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After much prevaricating about what to build, I've decided to start with an obvious choice and build a Thursday Island pearling lugger. It's an obvious choice because I've spent so much time (decades!) researching these vessels. The one I've chosen is GRAFTON, a classic example of the type, built during the heyday of the industry in 1907 at Thursday Island (the main settlement in the islands of the Torres Strait, between Australia and New Guinea) by a Japanese shipwright, Tsurumatsu Shiosaki. The Japanese had started entering the pearling industry in the Torres Strait in the 1890s and quickly came to dominate it, both as divers and as shipbuilders, mainly due to their willingness to work very hard and for lower wages than Australian shipwrights. GRAFTON had a long life, working as part of the Wyben Pearling Co. fleet (owned by Burns Philp & Co. Ltd) until WW2, when she was impressed into military service along with the rest of the pearling fleet, in 1942. She survived the war and was returned to Burns Philp & Co. in 1946, resuming pearling until the late 1960s. She then passed through various private owners, steadily deteriorating and on one occasion capsizing and sinking. She was raised, but never sailed again, and was eventually abandoned on a mudbank in Port Douglas, where the port authorities eventually removed her and broke her up in March 2019. GRAFTON (seen here behind the lugger PARAMA in the foreground) in her heyday, 1930, at Thursday Island. GRAFTON abandoned on a mudbank at Port Douglas, Queensland, shortly before she was broken up in 2019. As part of my ongoing research into these luggers, in 2007 I took the opportunity to take the lines off her while she was up on the hardstand at Cairns, getting a bit of maintenance. Her owner at the time loved her dearly, but lacked the resources to do the full restoration that a 100-year old really lugger needed after a long and hard life. In two days I filled a notebook with measurements, and a while later my research colleague Michael Gregg, curator of maritime history at the Western Australian Maritime Museum, arranged for Naval Architect Bill Leonard to use these measurements to produce a beautifully executed drawing of her. Taking offsets Taking offsets at Cairns in 2007. Bill Leonard's draught of GRAFTON produced from my measurements. At the moment I'm lofting frames and getting myself organised to get started. I've decide on a scale of 1/50, which gives a hull a bit over a foot long. The plans were drawn (in metric) at 1/20, so it was simple to print them at 40% to give the desired size, and 1/50 is close enough to 1/48 to make it easy to scale all the myriad measurements I took in feet and inches for all the details of the layout and rig. Enough to begin with, I think. More to follow!
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