Pearling Luggers - again

[TonyH]

I was digging around some photo archives on the net the other day and found some lovely old pictures of my beloved pearling luggers, so I thought I'd share them with you guys. Here we go then......

First of all here is Pam, a pre-war Broome lugger built in the 1920s (although this picture was taken in Darwin after WW2, probably in the 1950s). After some hard times she was in a bad way, finally being acquired by a bloke in Victoria and is currently being rebuilt in Traralgon last I heard.

http://www.ntlib.nt.gov.au/NTLPicLib/jsmall/24/24289.jpg

This is a lovely shot, taken in the 1930s in Darwin, of a near-sister of Pam named Redbill. Launched in Broome in 1929 this lugger led a most adventurous life before finally being destroyed by a cyclone in Broome in 2000. A friend of mine has written a book about her (which will be published next year) and I've just finished drawing up the plans for her to illustrate the book, as I was fortunate enough to take the lines off her in 1998.

http://www.ntlib.nt.gov.au/NTLPicLib/jsmall/17/17242.jpg

This is a Thursday Island lugger, taken around 1910 by famous Australian photographer Frank Hurley. It looks like she has a nice trade wind breeze (typical for Torres Strait waters) pushing her along.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23381969-v

This is a great photo IMHO, taken by Hurley at Thursday Island (in Torres Strait) around 1910. It shows a whole fleet of these little boats - at the height of the industry there were hundreds of them in service.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23556041-v

Here's a close-up, taken by Hurley around the same time.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23381958-v

And finally, here's a "modern" Broome lugger, built around 1950, during the brief last hurrah of traditional pearling before plastic buttons and cultured pearls finally killed it off in the early 1960s. These luggers were built more as motorsailers than sailing boats, with stumpier rigs and beamier, tubbier hulls. Still very pretty though, there is still a reasonable number of these latter-day boats around.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an14483536-18-v

Well, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did!

Cheers

Tony

[J. Dillon]

Tony,

Sure do

Thanks for sharing these photo's. smile.gif Did WB ever do an article on pearlers ? Maybe they should.
:cool:
JD

[shamus]

Lovely!!

[Donn]

Excellent! How big were these boats? What, exactly, did they do?

[imported_Steven Bauer]

Thanks Tony, Hurley took those just a few years before he joined the Endurance expedition with Shackleton. Nice photos, nice boats.
Steven

[Mike Field]

First of all here is Pam, a pre-war Broome lugger built in the 1920s (although this picture was taken in Darwin after WW2, probably in the 1950s). After some hard times she was in a bad way, finally being acquired by a bloke in Victoria and is currently being rebuilt in Traralgon last I heard.
Yep, still happening. I saw her early last year, and I talked again with the owner, Danny, about a fortnight ago. But it is indeed a rebuild he's doing, not a restoration.

Danny's traced Pam's origin back to 1901, when she was launched as Dominion (that being the year of Australia's federation.)

She was rebuilt in 1924, and the "Pam" after whom she was renamed was then the 3yo daughter of the owner. This lady remembers seeing the boat under construction. She's lived in the US since her marriage c1940, but is determined to come out to Oz to break a bottle over Pam's bows when she's relaunched.

The most amazing part of the original boat, to me, was the rudder. It's GROWN. The whole thing. Blade and stock are all one piece of timber (not sure what sort, but apparently nor jarrah.). The blade is a cross-section of the tree's stump and the stock part of the trunk.
.

[TonyH]

Thanks guys, glad you liked them.

Loon, the luggers gradually got larger as time went by, starting off at about 40 foot long in the 1880s and increasing to about 50 feet LOA by the start of WW2 - the advent of internal combustion engines as auxiliary power and to drive the air compressor was the main factor leading to increased size. The postwar boats were bigger still, up around 60 feet long.

The boats fished for mother-of-pearl oysters, in the shallow tropical seas off northern Australia the species is Pinctada maxima, the largest of the pearl oyster species. The boats would sail out to the pearling grounds and then tow a hard-hat diver along the bottom (usually with just the mizzen sail up - the pearlers called it the mainsail) at walking pace, and the diver would pick the oysters (which are the size of dinner plates) out of the muddy/sandy bottom. The main financial return came from selling the mother-of -pearl shells (for button making, decorative inlays etc), pearls were the icing in the cake, though keenly sought after. The divers and crews were a cultural pot-pourri; aborigines, malays, filipinos and Japanese mainly, with the Japanese progressively dominating the industry (and especially the dangerous job of diving) until WW2, when they were all interned, of course. With a few exceptions, white men just couldn't hack the lonely and incredibly tough life on the luggers, not to mention the diving, which in those unscientific days claimed many, many lives through accidents and the bends.

