Exploring the Role of Imagery in Sustaining Traditional Cornish Boat Building by Jasper Troje Tuck

Building on Coastal Cultural Heritage: Exploring The Role of Imagery in Sustaining Traditional Cornish Boat Building

Jasper Troje Tuck BA (Hons) Press & Editorial Photography Falmouth University PEP320 Photographic Theory 5: Dissertation Dissertation Supervisor: Julia Kennedy 25th November 2016

This essay is my own unaided work and its length is 5994 words. I confirm that the research and writing of this dissertation is entirely my own and I have not plagiarized any portion of this work. I have not worked with any other person inappropriately. I also consent to this work being stored electronically for the purposes of use within plagiarism detection systems in order to check the integrity of the assessed work. I consent to a copy of this dissertation to be retained by Falmouth University. Name: Jasper Troje Tuck Date: 25th November 2016

This work is an investigation into the world of maritime cultural heritage, traditional boatbuilding and the role of imagery in sustaining maritime heritage. It aims to explore in depth the definition of cultural heritage and the symbiotic relationship between tangible and intangible heritage. It answers the question of imagery’s role in preserving and sustaining maritime cultural heritage, through studying examples of traditional boatbuilding projects that have used visual media, such as photography and videography. It focuses on four case studies of such projects; namely Alexis Andrews’ work with traditional wooden sloops on the island of Carriacou, Luke Powell’s project to accurately restore the historic schooner Rhoda Mary, Runa Khans work reviving traditionally built river craft on the Brahmaputra Delta in Bangladesh and the Traditional Maritime Skills project which has built an online Virtual Learning Space to teach traditional boatbuilding skills. Additionally, this study investigates the ways that traditional wooden boat builders in Cornwall use archival imagery in their work today. By interviewing prominent Cornish boat builders Luke Powell and Ben Harris, the research has suggested that without archival imagery boat builders today would struggle to keep traditional boatbuilding from disappearing. It has also found that through visually documenting traditional methods and creating records of the techniques used to build a wooden boat, we are creating an archive for future generations of boat builders to learn from. Without the image, we would struggle to preserve our cultural heritage, and identity.

Contents Page 1 -‐ List of Figures Page 2 -‐ Introduction Pages 4 to 20 -‐ Literature Review • Page 4 -‐ Subsection 1: Defining Cultural Heritage • Page 6 -‐ Subsection 2.1: Traditional Boatbuilding Projects -‐ Carriacou Sloops • Page 11 -‐ Subsection 2.2: Traditional Boatbuilding Projects -‐ The Rhoda Mary • Page 14 -‐ Subsection 2.3: Traditional Boatbuilding Projects -‐ Runa Khan’s Living Museum • Page 16 -‐ Subsection 3: Heritage Preservation Projects -‐ Traditional Maritime Skills • Page 17 -‐ Subsection 4: Archive Keeping Page 19 -‐ Methodology Page 21 -‐ Analysis / Findings / Discussion • Page 21-‐ 1 – Mal Stone & The Last Traditional Oyster Men • Page 22 -‐ Luke Powell and Ben Harris: Traditional Wooden Boat Builders Page 27 -‐ Conclusion Page 30 -‐ Appendix Page 41 -‐ Bibliography

Figures Figure 1. CAMERON, Bill. 1968. Mermaid of Carriacou in cladding on the beach in Windward. From: Carriacou 1968 [online]. Available at: http://www.carriacou1968.com/wp-‐content/uploads/2013/09/VSO314-‐copy.jpg Figure 2. ANREWS, Alexis. 2003. Genesis in cladding on the beach in Windward. From: Wooden Boat Magazine. 2011. ‘In Focus: Carriacou Sloops’ (p. 78) Figure 3. Anon. ca. 1890-‐1891. The Rhoda Mary at anchor off Malpas, Truro. From: POWELL, Luke. Personal Collection. Figure 4. Anon. ca. 1891. Schooners anchored in Falmouth Bay. From: POWELL, Luke. Personal Collection. Figure 5. Pedersen. 2016. A master craftsman passes his boatbuilding acumen to workers and apprentices. From: National Geographic News [online] Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/Runa-‐Khan-‐explorer-‐moments-‐develops-‐living-‐ museum-‐to-‐preserve-‐national-‐craft/#/04-‐rolex-‐khan.ngsversion.1479400208784.jpg Figure 6. Anon. ca. 1890. Landing fish at Falmouth in the 1890’s. From: MCDONALD, John. 1982. ‘Living History Under Sail: Gaff Rig on The River Fal’ (p.69) Figure 7. Anon. 1888. The wreck of Isles of Scilly Pilot Cutter Queen on St. Martins beach. From: POWELL, Luke. 2012. Working Sail: A Life In Wooden Boats. Figure 8. Armstrong. 2016. Alva under sail in the Carrick Roads, Falmouth Bay. From: Ben Harris & Co [online]. Available at: http://www.benharrisboats.co.uk/ben-‐harris-‐boatbuilding/yachts/ Figure 9. Carr. Curlew under sail in the Carrick Roads, Falmouth Bay. From: Classic Yacht TV [online] Available at: http://www.classicyacht.tv/journal/2016/1/8/fresh-‐faced-‐wide-‐eyed-‐1-‐ben-‐harris-‐ boatbuilder-‐cornwall

Introduction “If this thing gone from here, everything gone, you know” (Enoe, Vanishing Sail, 2012) The words of Alywn Enoe, the Grenadine Islands last master craftsman, remind us just how tenuous the continuation of traditional craftsmanship is in the modern age. This work is inspired by my passion for the sea, having spent my formative years immersed in the world of wooden boats, being born into a family of sailors. Growing up in Cornwall and the Caribbean, the majority of my life has revolved around sailing, imparting a love of boats and ocean alike. Humans are the only species to build boats and put out to sea. This dissertation aims to explore the world of traditional boatbuilding and the rich legacy supporting it. Traditional maritime skills and craftsmanship constitute a substantial portion of humanity’s cultural heritage and identity, but are seriously threatened due to a lack of demand or interest in wooden boatbuilding. This work explores features of cultural heritage, specifically regarding coastal communities. I intend to uncover the importance of traditional knowledge and cultural heritage within communities, highlighting maritime heritage benefits to society. Secondary research, drawing upon the work of maritime historians, journalists, photographers and boat builders, will inform on several traditional boatbuilding projects, chiefly Caribbean trading sloops of Carriacou and a heritage restoration project by Cornish boat builder, Luke Powell. This work aims to investigate the specific role of imagery in sustaining maritime heritage, exploring benefits and dangers of how current photography and videography projects have brought about a renaissance in wooden boatbuilding. Additionally, it will asses the impact of archival photography on contemporary wooden boatbuilding. During initial research I identified a distinct absence of recorded studies on the topic of imagery in sustaining maritime heritage, in its own right this study offers a contribution to the longevity of maritime traditions and the communities they represent. Interviews with two prominent local boat builders, Luke Powell and Ben Harris, reveal the significance of imagery in their craft. An interview with Mal Stone, a photographer with strong ties to Falmouth’s traditional oyster fishery, informs upon what compelled him to record a dying Cornish tradition. Throughout this dissertation a narrative style of writing has deliberately been employed, to echo the traditions of story telling, creating an atmosphere and style reflective of the content.

