Building Valhalla

     I rather enjoy the notion of building Valhalla, that realm of Nordic gods engaged in epic battle across saga's savage seas. But such is not today's tale, for this is one of Viking sons and daughters in a land and time of leisure, the bloodlust tempered by civil pursuits and the callings of a young family. Valhalla was the little yawl my grandfather Frans designed and built to cruise the waters of Long Island.

     Seth picked the name by lot, from a hat filled with many names on little slips of paper; he the youngest at nine and the only boy besides.Who among them wrote the name Valhalla  on that particular slip of paper is long forgotten, for in truth it could have been any of them; Frans, the sailor from Sweden  more bonded with Norseman's ways than the church; Augusta, wife and mother, a more agrarian Swede but the Vikings were of that soil also; Agnes, the oldest child, strong of heart and will, or Emily, the fair artistic one. And Seth, a young boy fired with tales of seafarers and warriors sweeping across the wild oceans to their next conquering raid.In truth it could have been any of them, and Valhalla became the vessel and vassal of the family's storied summers under sail. 


     Valhalla was designed for the waters of Sheepshead and Great South Bay and the surrounding region, thin waters requiring shoal draft boats. Catboats have been common to these waters, finer perhaps than the Cape Cod catboats, the New York fishing fleet adapted for pleasure. Then these pleasure boats took on some of the appearances of the racing sloops of the day, with overhanging spoon bows that were bluff and rounded. Valhalla was similar to the latter, full and powerful, shoal draft with a large centerboard, with a cabin large enough to accommodate  five and more adults and children on the weekend and weeklong voyages across summer's saga seas.

     Frans built Valhalla on the beach next to Felix the French bayman's little shack on Sheepshead Bay; Felix, who as a boy of eight was caught smoking his father's pipe, and for punishment was ordered to finish the pipe, refill it, smoke that down, refill the pipe; and so Felix was never seen without his pipe again. Felix fished for a living on Sheepshead Bay, working under sail, riding the morning offshore breeze out onto the bay, catching the onshore breeze back in the afternoon. His was an idyllic, if solitary life,  doubtless lonesome and austere at times, and so the presence of an affable Viking busily building something as interesting as a boat must have been a welcome diversion for the personable Frenchman.


     Boats were always built on the beach in the days of old, before boatshops gave bare shelter from the raw winds of winter or the blazing summer sun. Boats, and, ships, those longships destined for raids of legend and daring voyages to unknown lands, their timbers hewn with broadaxe and adze, planking fit to frames and spars carved from solid trees. Frans worked on his family yacht during his leisure hours, the summer evenings and American weekends, while making the small parts in the basement of his Brooklyn rowhouse. Valhalla would be 28'6" in length, about 8'9" in beam, 2'6" deep with the board up. She would be rigged as a yawl, with gaff-headed sails, the standing and running rigging spliced by Frans, the Cape Horn sailor.


     Meanwhile, in the world beyond Brooklyn, war raged, in trenches that stretched across Europe and across the seas that cover the very Earth. Many of the materials used to build boats are also used for fighting wars, and Frans had to search out sources for the metal pieces he needed. By late 1918, he had his little ship framed up and ready for planking, which required an order of about 1000 board feet of white cedar planking stock. However, white cedar was one of the materials needed for the war effort (the naval war effort, one hopes). The war seemed to be winding down, though, and the cedar Frans needed would most likely be available fairly soon. But Frans was impatient to get started, and did not want to wait for the supply of white cedar to open back up.


     There was, on the other hand, plenty of white oak available.

     Oak is the wood that is the heart of boatbuilding, the timber of keel timbers and timber frames.  Green oak, fresh cut, may be steamed and bent, while seasoned oak is sinewy strong. America is fortunate to be populated with many varieties of oak, the black, yellow, red; but white oak is best for boatbuilding.


     Not so much for planking, though. Not, at least, for a boat as relatively small as Valhalla, though the sheerstrake could be oak, and some builders would use oak for the garboard strake as well. Ships, too, may be planked with oak, though yellow pine is much the better. But for a little, although proud, and able, ship such as Valhalla, oak is simply too heavy, to hard to cut and carve, too difficult to bend. Green oak is easier to work with, of course, it in fact carves and bends rather well, but it is green, and will shrink, dramatically. Looking back, one can easily see the wisdom behind finding the patience to wait for the right materials, using the time to make more of the small pieces, mindful that this boat would last and be used for many years in any event. 


     Valhalla was always a bit on the slow side, weighed down as she was with her oak planking. She was durable, one must admit,strong as iron; though on her second seasons' launching, from a marine railway at the small boatyard where she spent the winter, she simply filled with water and did not budge, her planking having dried and shrunk so her seams were wide open to the incoming water. The boatyard owner was naturally quite irate, but oak swells quickly enough and Valhalla was floating on the next tide. Her original launching from Felix's beach had been a straightforward slide down the beach under a Champagne shower and a Christian christening, Sweden being more Lutheran than Norse by then.


     Frans did carve a dragons figurehead on the tiller, in tribute to the dragon figureheads that adorned the bows of Viking ships, there to guide and protect the ship and crew. A dragonheaded tiller advances the tradition, allowing the figurehead to follow compass and chart and so keep the crew safe in darkness and in storms. At this tiller young Seth learned to steer, to sail by the wind and follow the compass, to coax the last fraction of speed from the spirit breeze and goddess waves.

      
     Valhalla was a working man's boat of the days before production plants and fiberglass, bank credit and marinas changed the very nature of boating for pleasure. Valhalla herself was only possible because of the changing economic realities of America at that time; a middle class income and enough leisure time to build a complete and able boat. In those days, boats were custom built and hand crafted, and were too expensive for working people. There were no boat loans available. Either used boats, or self-built boats, were the only options generally available for most people. There is I believe a transcendent value to this, on a sliding scale that begins with the self-built, moves on to the truly and uniquely personal custom boat, and ends finally with the used and neglected boat of no name or distinction. Unloved boats are utilitarian only, and any boat will serve a purpose. But stories that play on like sagas, repeated now into third and fourth generations, only rise from  vessels distinct and epic enough to be more a member of a family than a mere object owned and used by a family. Valhalla lives on in the traditions of boatbuilding and seamanship that have carried through to this, and perhaps in time to another, generation.