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Topsail schooner Alma Doepel
Alma Doepel’s Restoration Director, Peter Harris, checks another day’s replanking work on the hull of the ship, docked on its restoration barge in Docklands, Melbourne, 2021. All images courtesy Sail & Adventure Ltd unless otherwise noted
The story of a survivor
Coastal trader, ‘jam fleet’ vessel, army ketch, sail trainer – Alma Doepel has been all these and more in a life of almost 120 years. An ambitious restoration project in Melbourne is now readying it for the next stage of its career, writes Alan Edenborough.
DOES IT MATTER TO SAVE AN OLD SHIP?
This question was posed by the late Peter Stanford, founder of New York’s South Street Seaport. His answer: You have to see the ships, and walk their decks, to know the answer to this question. These old ships gain power past their time when they are, in fact, preserved and men come to walk their decks as other men walked them in another time.
Stanford’s words are understood by the men – and women – who have had the privilege, and the pain, of restoring an old ship. It’s intangible, but it’s real, that link with the past, with the people who worked on the ship in years gone by. Restoring what they built, to sail again, is to honour them and their ship. And so to the life and current restoration of the 1903-built three-masted foretopsail schooner Alma Doepel. In 1903 at Bellingen, New South Wales, Frederik Doepel had his sawmill on the banks of the Bellinger River. An ex-seafarer who had neither secondary schooling nor formal adult qualifications, Doepel was a master craftsman with timber. He had already built small ships and droghers and his seafaring experience had taught him what to look for in a well-found ship. Alma Doepel was designed on a rough piece of paper on the kitchen table, and so good was Doepel’s design that the ship has lived on to the present day. Alma Doepel was designed for coastal trading, able to cross the treacherous bar at the mouth of the Bellinger River but capable of safe coastal passages, to take the produce of northern New South Wales to Sydney. The ship’s length overall is 45 metres, with a beam of 8 metres and draught of 2.2 metres. Masthead height is 28 metres. For much of its life, Alma Doepel was rigged as a three-masted foretopsail schooner, setting square yards on the foremast. Launched with much fanfare on 10 October 1903, the new ship was named Alma Doepel after Doepel’s youngest daughter. In December of that year, the ship made its maiden voyage to Sydney carrying timber. Then began a decade of coastal and trans-Tasman trading. General goods from the northern rivers region of New South Wales to Sydney were the staple cargoes. The arrival of the north coast railway and regular coastal steamship routes greatly affected the trade of the coastal sailing ships on the east coast. But in Tasmania there was a real need for small ships and in January 1916, Alma Doepel was sold to jam-makers Henry Jones & Company of Hobart. Alma Doepel became one of the fleet of small sailing ships that plied the route between Tasmania and the southern mainland, known, regardless of their rig, as ‘ketches’ and often referred to as the ‘mosquito fleet’. From 1916, Melbourne was a regular port of call for Alma Doepel. So, too, were Adelaide, Geelong, Portland, Southport and Port Huon. Typical cargoes were timber sleepers for the railways, structural timber for buildings and, after the Great War ended, fruit, cases of jam, and pulped and dried fruit, as Alma Doepel became a significant vessel in the Henry Jones & Co ‘jam fleet’. Alma Doepel was a fast ship and in the 1930s it claimed the record for a crossing from Hobart to Port Phillip Heads, Melbourne, of 58 hours 30 minutes.
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World War II pressed Alma Doepel into military service, as it did so many varied craft around Australia. It was taken over by the army in 1943, its rig cut down, deckhouses and a bridge added, along with new engines and armament, and Alma Doepel became Army Ketch 82, painted grey from bowsprit to rudder. AK82 was on active service between northern Australian ports, New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, its crew army sailors – cooks, solicitors, horse-breakers – apparently anything but seamen. At war’s end, Alma Doepel was returned to the IXL company, Henry Jones & Co, for a major refit before resuming its Bass Strait trade. Back and forth went Alma Doepel, averaging seven or eight round-trips each year, predominantly to Melbourne. Its interstate trading ended in 1959 and Alma was consigned to limestone shipment in Tasmania, carrying stone on a 30-nautical-mile route between Electrona and Deep Hole, sea transport of the limestone being the cheapest method. The ship’s trading days ended for good in 1975 and it lay idle until purchased by Sail & Adventure Limited, a not-for-profit organisation that set about its first restoration and commissioning as a sail training ship in Port Phillip. From the 1980s through the 1990s, Alma introduced thousands of young people to sail training and its potential for youth development. This successful period came to an end through poor decisions and the ship entered a period best described as ‘in the wilderness’. Taken from Melbourne to Port Macquarie in New South Wales, the ship became a static exhibit alongside the town wharf, with minimal maintenance. A decision to ‘rescue’ the ship and return it to Melbourne was hatched and the board of Sail & Adventure Limited was reconstituted. The ship was slipped in Port Macquarie to assess the state of the hull in preparation for the 750-nautical-mile passage to Melbourne. Inspection on the slip discovered teredo worm damage to large areas of the port side. Water flow from a storm drain adjacent to the ship’s town berth, and warmer than the main river, had provided ideal conditions for a worm infestation.
