Wards Island
Posted: November 16th, 2010, 10:25 am
One more.
Wards Island
Looming in the middle of the Aucilla River in an air of mystery, Ward’s Island was a place we had never been able to visit. To get there you had to navigate two miles up river, most of which you couldn’t tell on high tide where the river stopped and the cypress swamp started. On low tide, the current could get pretty fast in the channel as the tide rushed out over huge rocks and oyster bars. All in all, it was a fairly dangerous playground for a bunch of ten and eleven boys. But in nineteen-sixty-three, in the North Florida "Big Bend", children and grandchildren of a mullet fisherman, were raised that way.
When we were not in school, we would work at my grandmothers modest little fish camp, mostly hauling bait, ice, and gas cans. Our only pay was the tips we received at the boat ramp. This was the days of mostly wooden boats and eighteen horse motors. The larger guide boats would have an electric start thirty-five-horse power. Drive-on, drive-off trailers hadn’t caught on yet, so you almost always had to get your feet wet to launch your boat on a ramp like the one on the Aucilla. That’s where we came in. By helping at the ramp, we had a legal reason to get wet, and make money at the same time. Life was great.
We would see all the boats leave the ramp to points unknown to us. “If we had one of those,” I said to Jack, “We could go fishing anywhere we wanted.” “We could even go to Wards Island.” It always seemed the fish were bigger from other places than those we were restricted to, so it only seemed right to have a boat of our own. “It doesn’t have to be big, only enough to carry me, and Jack.” I begged our grandma, she reminded us of her previous decision on this matter, and from her tone we guessed it would be a long time before anyone would help us get a boat.
“Now what?” Jack asked. I was a couple years older than my uncle Jack, so he usually agreed to whatever I said. “Let’s build our own boat!” I suggested. “We’ve watched granddaddy do it lots of times.” Our grandfather built many of the “Birddog” boats being used on the river then. Birddog was the name used by locals for a net boat used in North Florida then. We could ask granddaddy for some of his scrap plywood and two-by-fours, enough to put together a small cabin cruiser.
We began work, and soon had a frame, then the sides, and finally a bottom. It was a boat! It didn’t look much like what most folks would call a boat, but to us it was. Along the gunwale, corners of plywood stuck out here and there, in some places the wood didn’t fit well, and you could see light through the bottom. All this would be fixed when Jack could convince granddaddy to give us some fiberglass. He always had a boat in the making, and kept plenty of fiberglass and resin around.
This prospect didn’t pan out, however, and we were again stuck without a way to seal our new boat. It seemed granddaddy didn’t want to get in the middle of what he saw as an impending explosion when grandma found out what we were up to. Jack did however return from his begging trip with a book on boats. “Viking Ships?” I asked. “What are we going to get from this?” Look inside!” he said, “it tells how to make them.”
We fumbled through the book for a while and found a paragraph about how the Viking’s ships were sealed with tar and cloth. “We can do this,” I said. “There’s a bucket of roofing tar in the shed.” Consulting the book again, we still had to have some kind of cloth to help seal the hull of the boat. Jack volunteered to get that. While Jack went after the cloth, I prepared the hull by sawing off the excess wood, and sanding it.
Jack made good on his word and showed up a few minutes later carrying a large bundle of white cloth. He said something about grandma having a linen closest full of this stuff and wouldn’t miss one ole piece of cloth, but that went in one ear and out the other. After applying the first coat of tar, we cut the cloth and layered it on with successive coats of tar. Man! Did that stuff stink!
After an hour or so, we finished coating the boat with tar, and grandma’s fine linen tablecloth that was reserved for Thanksgiving and other important meals. We found a couple of old oars, and after a lot of grunting, we shoved the foul-smelling and very heavy craft into the river, where it instantly fell apart and floated down river.
Granddaddy finally stopped laughing and suggested we save out tips we made at the ramp and just buy a boat. Simple punishments weren’t acceptable when grandma found out what we did with her tablecloth. When our ears stopped ringing, and the threats were all said, we were informed that we were banned from the river till someplace grandma fully expected Jack and me to end up in, froze over.
We eventually made it to Wards Island, and spent many days and nights fishing, hunting, and camping there. The idea of building a boat was as far from our minds as it could be after that, but undeterred, we still fished everyday, and found other, less complicated ways to get to places previously thought unreachable.
