Sea Bright Skiff Transcription
- Decoration day, we're in what we call full bloom. They are all down and they all have that beautiful weekend. And of course they don't come down to work on their houses, they come down to enjoy what we have to offer. And I don't even think they know there's such a thing as a year-round person, the tourists. They have to fit in with our normal life, but I don't even think they know they're doing it. But we have to adjust to the crowds, traffic. But we adjust, we really do. And it doesn't take us too long. A couple weeks you think to yourself, "Oh, for heaven's sake when is Labor Day?" And then all of a sudden we all become one community. My father had his boat built by Charlie. Charlie taught me how to run my dad's boat and we were married in 1955. But these are the actual bay marshmallows. Charles has his regular fellows that come in. They hardly ever miss a morning. They just come to, what would you call it, the old country store?
- Seamen used to used to brag that his big pound boat can handle 20,000 pounds of fish.
- [Anna] Well, they come to talk about boats. "Charlie, what do I do about the engine when it doesn't do this?" Or, "Charlie, what am I gonna do with the outside of the boat? I think it needs help." They all come for information, and of course, Charlie likes company. We have a lot of folks just stop in without buying a boat.
- Most of the pound boats had a small vertical power head. My family moved to the Jersey Shore in the early 1920s, so that I grew up in Loch Arbour and spent as much time as I could as a youngster around the water. I was essentially away from home for a long period of time during the Second World War. And when I came back, I found that there were very, very few records of the boat builders who were no longer in existence. I decided that this was something that merited some documentation, which I have continued to do to the present time. The Sea Bright type of skiff seems to have originated about 1845 or 1850 along the North Jersey shore. The local conditions were the deciding factor in the design of the boat. These were boats that had to be launched and retrieved through the surf because the inlets were far distant. The boats had to be light so that they could be manned by a crew of a couple people to be able to push down through the surf. They also had to be seaworthy enough to be able to be retrieved through the surf.
- [Charlie] Jersey white cedar is used for most all the parts of the boat except for the ribs. The cedar is about next lightest to balsa wood, as far as flotation, and lightness to make the boat so it's not too heavy to carry. And it also swells very quick in water. When you put a boat together with cedar and it gets wet, in a matter of an hour or two it will be tight. Been used as long as I can remember or anybody else. It was a native wood and I think that was the primary reason, that it was a wood was easily available. To build a surf boat you have to build a bottom. The bottom consists usually of two wide boards about an inch and a half thick, which are joined together and sawed to a pattern that we have. So we standardize the boat. Most of the lifeguard boats all wanna be exactly the same. And when the shape is cut out and then it's glued together and so it becomes one piece. Then we cut a rabbit. The rabbit is where the first plank on the side of the boat fastens to the bottom. It's really a lap that's made on that bottom and it starts out at a point in the front where it's nothing down to a about an inch and a half wide in the middle and then back to the back of the boat again where it goes back to nothing. After that bottom is put together, it's put up on a set of stands and the stands are made at different heights, which have a shear put in the bottom so that it's curved from one end to the other. It's put in by pressure from the ceiling of our building to hold the center of it down. It has its curve in it so that we can handle the boat better on the beach, it'll float better. We usually use two forms, one of 'em in the bow, one in the middle, and the transom as the last form. And those forms determine the shape of the boat, that the hull is gonna be, and also how deep it's gonna be and make a decent looking boat outta it. The stem and stern post are usually cut from curved pieces of a tree. We try to find branches that have the right shape that we want to make a stem, which is in one piece, and a stern post, which is in one piece. And there again, we take the trunk of the tree and where a branch goes off to the side that has the appropriate angle or curve that we want, we trace our pattern of whatever we want on it and cut it out by band saw.
- [Peter] The reason I got the Hankins sailboat is because I'd had a larger Hankins boat before. I got the skiff with the sail because I was looking for a sailboat. I knew Charlie's work and it is a special kind of boat.
- I can imagine the guys were using these off the Sea Bright Monmouth beach. After a lousy day of sitting there with smelly fish all around at least to get the joy of sailing the damn thing along.
- Absolutely.
