has been raised the ship will have cost approximately $6,500 in actual money paid out. A similar, but slightly smaller ship advertised in “Yachting” was priced at $14,000.

How has the miracle been achieved? If only one hero could be hailed for the success of the venture it should be Bernard Collins Jr. (known as “June”) institutional representative of the Sea Scout Ship, and shop instructor at Orleans High Schoo1. It was he who first said it could be done, and who has followed the project faithfully through thick and thin, tracking down solutions to the knottiest problems, and spending countless hours, day and night, weekdays and weekends, working over the ship with the boys.

But June gives most of the credit to others. “It’s the boys who have built it,” he says, “and where would we be if at the start Spaulding Dunbar had not given us a set of plans designed especially for us?” For when June and Sea Scout leaders Moncrieff Cochran, Stanley Boynton and Paul Henson were in despair after fruitless attempts to get blueprints, having been told by one naval architect that the price of a set would be $600, Spaulding Dunbar, naval architect of Chatham, became very enthusiastic over the problem and drew a set of plans without charge, exactly to fit the boys’ needs, for a roomy boat with shallow draft, easy to build and easy to handle.

A SAILBOAT for cruising was first talked about in the fall of 1953 after the Sea Scouts had chartered the Maid of Orleans, a Chesapeake Bay Bugeye owned by Dr. William A. Dickson of Milton and South Orleans, for a week of cruising. By the following spring when the scouts made their spectacular row in Race Point pulling boats from Pleasant Bay Narrows to Nantucket, the idea had begun to crystallize, and the resulting Life magazine article was welcomed as an aid in raising funds for the boat building project.

“First we talked to Robert Foster at the Pamet River Boatyard”, June said. “He told us that if we gave him plans he’d build the hull for us, and we could finish the ship ourselves.

So the next move was to get the plans. After Spaulding Dunbar agreed to draw the blueprints we went back to Pamet River and found that Foster had just been drafted. We went into conference and decided to build her ourselves. The school committee gave us permission to build her at Orleans High School using the shop and equipment and in about two weeks Dunbar sent us the preliminary plans.”

THE LOFTING (making plans true size) was done on the stage of the High School auditorium on beaverboard in October of 1954. That winter the boys, under June’s guidance, built and assembled the frames.

They went to Boston and bought hard pine timbers in good condition for low rates through Duane Wrecking Co., re-sawed to the right size. These timbers had been salvaged from East Boston piers and warehouses when the Mystic River Bridge was being built.

That winter they worked on the centerboard and box, rudder and frames. Nickerson Lumber Co. got rift sawn fir for the bottom planking.

During the following spring the building was done under a car wash port borrowed from Jimmy DeLory. E1dredge Sparrow set up the “building bails” on which the frames were set to make them true and level. To simplify its construction the boat was built bottom up.

“Anything you can build at the high school with those boys I can turn over,” Fred Crowell, contractor of Harwich Port, said.

No work went on during the summer because both June and the boys were busy with summer jobs that took all their time. When Fall came they finished planking and covering the bottom and sides with Fiberglas cloth set in resin. “Bruce Hammatt of South Orleans got us the Fiberglas cloth at a reduced figure,” June said. The whole outside of the boat was finished in this way by December, using infrared gas lamps for heat that were loaned by W. H. Snow and Son.

Then Fred Crowell turned the boat over, moving the car wash ahead, and then putting it back over the boat. In the spring of ‘56 the upper part of the deck timbers and the cabin cockpi.t framing were built.

June then began to worry about how spars might be found. He looked around in Boston, and found that everything there was very expensive, but he was offered one from the Chester Crosbie Boat Yard in Osterville that came from a larger boat that had belonged to John C. Kiley of Boston. Mrs. Kiley generously donated the spar which would have cost $500. to build. Henry Coffin gave the scouts the use of a truck and Joe King of Eastham, telephone contractor foreman arranged with the Sea Scouts to pick it up.

Labor of making the other spar has been given by the Cape Cod Ship Bui1ding Co. in Wareham. Del Johnson Jr. of Eastham is contributing the cost of the material. By these donations the scouts are saved at least $350.

This Fall the boys and June have worked on the spars and booms and the interior. Wetherbee of Wetherbee Woodworking Co. gave them a good price on plywood and oak.

Joshua Nickerson gave substantial help toward buying the sails. June thought Dacron would be more practical than canvas and was given a good price by the International Sail Co.. The sails have been cut and will be delivered June 1. Castings and brass fittings were bought from W. E. Prue Brass Foundry in Dennis at a reduced figure.

The original design of the cabin was to sleep seven. By careful re-planning a chart table was made convertible with an air mattress to include an eighth, and one bunk was extended under the cockpit to sleep two small boys, bringing the total that could be accommodated up to 9.

A spacious icebox has been built in the shop, insulated with two inches of styro-foam plastic, three layers of aluminum foil and a lining of Fiberglas. Styro-foam is expensive to buy, but June’s Yankee ingenuity secured it without cost, from the cemetery superintendent (it is used in floral displays, and discarded afterwards.)

To determine the amount of ballast needed Orleans Police Chief Chet Landers called Rudolph King, Registrar of Motor Vehicles who sent down two men and a suitable set of scales on March 12. The ship weighed 8100 lbs. Dunbar computed that she would need 4700 pounds of ballast. 1,000 lbs. of this has been picked up free of charge from the Navy In the form of scraps which the boys are melting down and pouring into pigs.

The engine, a four cylinder, a ??? horsepower Gray Marine Auxiliary was bought for a modest price from Spaulding Dunbar. A barometer has been given by Gardner irmer. The Navy has donated a compass and Polaris.

Orleans artist Vernon Smith is at work carving a Nauset Indian figure head out of teak for the bow of the ship.

Many things are still needed – ropes, anchors, pulleys, a special stove, a sink and unbreakable dishes and cooking utensils for the galley. A ship’s Head is needed, and bunk mattresses, preferably foam rubber.

But such appointments will soon be within reach, and the day is near at hand when Fred Crowell will take the ship on her first and final land portage to the point of launching. A bottle of Bleeker Martin’s good champagne will shower her bow as she meets the sea. It will be a great moment.

Over a hundred boys had a hand in building her. Many of them will see her launched. But some who would like to be here have graduated from school and, gone off to college, jobs or the armed services. They can see her when they come home again and perhaps have a chance to sail on her.

And whatever the weather, her sails will always be filled with the good will and wishes of the many friends who liked the idea and helped it to materialize.

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Article written by Peggy Hobbs, wife of the Editor of The Cape Codder, Malcolm Hobbs