Literature Review Subsection 1: Defining Cultural Heritage Cultural heritage is defined by the International Council on Monuments & Sites (ICOMOS) as “an expression of the ways of living, developed by a community and passed on from generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions and values” (ICOMOS 1999). The International Charter of Venice (1964) was one of the first ICOMOS texts to define the concept of heritage as: “Imbued with a message from the past, the historic monuments of generations of people remain to the present day as living witness of their age old traditions... The common responsibility to safeguard them for future generations is recognized. It is our duty to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity…” (Vecco 2010). Tangible cultural heritage comprises physical artefacts, monuments, places and buildings considered sufficiently significant to preserve for future generations. UNESCO subcategorizes tangible heritage into three groups; moveable, immoveable and underwater heritage. Moveable heritage includes paintings, coins, sculptures, tools and manuscripts. Immoveable heritage includes monuments, temples, architecture, archaeological sites, along with others. Underwater heritage includes shipwrecks (UNESCO 2016). Historic ships are tangible heritage, but their definition as moveable or immoveable is dependent upon the state of their preservation. If a historic boat is abandoned, being left to decompose, it is considered immoveable heritage. Tangible heritage is vital to humanity’s history, offering a physical manifestation of our past. Objects we preserve demonstrate recognition of the necessity of preserving the past and articles that tell its story (CNRS 2016). Preserved objects authenticate memories; the reality of an article, as opposed to an imitation or replacement, offers a physical means of touching the past (CNRS 2016); making it seem more accessible. Intangible heritage is a recent development in the field of cultural heritage, established by the UNESCO Convention for The Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003 (Vecco 2010). The convention defines it as “The practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills… that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity” (Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage 2003).

Thus it can be described as communal ideas, knowledge and skills handed down for thousands of years. It is in our blood, helping to ground us to our origins, a source of cultural identity (Bouchenaki 2003). Bouchenaki asserted, “Symbols, technologies and objects are tangible evidence of underlying norms and values. Thus they establish a symbiotic relationship… The intangible heritage should be seen as a larger framework within which tangible heritage takes on shape and significance” (Bouchenaki 2003). Tangible and intangible heritage are both heavily inter-‐reliant. Physical artefacts, monuments and symbols are tangible forms of intangible ideas, skills, beliefs or values that a culture or community possesses (Bouchenaki 2003). Intangible heritage does not become entirely significant until demonstrated in physical form; when a traditional wooden boat is built or restored using traditional skills, knowledge and tools this process represents the tangible expression of intangible heritage. Conversely, tangible heritage possesses greater significance when understood in context. Subsection 2.1: Traditional Boatbuilding Projects: Carriacou Sloops Traditional craftsmanship is a perfect example of the symbiotic relationship between tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Illustrating how the application of traditional knowledge, handed down from generation to generation occurs, relating to anything from clothing and jewellery to shelter and transport. In traditional communities, sustaining craftsmanship is essential to preserving livelihoods. For example, small rural fishing villages in developing countries have traditional skills to build and repair their own fishing boats locally, rather than buying modern, expensive boats, minimizing costs of running fishing operations. Many coastal communities in developing countries rely on fishing for income and food. Estimates suggest that fishing sustains 10-‐12% of the global population, with over 90% of people employed by capture fisheries working on small scale operations in developing countries (UNFAO 2014). The majority of these fisheries retain traditional boats and methods of fishing. A study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture organization found that of 4 million fishing boats, 2.7 million were traditional open (un-‐decked) boats, over two thirds operating without engines, under sail and oar power (UNFAO 2007). Without the intangible cultural heritage, which is craftsmanship and skills behind building, maintaining and sailing the boats as well as traditional fishing methods, these communities would struggle to survive. Carriacou, a small island in the Caribbean, embodies an excellent example. Alexis Andrews is a photographer based in Antigua, specializing in super yacht photography. He became entranced with traditional wooden West Indian trading sloops and purchased an old, well used Carriacou Sloop called Summer Wind. He restored her himself then sailed her to Windward, a small village on the island of Carriacou with a very strong traditional boatbuilding culture and heritage. Declining fish stocks and shortage of raw building

materials as well as the advent of tourism had changed the beach and no new boats had been built in many years; the tradition was vanishing rapidly (Wooden Boat Magazine 2011). Traditional boatbuilding had once been vital to the local community in Windward, with hundreds of sailing boats launched from the beach they were built on. Windward was the central hub for wooden boatbuilding in the West Indies, building more boats than anywhere else in the region (Notarbartolo 2015). Records show that in 1929, 129 trading sloops and schooners were built and launched on the Island of Carriacou (Crask 2015), used for inter-‐ island trading, fishing and smuggling. As commercial trade under sail made way for modern engine-‐powered boats, traditional skills and craftsmanship became endangered. In the early 1960’s an entrepreneur, Linton Rigg, noticed that Carriacou’s once prosperous boatbuilding industry was slowly disappearing, along with the local shipwrights’ skills that had been passed down through generation. To combat this and save an industry that sustained the island for over a century, he commissioned the island’s master shipwright Zepharin MacLaren to build a 44ft gaff cutter (Hein 2015), named Mermaid of Carriacou, quickly becoming known as the fastest boat in the region (see figure 1). Boat racing had always been a significant part of the islanders’ lifestyle, and to encourage boat builders, Linton offered a prize of $500EC to any locally built boat in the ‘large working class’ that could beat the Mermaid in the Carriacou Regatta. She remained unbeaten for a whole decade (Cameron 2010). Linton’s efforts revived the traditional craft for a period, bringing about a renaissance of wooden boats to the island. In years following, many new boats were built, not only to race in the regattas but also to fish and carry cargo and passengers between islands (Hein 2015).

Fig. 1: Cameron 1968. Mermaid of Carriacou in cladding on the beach in Windward

The island’s boatbuilding industry flourished, then once again experienced a decline. By the time Alexis Andrews arrived on the island, no boats had been built in over a decade. He recognized that boat building was an essential part of the islanders’ cultural heritage. When a small country such as Carriacou loses such an important piece of largely unrecorded intangible heritage, their legacy is at risk of being lost forever. Andrews remained on the island, meeting one of the last remaining master boat builders in the village of Windward. Alwyn Enoe is descended from a long line of traditional wooden boat builders in the Enoe family (Notarbartolo 2015). Andrews decided to follow Riggs’ footsteps, attempting to revive Windward’s boat building industry once again by commissioning a new boat from Enoe. They named her Genesis (see Figure 2). For Enoe, it was a way to pass his vast wealth of knowledge down to his sons, hoping they would continue the trade. Knowing the importance of recording the long standing traditions and heritage involved, Alexis documented the entire process over a period of 18 months, from felling timber in the rain forest to the traditional launch ceremony on the beach. He used the photos from the build to self-‐publish two books, Genesis and Vanishing Ways, which generated considerable interest, inspiring another rebirth of the island’s boat building industry (Hein 2015).

Fig. 2: Andrews 2003. Genesis in cladding on the beach in Windward

Since the publishing of Alexis’ book, Alwyn Enoe has designed and built one last boat together with his sons before handing the business over to them. Alexis Andrews worked with him, producing a feature-‐length documentary, Vanishing Sail, about the project, and the tradition’s history. The traditional ways of building these boats have survived, but not without drastic change, no longer used as cargo or fishing vessels, but have become yachts. Traditional knowledge and cultural heritage relies on evolution and continuous upgrading of techniques, otherwise it would dissolve and become antiquated. The sudden surge in Carriacou sloop orders, spurred by Alexis’s marketing, resulted in changes to construction methods -‐ some positive, some not. External ballast, modern rigging and installation of auxiliary engines have caused problems in early boats of this latest generation, needing new solutions to be adapted. Perhaps the biggest change to the industry is the need to produce boats to a budget and to deadline for clients who are far removed from the island world of the Caribbean. It is a brilliant example of modern commercialization, its benefits and hazards. As Maiwenn Beadle wrote; “Gentrification has allowed the building tradition to continue where it would have died, and the future will always be different from the past but there is a tinge of sadness in this amelioration. Here is the dichotomy that, in keeping something alive, we have changed it irreconcilably… The only way for these traditions to live on is for outside money to come and buy these boats” (Beadle 2016. p.21). Subsection 2.2: Traditional Boatbuilding Projects -‐ The Rhoda Mary The Rhoda Mary project is a great example of a traditional boatbuilding project working hard to sustain Cornwall’s maritime heritage. The Rhoda Mary (see Figure 3) was a famous British cargo schooner built near Falmouth in 1868. Measuring 109 feet long on deck, with a displacement of 130 tons she was owned by a cooperative of villagers from Devoran. The ship would have been financed, built and sailed by the villagers, with profits from her cargo journeys divided between 64 shareholders. This was the way many of Britain’s schooners were operated in that era. She became well known and respected on the west coast for her speed, thought to be the fastest merchant schooner ever built in Britain and was also one of the most well documented ships of her time (Rhoda Mary Project 2016a).