Wards Island
Looming in the middle of the Aucilla River in an air of mystery, Ward’s Island was a place we had never been able to visit. To get there you had to navigate two miles up river, most of which you couldn’t tell on high tide where the river stopped and the cypress swamp started. On low tide, the current could get pretty fast in the channel as the tide rushed out over huge rocks and oyster bars. All in all, it was a fairly dangerous playground for a bunch of ten and eleven boys. But in nineteen-sixty-three, in the North Florida "Big Bend", children and grandchildren of a mullet fisherman, were raised that way.
When we were not in school, we would work at my grandmothers modest little fish camp, mostly hauling bait, ice, and gas cans. Our only pay was the tips we received at the boat ramp. This was the days of mostly wooden boats and eighteen horse motors. The larger guide boats would have an electric start thirty-five-horse power. Drive-on, drive-off trailers hadn’t caught on yet, so you almost always had to get your feet wet to launch your boat on a ramp like the one on the Aucilla. That’s where we came in. By helping at the ramp, we had a legal reason to get wet, and make money at the same time. Life was great.
We would see all the boats leave the ramp to points unknown to us. “If we had one of those,” I said to Jack, “We could go fishing anywhere we wanted.” “We could even go to Wards Island.” It always seemed the fish were bigger from other places than those we were restricted to, so it only seemed right to have a boat of our own. “It doesn’t have to be big, only enough to carry me, and Jack.” I begged our grandma, she reminded us of her previous decision on this matter, and from her tone we guessed it would be a long time before anyone would help us get a boat.
“Now what?” Jack asked. I was a couple years older than my uncle Jack, so he usually agreed to whatever I said. “Let’s build our own boat!” I suggested. “We’ve watched granddaddy do it lots of times.” Our grandfather built many of the “Birddog” boats being used on the river then. Birddog was the name used by locals for a net boat used in North Florida then. We could ask granddaddy for some of his scrap plywood and two-by-fours, enough to put together a small cabin cruiser.
We began work, and soon had a frame, then the sides, and finally a bottom. It was a boat! It didn’t look much like what most folks would call a boat, but to us it was. Along the gunwale, corners of plywood stuck out here and there, in some places the wood didn’t fit well, and you could see light through the bottom. All this would be fixed when Jack could convince granddaddy to give us some fiberglass. He always had a boat in the making, and kept plenty of fiberglass and resin around.
This prospect didn’t pan out, however, and we were again stuck without a way to seal our new boat. It seemed granddaddy didn’t want to get in the middle of what he saw as an impending explosion when grandma found out what we were up to. Jack did however return from his begging trip with a book on boats. “Viking Ships?” I asked. “What are we going to get from this?” Look inside!” he said, “it tells how to make them.”
We fumbled through the book for a while and found a paragraph about how the Viking’s ships were sealed with tar and cloth. “We can do this,” I said. “There’s a bucket of roofing tar in the shed.” Consulting the book again, we still had to have some kind of cloth to help seal the hull of the boat. Jack volunteered to get that. While Jack went after the cloth, I prepared the hull by sawing off the excess wood, and sanding it.
Jack made good on his word and showed up a few minutes later carrying a large bundle of white cloth. He said something about grandma having a linen closest full of this stuff and wouldn’t miss one ole piece of cloth, but that went in one ear and out the other. After applying the first coat of tar, we cut the cloth and layered it on with successive coats of tar. Man! Did that stuff stink!
After an hour or so, we finished coating the boat with tar, and grandma’s fine linen tablecloth that was reserved for Thanksgiving and other important meals. We found a couple of old oars, and after a lot of grunting, we shoved the foul-smelling and very heavy craft into the river, where it instantly fell apart and floated down river.
Granddaddy finally stopped laughing and suggested we save out tips we made at the ramp and just buy a boat. Simple punishments weren’t acceptable when grandma found out what we did with her tablecloth. When our ears stopped ringing, and the threats were all said, we were informed that we were banned from the river till someplace grandma fully expected Jack and me to end up in, froze over.
We eventually made it to Wards Island, and spent many days and nights fishing, hunting, and camping there. The idea of building a boat was as far from our minds as it could be after that, but undeterred, we still fished everyday, and found other, less complicated ways to get to places previously thought unreachable.