As I could rave on for hours yet, I'd better stop!

Mike - good to hear they're still progressing with Pam - how far have they got to go? Is there a launch date planned yet?

Cheers

Tony

[Wild Dingo]

Thanks Tony!

No Donn I dont believe WB has done an article on them... maybe they should? Well Tony would be the man to do that :cool: ...Personally like Tony I love these things! flamin brilliant... come complete with charector and history! :cool:

Unfortunately some end up going the way of some in your neck of the woods... left to rot and die mainly due to neglect lack of maintenace and lack of forsight... and for the ability to say "I have a lugger na nana na na" others just die...

one such was Buccaleah {sp?} 5 years underwater raised and 5 years above the water... no work done... no work being done... no work intent on being done... and no money offered to the one person prepared to do the work to pay for work to be done... {oh the money is there just wants to be able to say "I got a Lugger oh and I will fix it and sail her away" yeah right! :rolleyes: }... left high and dry camped in the bush hull wrapped in spanish windlass to keep from falling out... amid the white ants and crud... they die. :(

But they are gorgeous... sigh... pictures of Bucculeah {sp} are now in the mail hopefully you will get them soon Tony... I would have posted them fellas but my scanner did a snot and fried itself so till I get my act together and buy another we will have to wait for Tony to scan them and email em back then I will reserect this thread and post her...

Is that the same Panama {in the 2nd last photo} thats restored and in Fremantle Tony?

Take it easy
Shane

[Donn]

Great stuff, Tony....can you point me to where I can read more about them?

[TonyH]

Donn
They're pretty boats (in my opinion, anyway!) and there's a wonderful, romantic history associated with them. However, the literature about them is remarkably scanty, and what little there is, is mostly obscure. Almost nothing scholarly has been published about the boats themselves - there is a single chapter in a good but obscure book called "Craft & Craftsmen of Australian Fishing" by Gary Kerr, almost certainly unobtainable outside Australia (although maybe available on AbeBooks, I haven't tried). For history of the industry, the most comprehensive work is "Full Fathom Five" by Mary Bain (a Nun! but also a good historian) which is a fairly rare book even in Australia. There are various books of pearling yarns, true stories for the most part but told in a way that is long on colour but not toooo strong on "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" - good reads nonetheless. The best known is "Forty Fathoms Deep" by Ion Idriess, a well-known Australian author. A recent good book called "The White Divers of Broome" is a good read and is well researched, it tells the story of an ill-fated attempt in 1912 to break the stranglehold that the "coloured races" had on pearl-diving, using Royal Navy divers specially imported for the job. Half of them packed it in after a short time, the other half died on the job, also after a short time! And the yet-to-be-published book about "Redbill" by Kate Lance is also a cracking read and a superb piece of research, highly recommended when it hits the shelves. KL and I are now thinking of trying to write a scholarly work on the luggers themselves, some time over the next few years I guess...we'll see!

Cheers

Tony

[ 12-10-2002, 11:13 PM: Message edited by: TonyH ]

[Donn]

Thanks, Tony. My favorite thing in life is working boats...and you've given me enough to start some research. There are no borders when it comes to finding books.

[nedL]

Wonderful pictures! & thanks for the backround on their history. Sometimes its amazing how such a tough industry can develope such pretty craft.

[PeterSibley]

Great photos Tony...I havent seen those ones before.Did you see the lugger at the last Sydney Wooden Boat Show ? Did you recognise her ?

[TonyH]

Now youi've got me worried Peter - no I didn't. I had SWMBO and the kids with me and my visit was rather shorter than I would have preferred...

The ANMM usually has their lugger "John Louis" there, a post-war Broome lugger similar to the last one in the series above (which it appears may be Wild Dingo's "Buccleuch" in happier days - I've got the photos from Shane and will post them when next I get near to a scanner). The "Tribal Warrior", formerly "Mina" a very old TI lugger from about 1900, might also have been there, she's off sailing around Australia now (in Fremantle at present I think). If it were any other lugger I'd be most interested - I don't suppose you caught the name????

Cheers

Tony

PS. How's the "Fore-an-Aft" coming along?

[PeterSibley]

Tony.....a post war Broome lugger sounds about right,stubby masts and a fair bit of superstucture as I rember ,the only knowlege I have of luggers is from Kerrs book,"Craft and Craftsmen etc",but from the photos in that you are correct.I may have photos and possibly a photo showing a name ,but my photo albums are at my mothers place at the moment.....we are in a state of mild paranoia about bushfires....OK to loss the house ...can't lose the photos.When I get them back,I'll look .Re boatbuilding,things are progressing very very slowly....work has been interfering with life. smile.gif
Peter