Fig. 3: Anon. ca. 1890-‐1891. The Rhoda Mary at anchor off Malpas, Truro

She had an extraordinarily long career for a schooner, operating from 1868 until her decommission in 1925, then converted to a houseboat on the River Medway. In 1949 she was completely gutted, only the hull and deck remaining. Basil Greenhill, the director of the National Maritime Museum and his colleague David McGregor recognized how important a ship she had been, realizing the importance of thoroughly documenting her design. They took photos and made detailed sketches, recording all her dimensions (known in the boatbuilding world as taking her lines). In the 1960’s she caught fire and was completely burned down to the waterline, leaving just the keel and 40 tons of pebble ballast preserved by the river’s mud. The recording Greenhill and McGregor made, along with archival photographs during her years of service, have been instrumental in drawing up plans to rebuild (Rhoda Mary Project 2016a). During the mid-‐to-‐late-‐19th century, Britain was the world’s foremost trading nation, importing and exporting goods under sail, globally. The vast majority of this commerce was carried by West Country schooners, built and financed by coastal communities. There would have been hundreds of these schooners at the peak of Britain’s sail trading era, often laying at anchor together in great fleets (see Figure 4). Eventually sail trading gave way to steam ships, and the once vast schooner fleet began to disappear, unfortunately, no working examples remain (Rhoda Mary Project 2016b). Salvaging and reconstructing the wreck of the Rhoda Mary is a rare opportunity to restore an iconic chapter of Cornwall’s maritime heritage.

Fig. 4: Anon. ca. 1891. Schooners anchored in Falmouth Bay

The project, led by local boat builder Luke Powell, aims to reconstruct the Rhoda Mary as accurately as possible, drawing upon photographs, paintings, sketches and plans found of her. Their aim is to re-‐float her remains and transport them to a yard near Truro, to begin rebuilding. They are planning to use the build to provide opportunities for young people in Cornwall, writing that Cornwall “has significant levels of social deprivation and good employment opportunities are often lacking for its young people. The result, all too often, is an exodus from the county of bright young people in search of better prospects” (Rhoda Mary Project 2016c). They plan to open several six month long pre-‐apprenticeships, focusing on preparing young people for maritime sector careers, construction led by four skilled traditional shipwrights, alongside a blacksmith and two trainees. This project will restore a vital fragment of Cornwall’s heritage, training young people in traditional craftsmanship and building public interest in sustaining cultural heritage. Subsection 2.3: Traditional Boatbuilding Projects -‐ Runa Khan’s Living Museum There is growing global acknowledgement that maritime heritage is too valuable to be allowed to become obsolete. Bangladesh is witnessing an emergent movement for the preservation of traditional wooden boats and boatbuilding. The Brahmaputra Delta, supports one of the planet’s largest and most varied fleets of inland boats, its legacy dating back three thousand years. Due to the influx of Chinese outboard engines, numbers of traditional wooden boats have drastically depleted; Runa Khan is a woman who is working hard to preserve their heritage. “The beautiful, ancient boats were disappearing, and the old-‐world carpentry skills were dying before your eyes,” she says, “We had to fight to preserve what was becoming only a memory’’ (Pedersen 2016).

Fig. 5: Pedersen 2016. A master craftsman passes his boatbuilding acumen to workers and apprentices.

She created a “living museum”, hiring local shipwrights, carpenters, sail makers, blacksmiths and riggers to build replicas of traditional Bangladeshi river craft using methods dating back over thousands of years (see Figure 5), handed down through the generations by demonstration and word-‐of-‐mouth. When the traditional boats started to disappear, so did the craftsmen and their skills. By creating this museum, Khan has documented the techniques, preserving them for future generations, creating numerous jobs for members of the local community. Thus, she has meticulously detailed traditional methods of building over 80 different types of Bangladeshi river boats (Pedersen 2016). Subsection 3: Heritage Preservation Projects -‐ Traditional Maritime Skills Another project preserving and sustaining maritime heritage, through building new ships with traditional methods, training craftsmen in traditional skills and recording traditional boatbuilding techniques through video and photography, is the Traditional Maritime Skills (TMS) project. The project is a collaboration between four British, Dutch and Belgian organizations, recognizing that Europe’s maritime heritage is under serious threat, with numbers of craftsmen trained in building and maintaining traditional wooden boats deteriorating fast. They state on their website that “In the Netherlands only five people remain that master the skills to build or maintain traditional ships like Hoogaars type fishing boat; these skills are poorly documented and only transferred orally” (Traditional Maritime Skills 2014). TMS are working on solutions to protect and sustain maritime heritage, collecting and recording traditional boatbuilding techniques and skills, promoting these to the public and

generating interest (Traditional Maritime Skills 2014). The most innovative scheme that they have undertaken is the creation of a Virtual Learning Environment, an online database for learning traditional boatbuilding skills. The database is free to use for anybody with an interest in the subject, and funded by the European Union’s ‘Interreg Two Seas Program’. The Two Seas Program spans England, France, the Netherlands and Belgium, and is funded partly by the European Regional Development Fund (Interreg 2 Seas 2014). The TMS Virtual Learning Environment has recorded over 50 different boatbuilding skills, creating a website publishing step by step guides, instructional videos demonstrating the techniques in action and technical photographs. They have also implemented a framework intended for use in training programs and apprenticeships (Traditional Maritime Skills 2016). This has digitally frozen these skills, which might otherwise have been forever lost, permanently preserving them for future generations. Subsection 4: Archive Keeping Archives are collections of records, selected for preservation and including items ranging from letters and personal diaries, to government documents and business files. Maps, photographs, videos, and sound recordings also make up a large proportion of archives; essentially any kind of documentation of time or place considered of importance in understanding our history. They document humanity’s development though the ages, forming an essential part of any nations heritage and identity (Eberhard, Loo, and Smith 2008. p.12). Photographs are one of the most crucial components in many archives. They are physical evidence of a precise moment in time, very often portraying much more information than the photographer originally intended. The viewer can attain a significant amount of detail about a way of life, a culture, or a particular place in time, from studying archival photographs (Eberhard, Loo, and Smith 2008. p.519). A photo of fishermen landing their catch in Falmouth, taken in the 1890’s demonstrates this (see Figure 6), particularly interesting due to the distinct lack of literature on the subject.

Fig. 6: Anon. ca. 1890. Landing fish at Falmouth in the 1890’s

This photograph reveals much about what life would have been like for people in this time. The background details the fleet of fishing luggers, with the fish being loaded into wooden barrels. In the foreground the barrels are being hauled away by horse and cart, with a young boy rolling a barrel up the slip way by hand. On closer inspection, the observer notices the traditional flat caps of the working men and the bowler hat of the spectating figure of authority. from the lack of any kind of machinery it is indicated that it was taken before the introduction of motorized winches for hauling the barrels to the warehouse. This photograph is an excellent example of just how much can be learnt about the past from studying archival imagery. The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich holds one of the most extensive photographic records of Britain’s maritime heritage, covering all aspects of our interaction with ships and the ocean from 1840 through to the present day. Their collection has been growing since 1934, now holding 300,000 negatives, slides and plates and tens of thousands of photographic prints (National Maritime Museum Greenwich). These photos are essential assets to the preservation of our maritime heritage, without which we would lose a significant share of our cultural identity.