- [Gef] The Sea Bright skiff as a commercial vessel was just the beginning of commercial fishing in the state of New Jersey. When the boat was launched off the beaches of Sea Bright, Monmouth Beach, Galilee, the fishermen would use the boat to go out to the fishing grounds. In those days, most of the fishing was done by hand lining. In the morning, they could go out, either row or sail out, take the mast up, take the spread off, lay them in the bottom of the boat, do your day of fishing, and then instead of rowing the boat back to the beach you'd set the sail again and sail back in. Now in those days, they didn't really have a tiller and a rudder on the boat. They would just use one of their oars for steering. The Sea Bright skiff really hasn't maintained any kind of place in commercial fishing, because with fishermen traveling further offshore the use of engines, different types of gear now, using trawl nets or long lines or dredges, that kind of gear can't be put out from a small boat like that. The boat just doesn't have the place that it did in the past. There's really no place for sail anymore. People don't like the semi deplacement holes. They want to get up, get out of the water and go fast, and that's their only pleasure. I think they lose an awful lot when they don't enjoy slow pace and an understanding of the workmanship and ideals that go into a wooden boat, especially like the Sea Bright skiff.
- [Charlie] The first plank that we put on the bottom is called the garboard. The garboard is put onto this bottom and that goes from the bow to the middle of the boat. And then in the back there's another plank that's called the tuck streak, and it goes from the stern post up to the where the bow plank left off. And after that, you simply divide up how much space you have left to cover by how many planks you wanna put on the boat, and that determines the width of each plank. After that, you determine how many planks you're gonna put on the side of the boat. You put up what we call a spile, and that spile is a narrow strip of wood which is tacked up temporarily to where you want the next plank to go. When you spile a board, you can look at it and you can tell whether it has hoops and hollows in it or whether it's a fair curve from one end to the other. And if you have a fair curve, which is a a complete curve, one end to the other, without it going up and downhill or anything that's what makes a boat have more pleasant looking lines. If you have hollows and bumps in it one plank will have to be wider than the other in one spot than another place to make it come out right. I think the most important tool in building a boat is a hand plane, and that is to assure a proper fit between each plank. If you don't have the planks fitted together properly they either crack or they leak. But there's no machine that I've ever seen or known that can put a bevel on a plank other than by hand. And then it comes only by experience of how much bevel it takes for each plank and how each plank fits together. Without that, you have a leaky boat or one that the laps break on because they don't fit together properly. The planks on the surf boat are screwed with bronze screws on each end and the middle of it, the rest of the edge of it is riveted with copper rivets. And the copper rivet consists of a copper wire nail and a little washer, which we call a burr, which is put on top of it. And one man holds an iron on the outside to keep it from coming out, and the other person hammers it tight, pulls it up, cuts it off, and peens it over. There's about 2,000 rivets in the 16-foot boat.
- [Peter] As commercial traffic along the shore increased, there were an increasing number of shipwrecks. One of the most dangerous areas for shipwrecks was the northern coast of New Jersey, and this is because of the great number of vessels that were converging on New York, which was increasingly active as a harbor. One New Jersey physician, William Augustus Newell, happened to be working in Ocean County in about 1850 when there was a particularly disastrous series of shipwrecks with a great loss of life. He eventually was elected to Congress, and as a congressman legislated the establishment of a lifesaving service. The standard lifeboat that was used was an enlarged version of this little Sea Bright skiff.
- [Charlie] The ribs are steamed in a big piece of pipe, and this big piece of pipe is sealed off on the end. And it's boiling hot water and steam is forced into this pipe. And it's like putting a piece of wood in a kettle and boiling it. And it takes about three quarters of an hour to really get it hot enough that it'll bend without cracking. And the primary kind of wood to use for that is green oak. We steam the ribs and place them on the inside at usually about eight or 10 inch centers in a Jersey sea skiff. Every one of 'em is different. There isn't two ribs in the whole boat that are alike because every one of 'em is steamed to fit in the place that it's gonna be. They have to be fastened in place with copper rivets and that is what holds them in place until they're cooled off. After they're cooled off, we rivet all the rivets up, and that's what really holds the boat together.
