Harry Pardy's Speedboat
Fifteen foot speed boat built by Harry Pardy of Little Harbour, Twillingate in 2001.
That’s all cut out of the trees, roots of the trees. No steamed laths on my boats. A lot of people used to build boats that got steamed laths, but I always cut the trees in the woods the right shape for the timbers. Father and grandfather and them always done that, never used no steam, and I done the same thing.
I only went to the shop to buy nails and paint. I always cut the wood for plank and the wood for timbers and gunwales and stem and the stern, whatever I wanted. I went in the woods, over Gander Bay way, Gander Bay Road, and cut the logs and brought them home and sawed them at our old sawmill down there.
Visit the Isles Wooden Boat Builders Museum in Twillingate to see Harry’s boat and models on display.
When speed boats gained popularity in the 1950s, Harry built the first one in Little Harbour and outfitted her with a 7.5 horsepower Evinrude outboard engine. Over the years, harry built countless speed boats.
"Eighteen feet was an average length that I used to build and what I used for myself,” he said. After he retired from building boats, Harry turned to building scaled models built over winter and sold from his shed in Little Harbour each summer.