Methodology Whilst researching imagery’s importance in sustaining maritime heritage, I recorded a series of interviews with local individuals of influence in the boat building and traditional sailing community. I aimed to determine imagery’s role in sustaining maritime heritage, specifically focusing on traditional boat building, to discover exactly how people working in the industry, use imagery in their work. I also intended to explore why people feel it is important to keep maritime traditions alive. Luke Powell, Ben Harris are accomplished traditional boat builders and Mal Stone is a photographer with a strong involvement in the Falmouth working boat scene. Due to my involvement with the maritime community, I had knowledge of these key figures and was fortunate to attain a favourable response to my invitation to contribute to this work. Interviewing is a reliable method of data collection for qualitative research (Jamshed 2014), encompassing many different techniques, face-‐to-‐face, telephone or email (Opdenakker 2008). Face-‐to-‐face interviews are most common, this being my chosen methodology, due to the information I required being richer than simply gathering facts or figures. Face-‐to-‐ face interviews allow the interviewer to take advantage of the subject’s social cues, body language or tone of voice and act upon them to better direct their questions. As my interviewees are figures of authority, their opinions and attitudes were important to my research. Employing open-‐ended questions allowed me to communicate fluidly with my subjects, suiting their usual methods of communication well. These allow respondents total freedom in their replies, without restricting responses (Keats 2000. p.35). Due to the nature of their work as traditional craftsmen, many skills are learned through experience and dialogue with other craftsmen. I felt that semi-‐structured, linear approaches to my interviews were most appropriate. A semi-‐structured interview has the appearance of a conversation, with pre-‐set questions and an idea of the information desired (Jamshed 2014). This allows spontaneity, meaning that it could evolve naturally. My interviewees being locally based meant I could conduct face-‐to-‐face interviews in their own environments, without travelling long distances. Conducting the interviews in their own homes gave me the advantage of my subjects feeling comfortable in their space, ultimately leading to a more fluid exchange.

Analysis / Findings / Discussion 1 -‐ Mal Stone & The Last Traditional Oyster Men The first person I interviewed for my research was Mal Stone, professional photographer and author of The Last Traditional Oyster Men. During my preliminary research on the subject of traditional Cornish working craft I came across his book, which is a photo project documenting Falmouth’s working boat class and the men who sail them. Cornish families have been dredging the Falmouth river bed for oysters under sail, for hundreds of years, now thought to be the last remaining traditionally worked oyster fishery in the world. When Mal moved to Cornwall, he became fascinated by the boats, deciding to create a permanent record of their work. “I saw that there were these boats sailing around on the water. I realised that through the old laws, they were dredging for oyster under sail power and hand pulled dredges… Going back to about 2004, there were about ten boats… The average age of the guys out on the boats was about 64 years old. I thought if ten years from now this is the way it is, with only ten boats and the average age of 64, there isn’t going to be one of these fisheries anymore. I felt that it was an important way of documenting it.” He replied when asked why he felt compelled to record the traditions. “My main thing was documenting portraits of the people that were there… There are still some of those people on the fishery. There are a few new people coming along. Several people have packed up or died. It’s about where it was when I shot it. It has sustained itself to this point in time. There’s always a knife edge. I could see it was changing, that’s why I did it” (Stone: Appendix A). I feel like his book is similar in a way to Alexis Andrews’ books, in that they are both records of long-‐standing maritime traditions, specific to their regions. Both Alexis and Mal realize the importance of recording traditional ways of life, such as these. Through creating these records, they are contributing to future generations’ archives. In the same way that boat builders today use old photographs to learn about the past, one-‐day people will be looking at projects like these as a record of the time we live in. 2 – Luke Powell & Ben Harris: Traditional Wooden Boat Builders I wanted to discover how contemporary wooden boat builders today use imagery in their work, and how archival photographs have helped them in their designs. I also wanted to find out why they feel it is important to preserve the heritage behind their craft and why traditional boat builders personally feel drawn to a career in traditional craftsmanship. To this end I interviewed two well known local boat builders, Luke Powell and Ben Harris. Luke Powell is a traditional wooden boat builder based in Penryn, with a lifetime of experience in wooden boats under his belt. His father was a fisherman, and always had a strong interest in sailing boats. In 1969, when Powell was nine years old, his family set sail for Greece on an old Scottish fishing boat, settling on the island of Spetses, which at the

time retained four working boat yards building traditional wooden boats. Luke spent considerable time in the boatyards and around the harbours, absorbing everything around him. “I very quickly got interested in traditional boats because at the time I was seeing them disappearing. Old wooden cargo boats, old fishing boats and the like… When I was 14 or 15 living in Greece I was taking photographs of these boats, knowing that in ten years time they’d all be gone. Which is what happened. That really affected my awareness and I was trying to record them through photography. I went on to come back to England, books about Thames barges got me interested in that. I went to the east coast and started working on them. It was photographs all the time” (Powell: Appendix B). By the time he was 17 he was skippering a 60-‐foot ketch in the Aegean Sea. At 18 he returned to England where he started an apprenticeship as a shipwright, working on traditional wooden Thames barges in Faversham (Powell 2012). Following his apprenticeship, he returned to Greece and acquired a 75-‐year-‐old gaff cutter, which he rebuilt and sailed to the Helford River, Cornwall. On his return to England, he found a photograph of a Scillonian Pilot Cutter in an old book and made the decision to build one from scratch. “Now that we’re building boats, this is a direct result of looking at photographs. I found an old photograph of an Isles of Scilly Pilot Cutter abandoned on a beach [see Figure 7]. The photo was taken in 1888, and that photograph got me thinking ‘why don’t we build one of those?’ They’ve disappeared, lets recreate them. If you didn’t have the photography you would lose a lot of the history” (Powell: Appendix B).

Fig. 7: Anon, 1888. The wreck of Isles of Scilly Pilot Cutter Queen on St. Martins beach

I asked him about his use of imagery in planning and researching the Scillonian Pilot Cutter; “Because there was hardly anything written about them, the only way we could research them was by finding old logbooks, finding old photographs… It was too far in the past to interview people… We had to go on written anecdotes that had been written 100 years ago about the old boys that went out and did it. There was so little of that though, so you really had to get the knowledge through the photographs. You had to try and imagine how it was. Designing the boats was very much down to finding old photographs, there were no plans of the boats so we had to redesign them. We used a load of old photos and worked out the shapes of the boats… Without the old photographs it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to look at that piece of history. It would have been lost and forgotten. There was nothing published about the stuff, there were loads of maritime historians who I asked about pilot cutters from the Isles of Scilly and they said ‘well we didn’t know there were any’. It was gone” (Powell: Appendix B). Since the build of his first Pilot Cutter, he has pretty much single-‐handedly established a complete revival of Britain’s traditional Pilot Cutters. He has built 8 cutters so far, with another in the works at the moment. He has conducted extensive research on the subject, and published a book called Working Sail about his life’s work. His research into the Scillonian Pilot Cutters is probably the most comprehensive anyone has ever produced, and an invaluable addition to Britain’s maritime history. He asserts that photographs have been an integral part of his work, stating that: “It’s massively important in pretty much every aspect from designing the boats and getting people interested in the project to visualising what the future could be by looking at the photographs of the past. Eventually when we’ve got the boat built, then we can do new photographs… We’ll be adding to the photographic archives. In 100 years from now when they’ve all rotted away and been forgotten, maybe someone will find the photographs and say ‘wahey! Let’s build one of these! “ (Powell: Appendix B). Ben Harris is another traditional builder local to Falmouth, having worked with wood since aged fifteen, starting with cabinet making and eventually running his own saw mill and oak-‐ framing business in Scotland. Moving to Cornwall in 2005 to pursue a career building wooden boats, he has lived here ever since. The first, Alva (see Figure 9), was heavily inspired by traditional Falmouth Quay Punts, which worked the Carrick Roads in the 19th and 20th centuries. His next project is making a replica of a famous Quay Punt called Curlew (see Figure 10). “In my plans to build a replica of Curlew I’ve looked at old photographs of her to get an idea of her rig, the layout of her deck, and the positioning of her mast. I’ve read about her history in the book written by the Carrs, who owned and sailed her extensively. I’ve seen the lines…. supposed to be of Curlew… in the Falmouth Maritime Museum, but I believe they’re of a different boat called Curlew…. Since there weren’t any good lines [of the real Curlew] available, I went and studied her while she was on the hard and took the lines off her. I’ve presented these to

the maritime museum, so they now have them as a record… I was looking for that information, couldn’t find it, came up with it, and handed it to the maritime museum myself. That in a way is adding to their archives, so if someone else were to come along and wanted to understand her lines better they’d be able to do that because that work had been done” (Harris: Appendix C).

