ST. VINCENT and CLAN GORDON

Halfway down the hill on a walk to a small boatyard in Corry, near Ullapool on Loch Broom on the northwestern coast of Scotland, it’s the smell that hits you first—“boat soup,” as they call it: pine tar, linseed oil, and turpentine. The proper stuff for wood. On May 6, 2023, the scent seemed to hang off the trees and settle on each blade of grass. Like the aroma of oakum, it was pungent yet delightful. Then, as I turned the corner past salmon-farm buildings, suddenly the boat on the ways towered over the bunting, over everything. Two huge masts with two huge, dark-red lugsails hanging limp over a black hull spoke of tradition in every respect.

This was relaunching day for the 1910 herring fishing boat ST. VINCENT, 50′ from stem to transom, after her restoration by Dan Johnson and Tim Loftus and their team at Johnson & Loftus Boatyard. And even as she stood on the marine railway, another historic fishing boat with deep roots in the west of Scotland, CLAN GORDON of 1911, lay to a mooring just off Johnson & Loftus, where she had arrived under sail a couple of days before. She had been relaunched on April 29 after a full restoration at Isle Ewe Boats, Alasdair Grant’s boatyard on the island of that name in Loch Ewe, west of Loch Broom.

On the railway, ST. VINCENT showed her deep but incredibly flat floors. She oozed history: a blue caprail, a thin yellow covestripe, a white boottop, a long boomkin, and a much longer bowsprit, and all around her that aroma of boat soup. She was sitting on a purpose-made cradle, and as the tide approached its zenith the crowd grew excited. Soon, thuds and the crash of braces as they were removed echoed as Dan and Tim and their team prepared to unleash the cradle.

The railway had been coated with hot tallow, which had cooled and solidified. After a quick speech and a dribble of alcohol over her stem, ST. VINCENT was sent down the incline. With a cry from the crowd and a rush of water, she was afloat, 113 years after her initial immersion. She joined CLAN GORDON, and that day the two boats together presented a sight that hadn’t been seen in a century.

To read the rest of this article:

Click the button below to log into your Digital Issue Access account.

Read the Issue

No digital access? Subscribe or upgrade to a WoodenBoat Digital Subscription and finish reading this article as well as every article we have published for the past 50-years.

Subscribe Now