Model Ship Builder

by Bob Haliday

The Julia A. Johnson is a beautiful example of a Newfoundland schooner that was constructed to ply the coastal trade, commonly referred to as “coasting”.

Businessman Benjamin Johnson (center of picture) of Little Catalina, approached master builder William Thomas Johnson,  of Bonavista, with a proposition to jointly build a schooner. With the aid of a mortgage from Steers Ltd., a St. John’s merchant company, the construction was ready to take place.

In the fall of 1934 a crew of a dozen or so men left the community of Glovertown and traveled some fifteen miles by foot to Salton’s Brook, an isolated lagoon now within Terra Nova National Park. There, the crew built a bunkhouse and a lofting shed and quickly set out to cut and transport the timbers necessary to build the schooner.

The Schooner Julia A Johnson

Salton’s Brook was assumably chosen as the construction site because the area had a mature stand of fir, spruce, tamarack, and birch trees, and because it has a crag of rock leading to deep water suitable for launching. The builders, mainly fishermen by trade, would spend the winter here working unprotected through the harshness of a Newfoundland winter, until the ice had cleared from the bay and the vessel was ready for launch.

Will Johnson was not only the master builder, he was also the designer. The half-model that would serve as the builder’s plan was constructed of layered pine boards with a scale of 1: 24. It was not unusual for the master builder to make his own half-model based on the general requirements of the vessel.

The Julia A. Johnson ashore at Seal Cove This half-model was kept by Benjamin Johnson’s family and through several contacts I was able to borrow the model and take off its lines. I reduced the scale to 1: 48 and built two scale replicas of the Julia A. Johnson with single planking on ribs.

Benjamin Johnson skippered the Julia A. Johnson for quite a number of years bringing supplies from Canada (Newfoundland was a colony of Great Britain at the time) and distributing cargo to communities all around the island and to Labrador. At one point the vessel was almost lost when it went aground in thick fog off Seal Cove, Conception Bay. The story is told of the vessel being brought back to port at Little Catalina, where the rig was taken off and the hull rolled over in the harbour for the workers to fix and re-caulk the bottom.

The story of the Julia A. Johnson is not particularly unique, as hundreds, if not thousands, of schooners were built along the coast of Newfoundland and used to transport cargo and to fish for cod.

Over the last fifteen years I have been searching for builder’s half-hull models. I then take off their lines, from which I have constructed a number of scale replicas and half-hull models. It is my aim to use these lines and models to categorize the Newfoundland built schooners (i.e. as Western boats, Jack boats, Grand Bankers, etc.) and to trace the evolution of the design of these vessels back to their roots.