“As far as I know, most of the swampbottoms that were built, were built in Epworth. There were a couple of fellows down there: Ren Roberts was one man...”

Born in Cottrell's Cove, Notre Dame Bay, Lloyd Boone moved to Point of Bay in 1977 when he married Cybil Philpott. He learned how to build boats from from his father-in-law, Wilfred Philpott, a carpenter and farmer who learned how to build from his father, Stanley…

“Wherever you went, you either walked or rowed on Change Islands. Everybody had a punt,” said Calvin LeDrew. Born in 1942, his father Harry was a fisherman and boat builder from Change Islands, and his mother…

As a boy growing up Barr’d Islands on Fogo in the 1950s, Frank Combden learned how to build boats as part of a way of life. He watched as his father, George, and others built their fishing vessels and started building his own as a teenager…

“These are some of the tools I use,” Eric Bourden said standing behind a table of handplanes. “I used them… My great-grandfather probably used them. I know my grandfather did, and father.” In his shed, Eric showed me…

Edwin’s enthusiasm for boat building reaches back many years into his childhood. “I think I can honestly say that everywhere there was a boat, I had my nose into it somehow,” he explained. Edwin grew up in Heart’s Delight…

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…

The distinction between a punt and a rodney, or if there is even a distinction to be made, is often debated among boat builders and enthusiasts. Both punts and rodneys are…

Earl Feltham was born on Deer Island in 1937. His father Ephraim, was a fisherman and a carpenter. In 1953, when Earl was 16 years old, Ephraim and his wife Suzy moved their family to Glovertown. Earl went on to…

Sam Feltham learned how to build boats on Deer Island using cut timbers, but has been using steamed laths since moving to Glovertown in 1954. This punt, completed in August 2012, is just one of more than 100 boats built by Sam…

In a small fishing community where everyone built their own boats, learning how to build was part of growing up for a young boy. “You’d go from one stage to the other,” says Sam, “listen to what they were telling you and watching them work. That’s the way I got my training...”

When building boats, Jack Casey uses a set of moulds that once belonged to his grandfather, Michael Casey. When Michael Casey arrived in Conche in 1850, he made a set of moulds which he…

Jack Casey built his last boat, a sixteen foot row punt, in 2009 at eighty-eight years old.  Used by Wally Skinner of Pasadena, she is twenty-seven inches deep and sixty inches wide at midships. “Boats used to be more narrow.” Jack notes, “When I started…”

John (Jack) Thomas Casey was born on July 2, 1922 in Conche, a small fishing community on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula. One of eight children born to Michael and Nora Casey, Jack started working in the lumber woods at only seven years old and…

Built in Pasadena in 2008, Max Pollard constructed this punt for his daughter with timber cut in his own backyard. Used at Old Man's Pond, Max made repairs in 2012 which included replacing a number…

"My father had a motor boat that we'd use for fishing, about 23' long," says Max. "We were using hand and line then - baited hooks," he adds. Max left school at the age of 12 to work with his father, fishing in the summer and logging in the winter…

Samuel Andrews built this four-oared punt in Winterton during the 1930s-1940s. It measures 15’6” long and was used during the winter for hunting seals and…

The Wooden Boat Museum’s 2011 and 2012 boat building workshops were based on these lines, lifted from a half model carved by Frank Lane of Tilting, Fogo Island…

The three-piece mould is an old method for designing and building boats. A lot of the first boats to come off our beaches and take to the fishing waters were boats built with these curved sticks of wood. The method was…

David A. Taylor describes the three-piece mould method used by boatbuilders in Winterton, Trinity Bay. Similar to whole-moulding, Taylor describes these moulds as, “a wooden, three-piece adjustable template used to draw the shapes of…