Fig. 8: Armstrong, 2016. Alva under sail in the Carrick Roads, Falmouth Bay

Comparably to Luke Powell’s contribution to maritime records, Ben Harris has recorded historic Falmouth Quay Punts lines, thus preserving the boats’ history. He further states that while imagery has been crucial in his work, he needs more than photographs to gain a true understanding of the boat he is building. “I think the archival photographs and the written information is invaluable in giving you a picture of the time they were working in and the type of people who were sailing… But for me, building a replica of a certain type of boat, it's been as valuable to actually be able to go and be around the boats themselves” (Harris: Appendix B)

Fig. 9: Carr. Curlew under sail in the Carrick Roads, Falmouth Bay

Conclusion The aim of this study was to explore the preservation of maritime heritage, determining the role of imagery in its sustainment. Through studying boat building projects that are working to document and preserve traditional boatbuilding methods, it is clear that there is a growing interest in traditional craftsmanship and the safeguarding of cultural heritage. The work of Alwyn Enoe and Alexis Andrews has been instrumental in the revival of a Caribbean boatbuilding industry, although through reviving the industry they have permanently altered its form. Photography and videography have been influential in the revival of the craft, without Alexis Andrews’ marketing of the Carriacou Sloops through publishing his two books and documentary, the island’s traditions would have remained comparatively unknown to the world beyond. The importance of visual media in sustaining Carriacou’s maritime heritage is clear. Luke Powell’s project, reconstructing the Rhoda Mary, also demonstrates that archival photography has been fundamental in their planning and execution. The photographs they collected to draw up plans of the ship, are undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of the entire project. These two examples

of imagery’s role in the conservation of two contrasting cultures’ maritime heritage, demonstrate the importance of documenting traditions. Without archival photographs the project to rebuild the Rhoda Mary would not exist. Conversely, Alexis Andrews’ extensive documentation of the methods used by traditional boat builders in Carriacou will provide an archive for future generations, permanently preserving the island’s traditions. My research on contemporary wooden boat builders using archival photography to aid their work, uncovered a significant gap in the field. By collecting primary research through face-‐ to-‐face interviews with leading characters in the industry, I uncovering imagery’s importance to the work they do. Luke Powell has relied on photographs throughout his career, ultimately inspired to build his first boat by a photograph. He states “You can learn more from a photograph than from what people write, because when people write stuff they get it wrong” (Powell: Appendix B). Ben Harris has contrasting views towards written information, but agrees that the photograph is crucial to understanding traditional ways of working. Without being able to visualise the boat building methods, accurate reconstruction would be impossible. This research has verified that contemporary visual media is securing the future of traditional wooden boat building. Virtual learning environments, documentaries, photo books, museums and many new forms of documentation are rapidly gaining popularity. As long as people desire to build wooden boats with traditional methods, the information required for them to learn will always be available. While reasons for building boats has evolved from a necessity to a pursuit of pleasure, the future is bright for traditional wooden boatbuilding. ___________________________________________________________________________

Glossary Schooner -‐ a sailing ship with two or more masts, typically with the foremast smaller than the mainmast. Sloop - a one-masted sailing boat with a mainsail and jib rigged fore and aft.

Appendix APPENDIX A: Interview with Mal Stone, professional photographer, author of The Last Oystermen Jasper Troje Tuck: Alright, I’m recording… Mal Stone: Alright… I was listening to radio Cornwall on the way into work the other week. You may want to get in touch with them, they might have a bit more of a back story on it. The article was on a boat called the Rhoda Mary, which is the last known surviving schooner. Apparently Cornwall being situated where it is, it was a place of trade with stuff coming in and out from the world over. There were literally thousands upon thousands of schooners on the Cornish coastline. I mean huge amounts. The Rhoda Mary’s been found in Kent, and there’s a project to rebuild it. They’re setting up a massive project around the boat. They ha a woman that had literally thousands of photographs of old schooners. So that’s an archive in itself. What she’s doing with it I have no idea, I don’t think she’s doing anything serious or commercial about it. There have been people that were recollecting their memories of the schooners, not necessarily that they were born at the time but their grandfathers may have worked on them or that sort of thing. There’s an absolute plethora of material out there, what I suggest you do is you contact radio Cornwall and say about there was an article the other week on the Rhoda Mary trust. Ask if they have a recording of it, or any information or contacts. Luke Powell was interviewed on there too. It wasn’t a long piece, only a short feature. But you know, it shows that there’s something really big that’s going on. That was about the working boats that were coming in and out of Cornwall trading. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of boats up the river at Truro, how they ever got them up and down the river Fal… It’s all out there, so that’s one place I would have a look at. Another place I would look, have you been to the maritime museum? J: Yeah I’ve been to the library there. M: Also Andy Campbell, from Image Delivery. Tell him you’re one of my students. Andy has got an extensive record. The story is that Andy used to own the Pandora Inn, and even back in the day then probably about 30 or 40 years ago he had cameras and stuff. He was photographing all sorts of stuff. He’s got stuff on the working boats, both racing – which really aren’t working boats in fairness – but the old traditional working boats too. He’s got lots and lots of images. And he’s been given prints, archival prints, by old families that show what the working boat situation was like, what the marine and maritime situation was like around Falmouth, the river Fal and this part of Cornwall. He’s got lots and lots of stuff. He’s digitised a lot of it, in fact probably the majority of it. He’s got it all as digital files, if you needed to use anything for illustration purposes. Andy will be able to help you. The other person that will be able to help you is Alan Davis, he wrote a book on the history of the Falmouth Working Boats. He was an oyster fisherman; he has connections with the fishing industry. I think he lives locally, down in Falmouth. He’s got a lot of information as well, and he’s quite approachable. Have you got questions for me there?

