Happy 2009!
I have photocopied the “Down the Ways: Sam L Morse Co” article from Cruising World, February 1977. I’ll scan it and, in the next few days or so, upload it as a *.pdf.
Now I’m after another article, one that gives Hale Field’s side of the story of the design of Renegade (which of course leads eventually to the design of the BCC).
That article is:
Chris Caswell, “Hale Field and Fram”, in Sea (Inland edition), Vol 69, (don’t know which month) 1977, pp 91-93.
I’ve not read the article - the only copy of which I know for sure is in the library of the University of Michigan. The Library of Congress in Washington DC and the National Library of Australia both start their holdings of Sea (Inland edition) from Vol. 70, in 1978. And no library in Malaysia holds a copy.
But I found two tiny fragments of Chris Caswell’s article on Google Books.
Caswell (who started as a boating journalist and then went on to do other things in the boating world), was of course writing about Hale Field’s voyages with Fram. On page 91 he quotes Hale Field talking about how he worked with Lyle Hess to come up with Renegade.
In the quote, Hale Field says: “In 1950 we’d had our children and we thought it would be nice to have a boat again. I got together with Lyle Hess, a really good boat designer, and we thought that a boat based on actual use would be nice. So we cast about and found the old Itchen Ferry cutters of England. Of course, they were fishing …”
That’s the end of that fragment.
Caswell continues:
"Launched as Renegade in 1950, she had single sawn frames of hackmattack every third frame. As a result, she’s kept her shape after 26 years, although a lot of the credit goes to Lyle Hess and Roy Barto who built her.
“Renegade, still sailing in Southern California, is a traditional cutter, 24 1/2 feet on deck. Larry and Lin Pardey, saw her, liked her lines, and built a sister ship which, named Seraffyn, is famous for …”
Hale’s ‘Roy Barto’ is Lyle’s partner in the LA Boatyard, referred to as Roy Barteau or Barteaux in other sources.
Caswell’s ‘hackmattack’ is written as hackmatack in other sources, variously described as a poplar (Populus balsamifera) or a larch (Larix larcinia).
Hale Field contributed to several boat designs. He’s credited as sole designer of a few. And he’s a co-designer or major influence of several others. In the quote from Hale, his use of ‘we’ shifts meaning: first ‘we’ refers clearly to Hale and his wife; second and third ‘we’ seem to be Lyle and Hale. The use of ‘we’ sure raises questions about who - Lyle or Hale - first mentioned the Itchen Ferry cutters.
I would be grateful to hear from anyone who has a copy of the 1977 Sea (Inland edition). Or anyone who has access to the copy at U of Michigan (which is the copy that Google Books scanned to give those two fragments) or any other library copy.
Cheers
Bil