HISTORIC VESSEL

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 432, 13 May 1937, Page 3

HISTORIC VESSEL

MAYFLOWER “SAILS” AGAIN Railwayman’s Fine Work The making of a particularly fine model of the famous ship Mayflower, which took -the Pilgrim Fathers to America, has occupied the midnight hours of Mr. N. L< Howard., of 695 Awa Road, Otahuhu, for the past three months, says the Auckland S.ar. Completed this week, the quaint little vessel, with her high, carved and gilded poop and her jibboom cocked up into the air at a jaunty angle, is a piece of artistic perfection. As a result of war disabilities, Mr. Howard; who is a railway signalman, suffers from insomnia, averaging only about six hours’ sleep a week. Instead of fretting his nerves by lying awake in ba I, he finds a. toothing occupation in woodwork. He hag made practically all the furniture in his home and. many artistic ornaments during the hours when most of the world is asleep. Until he commenced the building of the miniature Mayflowei, however, his only essay in this branch of crafitz manship had been the curving of a model of a Maori war canoe, which he sent to a brother in America. In return his brother sent him the scale plans of the Mayflower, which were published for the first time only last December. Rigging Problem. In his construction of the model, Mr Howard has followed the plans with the utmost exactness, using a scale of three-sixteeaths of an inch tc the foot. His patisUaking attention to details is shown in the workmanlike finish of her woodwork which was achieved with only the simplest of tools. One of the puzzles that confronted Mr. Howard, as a landsman, was the leading aright of the many halyards, braces, buntlinet, bowlines, and other running rigging, which was even more complicated In the oldfashioned windjammers that it is in the present-day survivors of the era of old. His difficulties were increased by the fact that in the plans some of these details were not quite clear, but, since the completion of his mr>del, Mr. Howard has been congratulated by a retired shipmaster on having made not a single error in the vessel's rigging.

With all her canvas set, her paint and varnish gleaming, and her tiay cannon, cast in lead, jutting belligerently from her ports, the Mayflower is a handsome little ship for, despite ner clumsy-looking upper-works, she has a very shapely hull, her lines below the water-line being as fine and graceful as those of a yacht. She is well worthy of the ”520 hours of exacting work that her builder put into her.