Ferdi Darley, a master shipwright with international experience in traditional wooden shipbuilding, was stunned by the extent of the worm damage. As a temporary measure, Darley decided to fibreglass the most badly damaged areas, but after consultation with the team it was decided that an additional layer of hull protection would be needed. A member of the team who had attempted it in a Sydney project suggested ‘fothering’ the hull. Instead of using a sail, the traditional covering for a leaking hull, the idea was to use theatrical backdrop canvas, a dense heavyweight material. It was not available in Port Macquarie, but a supplier was eventually located and enough canvas ordered to cover the hull on both sides to above the waterline – no small order! That meant booking a second slipping for the fothering task. There was more than one raised eyebrow as the team set to work with reams of canvas and a thick mastic to stick it to the hull, painted over with anti-fouling and battens fastened over the canvas in a one-metre-square pattern. But it worked! In January 2009 Alma Doepel once again passed through Port Phillip Heads to begin its long and much-needed restoration in Docklands.
01 Tied up with other ‘ketches’ of the Mosquito Fleet, Alma Doepel awaits a cargo, c1920s. 02 Alma Doepel under full sail during its days as a sail training ship, 1990s.
01 ‘Fothering’ the hull in 2008 by attaching heavyweight canvas, embedded in thick mastic. Birdon Shipyard, Port Macquarie, December 2008.
02 Fothered, anti-fouled and battened, Alma Doepel is ready for the water once again at Birdon’s in Port Macquarie, December 2008.
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For further information, or to donate to the Alma Doepel restoration fund, see almadoepel.com.au. If you would like to join the restoration team as a volunteer, or can offer the project goods or services in kind, please contact the Restoration Director, Peter Harris, on 0427 829 134.
Alma’s return to Melbourne was popular and the authorities were helpful from the start. A large unused shed on North Wharf at Docklands was provided by Development Victoria as a workshop base and City of Melbourne Waterways provided berthing space adjacent to Shed 2. All set to go! Alma Doepel’s hull needed major restoration and that meant removing everything from inside the hull, as well as removing masts and spars and one of the deckhouses. Shed 2 was soon the repository of individual items of Alma’s gear and equipment, everything sorted for restoration or replacement and suitably tagged. Planning was paramount. The restoration objective was to return Alma Doepel to commercial survey, which meant working with surveyors and other professionals as well as the certifying authority. A detailed restoration plan was prepared and costed, and this has become the single most important document of the project. Updated continuously, it has driven fundraising and budgeting as well as setting the rate of workflow.
Volunteers joined Ferdi Darley’s shipwrights as members of the Docklands restoration team with Sail & Adventure board member and Restoration Director, Dr Peter Harris OAM, co-ordinating the project. Work has been steady and continuous since 2010. The need to work on hull restoration for an extended period meant creating a floating barge large and sturdy enough to take the size and weight of the ship. Working with a naval architect and a creative marine contracting firm, components were acquired to provide sufficient buoyancy, including containers with all openings welded up. The resulting barge was large enough to provide work areas around the hull of the ship to allow the erection of scaffolding. The ship was docked on the barge in BAE Systems’ historic Alfred Graving Dock in Williamstown and then towed back to its Docklands berth alongside Shed 2. The hull restoration work was more extensive than anticipated, but the team never lost sight of the fact this is an historic ship of considerable maritime heritage significance. Where fabric could be retained it has been, while balancing the need to restore the ship to a standard which will ensure it regains its commercial survey certification. October 2021 marked a high point of the restoration project to date. In a complex operation, Alma Doepel was lifted from its work barge by the cranes aboard lift-ship AAL Shanghai and slowly lowered into the water. To the absolute delight of the team, the bilges stayed dry as Alma returned to water.
There is still about two years’ work in refitting the ship, the timetable always governed by fundraising, which has seen more than $3 million raised, with a little more than another $1 million to go to completion. Anyone seeing Alma Doepel today knows that Peter Stanford was right: it does matter to save an old ship!
For further information, or to donate to the Alma Doepel restoration fund, see almadoepel.com.au. Alma Doepel is listed on the Australian Register of Historic Vessels as HV000436.
Alan Edenborough chairs Sail & Adventure Limited and has been involved with the Alma Doepel project since 2008. He is a member of the Council and Steering Committee of the Australian Register of Historic Vessels (ARHV), President of the Australian Maritime Museums Council (AMMC), and a member of the Executive Council of the International Congress of Maritime Museums (ICMM).
