- Joined
- Dec 13, 2024
- Messages
- 1
- Points
- 3
Hello… my name is Jim Carwardine and this is my intro. I should say, up front, that I am restoring a model of the Bluenose that I acquired at an antique store in Blockhouse, near Lunenburg, NS. It was originally made by William Morrow, former CEO of National Sea Products, now High Liner Foods, and a question I have is when did he do it… So, along with refurbishing the model, I plan to reproduce the look of the original schooner on the starboard side. A little deeper into my history starts with a Revell kit of the clipper ship Thermopylae when I was 16, 60 years ago. I still have that model. Skip to the last 7 years… A friend at the Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax asked a model-maker friend if he would make me a half model of a Tancook schooner. The model he made was of the earlier Tancook whaler. I had been a member of the Nova Scotia Schooner Association since 1995, sailing for 15 years on Nova Scotia’s oldest schooner, the Adare (1905) and had a large interest in local schooners, but mainly of the later models called the Tancook schooner, spoon bowed tiny Bluenoses. So, I decided to build my own half model and selected a set of lines of a 36’ schooner called the Glen Dora (1931) from O’Leary’s book, The Tancook Schooners. It was figure #17 in the book. Unknown to me at the time was 3 years later I would rescue that schooner (the real one) from Montreal in 2018. At that tome, I reslised that there were only 4 Tancook schooners left built before 1945 and one later, built 1946. I created the Nova Scotia Heritage Schooner Rescue Society (schoonerrescue.org) and we have since rescued 4 schooners, two of them (including mine) from before 1945. Having said all this, our longer range idea is to create models of these schooners that have figured so importantly in Nova Scotia’s history, initially as survival strategies (fishing and trucking), and, now works of technical function and art, beyond beautiful, generating famous schooners like the Bluenose, that were fast disappearing. We are currently canvassing Nova Scotia families to search their closets and attics for half models and other relics that preserve the character and nature of this Nova Scotia heritage. In conclusion, I’m sure that there are many Nova Scotia model makers, Ben Verburgh comes to mind, who are members of this organization, but I do feel somewhat unique in the sense of where my focus lies - not only making a model, but preserving our lost heritage through models, and also through saving and preserving the real boats. I will attach some photos to this intro…Jim Carwardine, Seabright, Nova Scotia
