Wooden Boat Museum Sunday

After our initial plans for this weekend were disrupted by post-tropical storm Bertha, we ended up taking a day trip to Winterton to learn all about wooden boats, how they're made, and the significant role they play in Newfoundland history.

Wooden Boat Museum in Winterton

We spent most of the past weekend at Elizabeth's parent's cabin on Ocean Pond, enjoying brief intervals of sunshine between the heavy downpours from post-tropical Bertha as it swept over Newfoundland. Much fun was had water skiing and playing games (even though we lost many, many games of Sequence to Rebecca and Skye and their sneaky Jacks...).

On Sunday, after a big cooked breakfast and a few rounds of 7 Wonders we headed up to Winterton, a small community near Heart's Content, to visit the Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador. Our initial outdoorsy plans had been scuppered by the weather, so we were grateful to visit an indoor museum.

After initially trying to tackle the museum by ourselves and quickly becoming overwhelmed the amount of information on offer, we opted for a free tour by one of the museum's staff.  Our tour guide took us through the different rooms of the museum, providing an excellent overview of the different aspects of boat building throughout Newfoundland history.

The first section of the museum took a look at tradition Inuit and Beothuk boats and how they were constructed; this included seal skin Kayaks, Canoes made from birch bark, and the unusual W-shaped Canoes used by the extinct Beothuk people to chase Caribou into the water.

The second room focused on the various boats used in the Newfoundland fishing industry. It was a different way to explore a familiar history -  taking a look at the specific tools of the trade and their development over time, from sail powered Punts and Dories to the introduction of dangerous on-board motors. We also learned about the differences and specifics of the onshore and offshore fisheries.

We then learned a bit more about the construction of the traditional small wooden boats used in fishing, such as the Dory and the Punt. There was a partially built boat that gave a great insight into the construction process, while helping to demonstrate the differences between modern boat building and the old hand methods used in the earlier days of fishing. Boat building requires so much knowledge and it's hard to believe that everything was made from scratch! Previously, we had assumed that all of the curved wood used in boat building was shaped or steam bent, but it turns out that people would go in the woods to look for trees that were curved or bent at the angle they required, and then cut it down. 

Here, we got to try our hand at caulking: the method used to waterproof wooden boats using Oakum. 

Note: Elizabeth's face

After learning a little more about fishing methods, and viewing a variety of full sized wooden boats, we were lead upstairs to the second floor which contained a museum with exhibits on life in an outport fishing community. All in all, it was a very interesting tour, and the guide was very friendly and informative.

Here's a few more pics from the trip: