KEEPING THE HERITAGE

GAIL MCGARVA Heritage heroine

Lyme Regis-based Gail McGarva’s unique skill of preserving historic craft and sharing her passion with others, has blossomed into a thriving business model

WORDS CATHERINE LARNER PHOTOGRAPHY REBECCA COLLIS/N7 PHOTOGRAPHY

Building rare and near-extinct traditional wooden working boats may seem a niche and isolated occupation but when Gail McGarva takes on a new project, she likes to get everyone involved. reverence, as if they are living, breathing entities each with their own particular characters. “Working boats have a strong sense of the weaving of form and function and, alongside the oral history attached to a

Rowing crews are involved in the riveting and oiling of craft,” she says, “you can look at the shape of the boat and it their Cornish pilot gigs; workers from the sawmill join the tells you its past, its job, its shoreline, the way it’s launched. launch of her replica Shetland boat; and the elderly men who Every working boat has a different story to tell in the shape once went to sea in the original lerret boats she replicated, of its hull.” share their memories as oral histories. Although Gail is commissioned to build boats by

“I have a very strong philosophy that if you involve individuals, groups or heritage organisations, she hopes that people in the building process, they will have a connection they aren’t static museum pieces. Her goal is for them to fi nd with the boat and then they will ultimately become a place in the modern context. The revival of the building of custodians of it,” she says. Cornish pilot gigs shows how this can be possible.

These days Gail also shares the skills, history and stories “I was very fortunate that when I completed my training there of regional working boats by touring museums and heritage was an explosion of interest in Cornish pilot gigs and clubs were centres with her programme called Disappearing Lines. commissioning new boats,” she says. Participants learn the key processes These 32ft (9.8m) clinker craft were of boatbuilding and are taught how formerly used to guide ships into to steam-bend oak ribs, creating harbour, but are now popular as racing what Gail calls ‘ghost ships’. boats, rowed by six oarsmen and a cox.

“They’re a symbol of the craft that Around 160 vessels line up at the is disappearing,” she says. “I hope to Scilly Championships. raise awareness and help prevent As Gail’s passion for her subject boats from being lost, reigniting grew, she learned more about the people’s passion for their local history of boatbuilding and the maritime history, and for the sea.” different types of working boats, and

Gail’s own passion for traditional started to give talks on the subject. clinker craft was sparked at the “I’ve been invited everywhere from outset of a nine-month course at the “Working boats are the WI to the V&A,” she says. “People Lyme Regis Boatbuilding Academy in rarely given a status or realised I wanted to communicate the 2004. She’d had no formal experience of woodwork and was profi le” stories, sharing the narrative of the boats and where they sit in our changing direction after careers in Gail McGarva cultural heritage, as well as showing theatre and education, and as a sign how they have been created.” language interpreter. Having lived on She constructed a ‘story boat’ to boats for many years, she felt now host events for children, transforming was the time for them to be her focus. Gail was 39 when she Vera, a 100-year-old lerret she had been given, into a mobile gained a City and Guilds bursary to do the course and “knew maritime museum – upturned and mounted on wheels – to immediately as soon as I walked in the door that this is what travel around schools. I wanted to do,” she says. “It was common in island communities, when a boat is no

Her initial project was to create a replica of a Shetland longer seaworthy, to use it as something constructive on fi shing boat she’d read about in an article in this magazine – land,” Gail says. “On Unst, I came across an upturned boat Classic Boat. The Gardie dated back to 1882 and was housed used as a sheep shelter. I’d crawled inside and the structural in the Boat Haven Museum in Unst. Willie Mouat had been ribcage of the boat as the roof was enchanting.” responsible for its conservation so Gail asked him to be her Her passion and commitment are infectious, and Gail has guide for the build. been recognised with several awards including the British

Having completed the boat, she made the enormous journey Empire Medal for her services to clinker boatbuilding and back to Unst with the boat (a 14-hour ferry from Aberdeen) to heritage crafts. She’s a trustee of the Boatbuilding Academy and launch it among the community from where it originated. It is also working with the Heritage Craft Association to heighten was an emotional moment and confi rmed for Gail that she awareness and gain support for traditional boatbuilding. wanted to specialise in creating replicas of boats in danger “It’s not only the vessels that are teetering on the edge,” of extinction. she says, “it’s the skill base that’s available to do it.”

“Working boats are rarely given a status or profi le,” she says. It all seems very different from Gail’s earlier life and career “They’re not so well documented as other boats, with no designer but she believes her skills and experiences all come together in drawings or construction plans. The skills to build them would this new role. have been passed down from generation to generation.” In her concluding note, Gail says: “Working with

In order to preserve these craft, Gail takes the lines of an communities, focusing on heritage, writing songs and stories, existing endangered ‘mother’ boat and replicates it, calling it I feel there’s an integration of all the past threads interwoven a ‘daughter’ boat. She speaks of them with fondness and in the work that I do as a boatbuilder.”