- [Don] I came here from Bethel, Pennsylvania when I was 11 and at that time Long Branch was a winter population of maybe 16,000. And I lived right across the street from the Shrewsbury River. There was a lot of guys that made a living on the river digging clam, catching eels and soft crabs. Then there was a fishermen down in North Long Branch that fished off the beach. The biggest fishery was in Galilee was the fish pounds. They had huge skiffs there, 34 feet long. If you stood in one you couldn't even see over the gunnel. A pound is a series of poles that are set in the seabed and fishnet is fastened to it, which makes a fence that leads them to a trap, a pocket, and that pocket can be lifted and the fish bailed out into the boat. Down in North Long Branch there was Norwegians and Swedes mostly, and they all had nice little houses with picket fences. In fact, you could ride through there now and they're gone, but their houses are still there. They used to call it Fishtown when I was a kid. I guess there's not too many pound fishermen left. Hilding Johnson's still living, and he was one of the younger guys when I was a kid.
- I started fishing in Sweden after I was finished school when I was 12 years old. And I could mend nets and such a thing when I come over here. I came to the United States 1923. Me and Lea Norby, and we lived together and we worked together. 1938, we began pound fish and the company we bought into was named the Galilee Fish Company. They was located in Monmouth Beach. We had two teams of horses. When we were fishing we had two boats. We was 14 men and a cook. And one man was driving the horses and tractor. We were actually seven men in each boat. Everybody had to do the share work, and want to go on the boat, no exception for anyone. We started lagging out in March and we were ready for fishing last week in March. And then we fished all summer, usually to the middle of November when it get too cold and icy, we had to give up. Well, when we got the boat up high on the beach, there was a wagon there with baskets on and we sorted the different kinds in different baskets and then they were driven up to the packing house. Some were sold locally and some were shipped to the Fulton markets, some to Philadelphia. When the things get too expansive and shortage of labor, there was no profit in it anymore. So the late '50s, all the pound nets on the Jersey Shore had to go out business. But I think I am the last one on the beach.
- [Don] I made my living running a bulldozer. And finally I gave that up and I told my wife, I says, I always wanted to be a boat builder, so I'm gonna be one. As I got older I just started building little boats myself here in the shop. There was a lot of people building boats here in the '30s. By the time I remember, 1936, they were starting to go out of business. But the the two I remember the most was Pappy Seaman. There was an old guy, in fact, he was my step-grandfather. His name was George Huff. George Huff lived right across the street from me and behind his house was the Shrewsbury River. And his shop was there and it was a two story shop, had no electric in it, and he built these boats by hand. If you had a Huff skiff, you had a Cadillac. Now, Pappy Seaman, who I knew better than George Huff, Pappy built a fine boat. And the difference between George Huff and Pappy's boat, George wouldn't change his shape of his boat to accommodate powerful engines. Pappy was a younger man, and he realized that he had to widen the bottom of the boat in the back so it wouldn't suck down the power. And Pappy went ahead to make faster boats and all. But as far as a beach skiff, George Huff's were the best. The way I understand it, Charlie Hankin's father apprenticed with the Huff Brothers. If you look at a Huff skiff and a Hankin skiff you can tell they're related just by the way they're built. They're hefty. They're built for carrying a load of fish.
- [Builder] My father came to Lavallette in 1905. He had worked for Huff for a few years and then when he moved down to Lavallette and he started with his own business. And then of course, in the 1920s when the prohibition came, why then they went into bigger boats, faster boats, which were all evolved from the original Sea Bright skiff.
- [Peter] After the passage of the Volstead Act, alcoholic beverages were made illegal. One of the very interesting variation was the Sea Bright skiff developed as a rum runner. Rum running imposed another requirement and that was to design and construct a fast seaworthy boat which could carry a reasonably large cargo. And then this came to its peak development, with some of these later boats like the fleur-de-lis and others that Paul Dicofo built.
- [Charlie] The seats are put in a boat on a riser, which is a strip of wood which is fastened to all the ribs and the seats rest on top of that riser. And then there's Hackman tack knees are put on each side of the seats to give it more strength so that if you roll the boat over you don't break the sides. It makes the side of the boat strong. It is approximately 12 inches from the back end of the seat to the center of the oar lock for the size oars that we use on the beach, which are eight and eight and a half feet long.
