Reflections of a Halvorsen Shipwright by Peter Gossell
Not long after my wife and I immigrated to Australia from America I was fortunate enough to get a job at Lars Halvorsen Sons at Ryde. This was the early 1970s and they had just laid the keel for a ninety foot motor yacht for a private client. It was to be the last major boat to be built at the Ryde yard.
One morning not long after I had started working there, I was on a scaffolding plank positioning frames or some such when I noticed standing behind me on the catwalk, not far from me and at about the same level, a dapper white haired gentleman wearing a sports coat and tie. I made eye contact with him and said “Good morning”.
Well, you would have thought I had picked up a lump of timber and thrown it at him. He turned on his heel and took off at a clip towards the mezzanine where the offices were. I turned to the chap working not far from me.
“Wow, that was strange. Who was that?”
“Oh that’s Harold Halvorsen. He’s the boss!” he replied in a hushed voice.
I noticed after that, that most mornings Harold would walk briskly through the shed not stopping to speak or even making eye contact with anyone, and then up to his office not to be seen the rest of the day.
I thought to myself, I work for this man, I should at the least be able to say “G’Day” to him when I see him, so thereafter when I was in Harold’s path and there was no one else around I would just say “G’Day”.
This went on for a few months or so when one morning when I said “G’Day”, he actually acknowledged me with a curt little nod of his head. I thought, “Wow, I’m making progress.”
One morning, after having worked there for maybe nine months, Harold stopped and had a chat to me. I think I was setting out the framework for the transom (everybody there called it the “tuck”).
Shortly thereafter the hooter went for smoko (that great Australian institution) and a couple of my mates came racing up to me and asked “What’s happening, have you got the sack?”
“I don’t know, I don’t think so. Why?” I said.
“We saw Harold talking to you, Harold doesn’t talk to anyone!” They said.
After that Harold would sometimes stop and have a chat, especially if I happened to be working on a particularly interesting task.
It just seemed to me that he was a very shy sort of a man. Once you got him talking he was very interesting and extremely knowledgeable, as one would expect. And he knew everything that was going on in the shed.
When we were getting close to finishing the 90-footer, I was given the task of marking out the waterline. I had the lines plan spread out and I was making some lines in chalk on the hull. She was a really beautiful shape of a hull, but she was very fine in the bow and very flat aft. (We got 25 knots out of her on her sea trials!)
Anyway, I’m thinking with all that buoyancy aft and that very fine bow, she is going to float down by the bow. Meanwhile other shipwrights are walking past and saying under their breath “She’ll float down by the head!”
So I’m thinking I might just raise the waterline maybe four or five inches at the bow when the next thing I know Harold is at my shoulder.
“She’s fine in the bow, she’ll float down by the head.” Harold said.
“That’s what I was thinking, Harold.”
“Raise the waterline six inches at the bow.”
“OK, Harold.”
And I raised the waterline 10 inches thinking a waterline that is too high in the bow doesn’t look that bad but one that is too low looks terrible!
We launched the boat on a cold winter Saturday night; we needed a high tide as she was the heaviest vessel launched out of the shed. To my great relief she floated perfectly to the lines she was given!
On the Monday morning I was in the engine room checking things when I hear Harold calling from the wharf.
“Where’s Gossell? Where’s Gossell?” he shouted.
I raced up on deck and he says, “See, see, I told you six inches.”
I just said, “Good call, Harold.”
When the 90-footer was finished there was no new building anticipated so I left to work for myself. Before I left I asked Ray Philips, the head shipwright, if he would write me a letter of recommendation and he said he would be happy to.
Later that day he came up to me and said he hadn’t written the letter as Harold had overheard him talking to a secretary and had said that he would be pleased to write the letter, which I later found out was fairly unusual.
Halvorsens was a great place to work. There was an amazing amount of knowledge and experience among the workforce there. There were men that had worked, on and off, for the firm for forty years or more and it was a privilege to be able to work alongside them.
There was a great camaraderie and work ethic amongst the workers from the most experienced hands to the apprentices. I never saw anyone hassled for not working fast enough, what mattered was that the job was done properly and with a first class finish.
When I started there, there was a workforce of about 35 (I was told that during the war there was a workforce of 400). If I remember correctly, I was the only non-Australian working there at that time. It was a union shop so we were all members of The Federated Shipwrights & Ship Constructors Association of Australia, at the time the oldest active labour union in Australia.
I have fond memories of working there and of what now seems like a by-gone era.
*Peter Gossell is Vice President of the Wooden Boat Association. He runs Marine Exchange with his wife Betty.