Fogo Island Punt
Born 1864 and married at 24, Thomas Head lived in Joe Batt's Arm on the north coast of Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Thomas was a fisherman all his life but, to eke out a living with his wife Phoebe, he would likely have turned his hand to many other things in the course of a year.
Typically an Island fisherman at the turn of the century would have been engaged in numerous seasonal activities: hunting game and trapping for furs in the fall and winter; woodcutting, hunting seals and sea birds winter and spring; farming spring and summer; harvesting crops and native berries in the fall.
Winter and spring saw Thomas building boats - some for his own use, some for profit. In February 1906, at the age of 42, Thomas built the gunning punt featured here.