J: I have yeah, I wanted to ask about your book. I was researching the boats and came across it in the library. I wanted to know why you felt driven to record the traditions as they were? M: When I came down here I’d been a commercial editorial photographer in London for about 25 years. It got to the point where I was only picking up a camera if there was money on the end of it. It had become a job. When I came down here I decided that I wanted to get back to my own personal love of photography, which as always been in the portrait world. I’ve never been a landscape photographer; I’ve certainly never been a photojournalist. It’s not been my speciality. I looked around and I saw that there were these boats sailing around on the water. I realised that through the old laws they were dredging for oyster under sail power and hand pulled dredged to keep the ecology of the river bed. This is going back to about 2004, the winter of 2004 into the spring of 2005. There were about ten boats out there, and the average age of the guys out on the boats was about 64 years old. I thought, you know, if ten years from now this is the way it is with only ten boats and the average age of 64, there isn’t going to be one of these fisheries anymore. I kind of felt that it was an important way of documenting it. Rather than say, photographing boats sailing and that, I have done that in the book but they’re not great, its just what I shot on an old Rolleicord from a punt. My main thing was documenting portraits of the people that were there, it’s very portrait led. It was there to document the people that were doing it. There are still some of those people on the fishery. There are a few new people coming along. Several people have packed up or died. It’s kind of about where it was when I shot it. It has sustained itself to this point in time. There’s always a knife edge. I could see it was changing, that’s why I did it. I felt it was important to document it. J: Okay, so why DO you feel like its important to keep traditions like that alive? M: Well, because it’s the last oyster fishery of its kind in the world really. You do have oyster fisheries in Kent, and the oyster industry in Essex and Ireland. But none of them are under sail. For instance, when I did the exhibition a few years later Canterbury Council paid for the exhibition to go to Whitstable because they too have an oyster festival. I went up there with Auburn and took her out of school. The understanding was that she had to do something educational to be out of school. We hung the exhibition, and she went out and she photographed their oyster fisherman around the harbour. She came back saying “ooh dad it’s not like it is back home, they’ve got motorized boats and winches and everything. It’s not like the real thing.” It’s the last of its kind. There was one in America called Chesapeake, but that’s gone now. So really, this is the last natural oyster fishery in the UK if not the world. The Falmouth bay fishery is completely natural and has been here since reputedly the roman times. J: Do you think it will carry on? M: I think it will carry on provided that the ecology stays, and that the greed doesn’t come in through commercial opportunities. The problem we’ve got is whenever someone puts a new mooring in, there’s a chain swinging round as the tide goes up and down. That circle just wipes out any chance of any kind of oyster growth. The reason they say you don’t eat shellfish if there’s not an R in the month isn’t because you’ll get poisoned because its

summer time. It’s because that is the season when they breed. They finish on the 31st of March, and they start again on the 1st of October. To give the oyster beds the chance to breed and grow. That is the reason for the R in the month. You’ve constantly got that, and you’ve got the problems with the pollution, things coming out down the creeks. There was a lot of trouble a few years back when pollution from the old tin mines was coming into Restronguet creek. The oyster fishery shut for about ten years I think, in the 1980’s. It’s like with anything; you’ve got the watch the tides. If you look at Surfers Against Sewage, you’ve got to be careful after rainfall and that, because that’s when things come off the land and wash into the sea. Then you’ve got pollution in the water. That’s going to affect all the sea life in there and along with it the oysters. J: Alright… So moving back to the archival side of it a little bit. Do you think that historical maritime paintings and photography and the records that have been kept have been integral to keeping traditional working boats and traditional sailing alive? M: Yes of course. I think its more so now there’s an interest in it than ever before. When you look at how people like Luke Powell are building the working sail boats, the pilot cutters and the gigs. I think it’s more so prevalent now than ever before. It’s just finding that material. There’s still plenty of it about, still loads of boat plans, still people drawing up plans and interesting things going on really. J: What do you see as the role as the role of photography as a means of documentation? I think photography is a very important part of documentation in what’s going on now, and you know more so now especially with multimedia. There’s a very good video that was done by SoFT on the oyster fishery with Timmy Vinnicombe and many of the others. I think its key, you only have to look at the interest… Put it like this. When I started doing the book there was nobody really photographing the oyster fishery. It had been done by people like Andy Campbell in the past, and a few other people here and there. Since I did it it seems to have grown by a bit, there’s been lots of people going out there. A lot of the students here get interested in it. If you’ve never done it before or never seen it before then its quite an interesting thing to do. It was a bit like Winston Link, when he stopped shooting the railway he ended up buying his own railway engine. I bought my own oyster dredging boat. J: Do you dredge with her at all? M: She was dredging when I bought her off Bill Rogers when he packed up, and about four years ago myself, Adam Spargo and Sam Cottrell got licensed. We were just going to do it on the weekends but Adam and Sam ended up going most of the week. It battered the boat to bits to be quite honest, but it was an interesting thing to do and say that we’d done. J: Using the boat for what it was built for? M: Well, my boat was built as a Polperro Gaffer. She was never built as a Falmouth oyster dredger. She ended up here because of the fact that she was a gaff rigged boat. Before that she would have been a Pilchard driver back in Polperro during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. So now my next thing is that I’m doing a documentation on the last 10 fishing

families living in Polperro who are are still commercially fishing. The last Cornish families. I see that in itself as an important task, seeing how villages change with newcomers and all this sort of thing. The fact that its often quite difficult to sustain a living in the world of fishing now. The reason why a lot of the fishermen voted for Brexit was because of the fact that there’s always been indifferences between the British and the foreign fleets. If you look at the haddock quota, a friend of mine can fill his entire haddock quota in an afternoon. And he can’t go anywhere close to France to fish it. Yet they can be right on our doorstep, and they can fish day in and day out. He goes out in and out the harbour, unable to catch any haddock because he’s already filled his quota, while the French and the Spanish are out there catching away. 70% of the haddock quota is owned by the French…. APPENDIX B – Interview with Ben Harris, traditional wooden boat builder Jasper Troje Tuck: Why do you feel like it's important to sustain tradition skills and craftsmanship? Ben Harris: it’s a question I haven’t really spent a lot of time thinking about, the skills and the tradition of the skills, the craftsmanship of boatbuilding is something that has been passed from generation to generation... It links us with the past, it links us with... God that’s a really difficult question. Why is it important? Anybody who takes on a craft or a skill, something specific like boatbuilding, they’re not doing it because they’re thinking about its importance. They’re doing it because they’re drawn to something that gives them an opportunity to express their talent. It gives them an opportunity to make something that’s appealing to them, it gives them the opportunity to learn from the people around them that have learned those skills themselves. The importance of it to each person who learns those skills will be quite personal. To me, when I see a wooden boat, it’s just such a beautiful construction with a useful purpose and that’s the appeal of it to me. So the importance of keeping it going is keeping their beauty and their function alive... That sounds a bit vague doesn’t it? J: Why do you think people are so drawn to it? Well... You kind of just answered that already. B: The importance of keeping it alive... I’m drawing a bit of a blank here. I’ll come to it. J: Alright, let’s talk about your research when you were planning Alva then. Have you personally used many old records of boat building plans, or old photographs or paintings to learn about how they were built and sailed or was it just through experience? B: I’m finding this really quite difficult. It’s something about having the microphone there and having my thoughts recorded... In building Alva I was working from plans, I was working from a designer's plans. J: Whose plans were they? B: They were Paul Garside’s plans. He was influenced by the Falmouth working boats, because he lived on the Fal and he studied the local boats and drew influence for his designs