- [Pete] I've been lifeguarding 21 years. This coming season will be my 22nd year of lifeguarding on the Jersey Shore. My title at Ortley Beach is Supervisor of Beaches. We have 24 lifeguards, 12 on the North beach, 12 on the South beach, and that's the way our lifeguard staff is on the ocean. The types of boats used as a tool for lifeguarding along the Jersey Shore are originally the Hankin skiff and the Van Dyne boat. And because it was a work boat and then they adapted towards lifeguarding, but mainly in New Jersey. South Jersey has a Van Dyne. North Jersey right now has the Hankins. We use these boats daily to go out, train our lifeguards in boatmanship, but more importantly, to go out and patrol up and down our beach. Every day, get out there and row and practice and learn from somebody who's a veteran. I learned an awful lot from Junie Boyd, who was a fine boatman out of Seaside Heights. He could do anything with a boat. Junie could stand up in the back of a boat and just surf it down the face of a wave. An unbelievable boatman. Junie's a legend. We host a lifeguard competition in late July every year at Ortley Beach. Every beach has them. It's more or less the idea of the lifeguards getting together to show their skills of lifeguarding.
- Must be behind the line. The man has to be behind the line.
- As soon as I say start turning, just crank it, boom, boom.
- [Announcer] And they're off.
- [Pete] Our lifeguard competition usually consists of 10 teams. The most traditional events that the tournaments have are the swim relay. Another traditional event would be the paddle relay. The event that I love the most is the boat relay, because I'm a rower.
- [Announcer] Monmouth squad really moving along, along with Ortley Beach.
- [Pete] We always invite our local teams around us, such as Lavallette, Seaside Park, Island Beach State Park, Sea Girt, Manasquan, Sandy Hook we invite, and they usually come.
- [Announcer] In lane one.
- [Pete] And we have a real fine comradery between those beaches that always come to our tournaments.
- [Announcer] Boat Relay. Monmouth Squad in a Hankins.
- [Charlie] The biggest use of 'em today is for the lifeguard. Occasionally someone will want one for their own use, but most of 'em are all used by the beach communities for lifesaving. And we have shipped as far away as Alaska, California, Florida, but 90% of 'em, I would say are used on the Jersey Shore or Long Island Shore.
- [Builder] I get it out here and get it painted, Mike.
- [Mike] Yeah, it's about time.
- [Builder] Yep, it's about time to get it ready for painting,
- [Charlie] I have personally built over a thousand lifeguard boats. The 16 foot model boat. In finishing the boat, we usually paint the inside of the boat whatever color the different beaches want. Some are variety of colors. But the outside is usually painted white. Some of 'em now have 'em varnished. And the boat has to be sanded off and all the little spots filled up so that they have a nice smooth surface. And then usually painted with about three coats of paint. Our code number initials is CHS. And that was determined when my father, my brother, and I were Charles Hankins and Sons. And that was the Coast Guard's designation for our company.
- Alright.
- [Charlie] I enjoy building boats. I've built boats for all kinds of people all over the world. I've built for rich, for poor, for whatever. And I had a enjoyable life building boats.
- Thank you . Thank you.
- Yes, sir.
- Thank you.
- [Anna] I always said to Charlie, I don't know how he can do it. He put so much time and effort and so much of himself in each boat. I don't think I could do what he does. Simply signs it over to somebody and says here's your boat. I always like to meet the people who we were building a boat for. Oh, I've met some fine people, real boatsmen. Of course, people who have a boat built know boats. So you're talking to people who know what they want.
- [Charlie] The biggest change, I think, in our business is that people want a boat that there's no maintenance on. And I think fiberglass is what they advertise as no maintenance, where a wooden boat you have to paint maybe every second year, depending on how bad it gets banged up or scratched up. I've had people come to me who want me to make a mold of a boat that I would build out of fiberglass. Well, I've refused, I won't do it, because I don't want it copied in fiberglass. I feel that within a couple years there will be probably no more building wooden boats in New Jersey at all. I think that'll be a long gone industry.
- [Anna] It's his life. It's his life. Boat building is Charlie's life. Everybody now says to me, "Anna, why don't you get him to retire? Why don't you get him to sell this building?" Oh no. Oh no. Boats are Charlie's life. When Charlie is really happy, it's when he's with his boats, with his wood, with his tools, with all that sawdust. Comes home a mess. You always have to wipe him down. But he's happier then. It's his life. Boat building is Charlie's life.