from them. In my plans to build a replica of Curlew I’ve looked at old photographs of her to get an idea of her rig and the layout of her deck, and the positioning of her mast. I’ve read about her history in the book that written by the Carrs who owned her and sailed her extensively. I’ve seen the lines drawings that were supposed to be of Curlew that are in the Falmouth Maritime Museum, but I believe they’re of a different boat called Curlew that is around at the moment. She’s at Freemans wharf now. Since there weren’t any good lines of her available I went and studied her while she was on the hard and took the lines off her. I’ve now presented these to the maritime museum so they now have them as a record. I suppose I was looking for that information, couldn’t find it and came up with it, and handed it to the maritime museum myself. That in a way is adding to their archives, so that if someone else where to come along and wanted to understand her lines better they’d be able to do that because that work had been done. In terms of understanding more about how the boats were used and what their purpose was, I’ve read the Inshore Craft of Britain and various magazine articles that are available, I’ve spoken to Andy Campbell who is a great resource on the matter. He knows a lot about the different types of boats that operated in Falmouth, and has a lot of imagery of them. He would love to talk, because he knows so much. I have a couple of friends who have Falmouth quay punts, there’s Barnaby with Mollin, and it was German Michael who had Holly Ann. I’ve seen those two boats being restored, and I’ve sailed on Curlew. I suppose I’ve built up my understanding more by being around the boats and observing their reconstruction and sailing on them than I’ve drawn from the archives. I think the archival photographs and the written information is invaluable in giving you a picture of the time they were working in and what they were needed for and the type of people who were sailing them and how they operated and what their needs were for that boat, but for me building a replica of a certain type of boat it's been as valuable to actually be able to go and be on and around the boats themselves. I think it goes hand in hand, you wouldn’t have an interest in a boat if you didn’t have a sense of its working past, like a feel for the way they were being used and the type of people who were using them. The Falmouth Quay Punts, again Andy Campbell will give you a much fuller picture of this, they were operating from Customs House Quay and from Falmouth Harbor and they were sailing out to tall ships in order to... I think actually one of their primary functions was to take post and information from the ships and to give the ships their orders. They’d be taking out instructions from the companies the ships were working for and telling them what they’re next work was and also passing on valuable information about the cargoes they were carrying or information front he countries they were travelling from, but also it was carrying the captains to shore, it was carrying water to those boats. The Falmouth watermen would often sell wares to the boats they were affiliated to during their stay in Falmouth. They served a variety of purposes, which was appealing to me, picturing the kind of activity that would going on on the water there. People sailing these boats out as far as the Lizard to pick up custom. It would have been a real hive of activity on the water, a lot of comings and goings from the quay. There were that essential link between the shore and the ships. There would have been all kinds of wheeler-‐dealing going on on board those boats I reckon. Yeah, so some of it’s stories some of its photographic imagery some of its imagination putting yourself in the picture and sailing on those boats myself. You get a feel for how they handle in the Carrick Roads, in Falmouth Harbour, which is where they were built to sail. When you’re sailing on that type of boat in Falmouth Harbour feeling how they handle and seeing the town from the water and having a sense of that history it makes you feel part of it. I think without the archival records, without the photographs, you just

wouldn't have that sense of a link with the past and knowing why and where they came from and what their function was. That comes back to why I feel like it's important to have a link with the past. It’s where we come from, it’s what's made us what we are today. In Britain particularly we’re a seafaring nation, always have been. If you have a pride about the our country and about our seafaring heritage, those details and information about the small people and the little boats that were part of a whole, each type of boat having its own essential function within that. Ships were coming from all over the world to Falmouth and the Falmouth Quay Punt was that link of communication between the ships and the shore. Before telegraphs, before phones, the packet ships were carrying really valuable information all over the world. Things that would make or break fortunes or influence war. Information was being transported by those boat. Perhaps not as deliberately or not on that scale, the Quay Punts were performing a similar service. They were bringing valuable information from ships as well, information that would affect the price of good at the market or what have you. Their role was significant to that whole network that was essential to the British Empire. Just a small cog in a big machine, but an interesting one. J: So, moving on a little bit, back to the archives. Another question I’ve got is whether or not you think that having the archival plans, photographs and paintings has been integral in keeping traditional boatbuilding and sailing skills and lifestyle alive? B: Absolutely essential! It’s that feeling of having a connection with the past. If you look closely at archival photographs you can learn a lot about the way things were done. You can see how the frames were laid up, you can see how the timber was stored, the conditions people worked in. That sense of Falmouth being an important boat building town with a lot of boats being built there, its warming to see that and to feel that you are a part of a tradition. It gives you a sense of belonging in a town to feel like you are continuing something that has been going for centuries there. I think whenever I see photographs up in hotels, or pubs or in shops around town in Falmouth, I just love standing and examining it. Looking at the people at work. You have a respect for them anyway if you study the imagery but you have an even greater respect if you’re doing similar kind of work yourself. You realize just how hard these guys were working, and how skillful they were to make these boats in the conditions they were making them in, with the tools they had in the time it took them to do it. All that information you wouldn’t know unless you’d read the books or looked at the photos. And simultaneously done the work yourself to really understand it. A huge amount of the techniques that I’ve learned have come from books and no doubt those books will refer to other books that will have had information that was written down from the people who were building them in the past. The documentation of those skills is an invaluable resource to anyone that wants to enhance their learning. You can learn direct from other boat builders and that's a great way to learn, but you can really learn a massive amount by reading about boat building techniques and how things were done in the past. The fact that someone's gone to the bother of documenting that is a massive resource. There’s so many books on boat building that are holding for whoever wants to see them information that has been passed down through generations. It makes it possible to pick up the threads as well to fill in the gaps and understand how things were done. Because there are less people building boats now, it becomes more valuable that this stuff is being documented. There’s less opportunities for people to gain that full range of experience.

APPENDIX C – Interview with Luke Powell, traditional wooden boat builder and author of Working Sail Luke Powell: I think nostalgia has grown massively with the advent of photography. Jasper Troje Tuck: Yeah, that’s a big part of this essay, the theory of nostalgia. L: I suppose you’ve got to think of interviews with famous photographers, like David Bailey who was a famous war photographer (????). Photographers going and documenting war has really changed our attitude to war. You know back in the first world war they all said ‘oh jolly good show lets go and bash the bosh’, and then suddenly you start to see pictures of what's really happening and its like ‘fuck’. Vietnam was the first war that was properly documented by news reels and it created a rebellion against war. The whole hippie movement came around through that. So that’s not nostalgia, but its seeing the effect of the photography. J: Yeah, it’s the importance of the imagery. L: Trouble with painted imagery is that its political, its distorting a fact. It could be bigging up kings and queens, they always used paintings to glorify their own existence. They’d commission paintings of boats to make them look faster and bigger than they really were and what have you. J: The painting isn’t a huge part of it for me, I will be writing a bit about the history though. I want to write a section about painters who started their careers as sailors, so they have a better understanding of the sea and the ships. L: I see, so you see that black and white etching on the wall over there? That’s from a guy called James Dodds, who started out as a boat builder. Now he’s a quite famous artist. He knows what a boat is meant to look like. Things like that have been good, and he did that from some photographs he took of us working. Quite a few boat builders, or people that have practical knowledge, have gone into art. J: Alright, so I’ve got a bunch of questions written down that I wanted to ask you… L: Fire away. J: If you could start off by telling me a bit about your background in traditional boatbuilding and how you were drawn to it? L: Okay… Well my father after the second world war become a fisherman, and then had a family, stopped fishing eventually and took us all to Greece on an old boat. So from the age of about 9 I was living on boats, but prior to that my father was heavily into them. It was in the family. I very quickly got interested in traditional boats because at the time I was seeing them disappearing. Old trading wooden boats, old fishing boats and the like… J: Did you realise at the time that what you were witnessing was disappearing?

L: Oh absolutely, yeah when I was 14 or 15 living in Greece I was taking photographs of these boats knowing that in ten years time they’d all be gone. Which is what happened. That really affected my awareness and I was trying to record them through photography. I went on to come back to England, books about Thames barges got me interested in that. I went to the east coast and started working on them. It was photographs all the time, I used to love leafing through books. I’ve got bloody books here that I had when I was about 14. This is one I’ve had since I was about 14, it’s knackered but it just… you just spend hours looking at the photographs, learning from them. You can learn more from a photograph than from what people write because when people write stuff they get it wrong. If you really study photographs you can really see how things were. I’ve always spent my life delving into any kind of photograph. So now that we’re building boats this is a direct result of looking at photographs. I found an old photograph of an Isles of Scilly Pilot Cutter abandoned on a beach. The photo was taken in 1888, and that photograph got me thinking ‘why don’t we build one of those?’ They’ve disappeared, lets recreate them. If you didn’t have the photography you would lose a lot of the history. History from 150 years ago… There’d be a few paintings, you’d know roughly what went on but we’d have far less knowledge than we do with photos… J: So one of the things I’m trying to hit on with this essay is why people feel like its important to know about the history? L: I think it’s because we want to appreciate the other people who’ve lived on our planet. We’re walking in the footsteps of thousands of generations that came before. I suppose if you think about it, psychologically you want to remember them and I suppose you want to be remembered in turn. We all want to leave our mark on the planet. J: Alright, and why do you feel like its so important to sustain traditional craftsmanship and working boats… rather than moving with the times I guess. L: Rather than moving with the times… That’s a difficult question. Oh god… Does it matter? I suppose it doesn’t matter. But it does matter in a sense that there’s a beauty in continuity. I don’t want to just dwell in the past, I want to keep it alive so its in the present. I’d hate to be just working in a museum full of old photos. It’s important that its living history. Drawing on what other people did helps us live today… Its whether you subscribe modernity or not. There’s a lot of things wrong with modern society, and there must have been a lot wrong with previous societies. I suppose with the benefit of hindsight or… History gets ironed out and you forget about all the bad bits, focus on the nice bits. You’re looking at what you think is a better society. You want to get the best things out of the past… J: That’s coming back to Nostalgia again isn’t it… L: Yeah it is, yeah you’re nostalgic for a simpler time, an easier… Not easier, because they worked hard in the past. Better values. I don’t subscribe to where the worlds going, materialism and all the bullshit around gadgets and technology. It all seems to be about fashion and, anyway…

J: Can you tell me a bit about you research on the Scillonian pilot cutters? L: Right, so because there was hardly anything written about them the only way we could research them was by finding old logbooks, finding old photographs… It was too far in the past to interview people about how it was so we had to go on written anecdotes that had been written 100 years ago about the old boys that went out and did it. There was so little of that though, so you really had to get the knowledge through the photographs. You had to try and imagine how it was. Designing the boats was very much down to finding old photographs, there were no plans of the boats so we had to redesign them. We took a load of old photos and worked out the shapes of the boats. We had the tonnage and the dimensions of the boat I could work a bit between that. You had the registered tonnage of a vessel. Say a vessel like Agnes that we recreated, we had its beam, its depth, we knew its tonnage. Within those parameters you know what you’re working with, then you have a photograph that shows roughly how it was, and a few photographs of other boats that were like it so you mash all that together and you et pretty close to how it was. Without that photography, without the old photographs, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to look at that piece of history. It would have been lost and forgotten. There was nothing published about the stuff, there were loads of maritime historians who I asked about pilot cutters from the Isles of Scilly and they said well we didn’t know there were any. It was gone. J: So now with your book you think you’re putting information back into the archives? L: Yeah! It’s putting it back in and that was really nice, like resurrecting a piece of history. They were brave bastards that lived that life, in a wild place and they did some pretty wild things. It’s worth recording it, it’s worth going ‘well fuck, if they did it I wonder if I could do it. They were tough people. J: They were extremely tough… So, how has archival photography directly helped you? L: It’s directly helped me massively in designing the boats. We’re about to start a new Falmouth pilot cutter, and the direct reason for this guy commissioning it is because I found an old photograph which enthused him. It’s massively important in pretty much every aspect from designing the boats, getting people interested in the project, visualising what the future could be by looking at the photographs of the past. Eventually when we’ve got the boat built then we can do loads of new photographs, which will be great. Modern photography. We’ll be adding to the photographic archives. In 100 years from now when they’ve all rotted away and been forgotten, maybe someone will find the photographs and say ‘wahey! Lets build one of these!’. J: Can you tell me a bit about the Rhoda Mary project? L: The Rhoda Mary is because some friends of mine did a project digging up a wreck on the east coast, the wreck was a boat called the Pioneer. There wasn’t much left of it, a few bones from the bottom of the boat. From that they recreated the whole boat very authentically. They ended up with a boat that is now classed as a historic vessel. I thought I could do the same, I knew of another wreck on the east coast. It knew it had been a very famous boat in its time, it happened to be the fastest schooner in the west country. It was very well documented as well. This wreck had a real name and a provenance that was

important, so I thought through the example of the Pioneer project we could do the same with the Rhoda Mary. She’s a much bigger boat at 110 feet. She’s a real ship. Built with two masts, and square rigged on the first mast. Later on in her life they added a third mast. She’ll be the biggest wooden boat built in Cornwall in over 100 years. A thing like that sailing into Falmouth, can you imagine? It’s a really exiting project, we’re going to do apprenticeship training, vocational training with young people on board getting them involved. It’s about keeping the traditions alive by getting young people to learn the trades. There’s no point with people like me just doing it for ourselves, because 20 years from now we’ll all be gone and forgotten. It’s about getting the next generation enthused and then they can build the boat and maintain it and through that get a massive skill base. We’ve had real trouble raising the money to get started, we’ve got some good people involved but it’s going to take a long time. I’m kind of clashing with some of the committee members who don’t want to take the risk of just going for it and crowdfunding and getting it done. So I said to them, this isn’t going anywhere, we’re not bloody achieving it, working in a committee is really frustrating. So I said to him, what we need to do really is start a slightly smaller boat that can be funded by one person and he said okay I’ll fund a pilot cutter. That’s the new Falmouth pilot cutter that we’re starting now. We’re in the process, literally the woods coming into the yard at the moment. We’re setting up the yard by Truro and by the new year we’ll be building it… (His wife comes in) She’s sick to death hearing me talk about the Rhoda Mary, drives her mad. Wasting my life on a hopeless cause. You’ve got to have a passion in life though don’t you! You need something to get out of bed for. In a way the Rhoda Mary, even though it hasn’t started yet, she’s made this 68 foot pilot cutter happen. So indirectly, it has an energy… Hopefully this Pilot Cutter will be done with apprentices and youth training, and hopefully on the back of the pilot cutter project we’ll get people interested in doing the Rhoda Mary. There’s a synergy there that could make it all happen. J: So you told me about the memory day, what was that? L: Yeah we had a memory day, I wonder if I’ve got a poster… We’ve been trying to think of different ways of getting people enthused and interested. Down at Devoran near where the Rhoda Mary was built we will have in the local village hall… I don’t know where this poster is. If you need any of the stuff like that I can send it to you though, I’ve got the… what do you call it? PGD? PDF… And any photographs that you need. But yeah. The memory day was about keeping people interested, and getting people aware of the project. It’s just a small thing about raising the profile. There’s lots of stuff we have to do like that, and to be honest it’s not stuff I’m particularly interested in. There are people on the time who like it so I suppose I’ll let it happen. J: So in the same way as your research on the pilot cutters, has imagery helped with the Rhoda Mary?

L: Yeah it’s been integral, but we are struggling to find decent photographs. There are not enough of them…. Here’s a photo of her carrying her last cargo into Newlyn harbour. J: Will you be using her a cargo vessel? L: We would like to! There’s a whole movement now around sail cargo… (chatting for a while about sailing on Grayhound, Marcus and Freja etc... shows me a photo of the wreck of Rhoda Mary) J: Will you be able to use any of the original timbers from the wreck? L: It really is a wreck, but its not about the fabric. It’s about getting the history of the boat, bringing the soul of it back. We’ll be able to use the keel, the lower timbers in the mud are all in good condition because the mud preserves it. There’ll be timbers we can use. Even if you had a boat that was in good condition of that age, built in 1868, you’d have to replace pretty much all of the wood anyway. What we’ve got there is the shape. We’ve got the shape of the bottom there, and then we’ve got loads of plans of the boat. She was heavily documented before she died. We’ve got no end of information about her. She’s perhaps the best documented vessel of her type that existed and also the last wreck that survived. We’ve got bills of sale, launch documents. It’s all in the imagery though! If you don’t look at the images you’ve got no idea, it’s all about the image. Here’s a painting of her racing the Mary Blewit just off St Mawes. It’s gone into folklore really; she’s still remembered in the area. Again, without images you’ve got nothing. How could you explain to anybody what you’re trying to do unless you’ve got a whole load of pictures to show! J: So I think that pretty much wraps it up in regards to the questions I wanted to ask you… Thank you so much, that was brilliant.

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