Crafting Exquisite Ships for Seaworthy Cause

The Port of Los Angeles is a gritty industrial landscape of diesel trucks, towering hammerhead cranes, steel shipping containers and boxy cargo vessels whose designers threw any notion of beauty overboard a long time ago.

But at Brigantine Boatworks in San Pedro, form is as important as function. Taking shape in the temporary shipyard at the foot of 6th Street are two wooden sailing vessels that look more out of the 19th century than the 21st.

Timber shavings cover the asphalt and the fragrance of purple heart wood and laminated oak fill the air. Drills whir and saws scream around the skeletons of the ships, the Irving Johnson and Exy Johnson. While there are modern conveniences like power tools, forklifts and a small crane, much of the work is being done the old-fashioned way--by hand and well-trained eye.

“Shipbuilding like this is the most challenging woodwork you can do,” said Roy Vetterlein, one of 14 veteran shipwrights in the yard. “It combines mechanics and art.”

The brigantines are being built for the TopSail program, an academy at sea for troubled adolescents. Run by the nonprofit Los Angeles Maritime Institute, TopSail serves more than 1,000 youths a year.

The wooden ships eventually will replace the program’s current schooners, the Bill of Rights and Swift of Ipswitch. The 70-foot Swift once belonged to actor James Cagney and the Bill of Rights, which is 94 feet long, used to be a charter craft, a kind of oceangoing dude ranch for the affluent.

Since the program was founded in 1991, TopSail has become so popular that the former pleasure boats are becoming cramped. So program officials have turned to the meticulously crafted brigantines, which have two masts and roomier hulls. The new vessels will be 110 feet long and cost a total of $5.6 million.

Each brigantine will have sleeping accommodations for 30 youngsters and a crew of up to 10. There will be meeting areas, more galley space and small on-board labs.

Not only will the new ships handle the program’s day sails and three- to five-day excursions to Santa Catalina Island, they will have enough range for longer voyages and semester-at-sea courses.

“We wanted three absolutes: beautiful boats, boats that sail well, and boats that can put kids in the environment we want to achieve,” said Capt. Jim Gladson, a retired schoolteacher who founded the program in 1991.

Fund-raising efforts have collected about a third of the money from corporate and individual donors, including some of the program’s graduates. Also contributing time and facilities are the Port of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, operated by the city Department of Recreation and Parks.

Allen C. Rawl, a veteran shipbuilder from Maryland, is overseeing the construction, for which he has assembled the crew of skilled shipwrights from across the country.

“I’ve built a lot of yachts for the wealthy that aren’t used much,” said Barry Bowles, who is responsible for installing the brigantines’ metalwork, machinery and auxiliary engines. “These boats are going for a nice purpose, and it’s good to give something back to the community.”

The construction is underway in the John S. Gibson Jr. Maritime Park behind the U.S. Merchant Marine memorial at Harbor Boulevard and 6th Street. The keels were dedicated in February. Since then, dozens of curved oak frames or ribs have been bolted into place, revealing the graceful lines of the vessels.

Instead of steel, the ships are being made of fine hardwoods, including white oak and massive timbers of purple heart from Guyana. Corrosion-resistant bronze fittings are being used throughout the hulls to hold the frames in place.

Though wood construction costs 30% more than steel, TopSail officials decided the material was more durable and more pleasing aesthetically. Gladson relied on the advice of Martyn Clark, head of the Sail and Life Training Society in British Columbia, Canada.

“He is adamant that kids are more attracted to a wooden boat than a steel one,” Gladson said. “You can appreciate the work that has gone into it and that virtually every piece is hand-sculpted.”

The task last week required Bowles and his crew to coax tons of ballast--weight that steadies the ship--into place. Under each ship was a line of lead blocks to be bolted to the keel. Drills spat out silvery shavings as workmen bored through the metal, making room for massive bolts that will hold the castings in place.

Each ship will have 42 tons of ballast. The lead castings weigh 6,000 pounds to 20,000 pounds apiece, requiring the use of hydraulic jacks to put them in place.

“In a way, it’s like building the pyramids,” said James Goss, a special projects coordinator for the Maritime Museum.

The brigantines will be named after Irving Johnson and his wife, Exy Johnson, a Massachusetts couple who pioneered youth sail training in the United States. Among other things, their voyages aboard the 50-foot ketch Yankee have been chronicled by the National Geographic Society.

TopSail officials hope to launch the brigantines by the end of 2001. After the ships are outfitted and rigged, they will be commissioned in mid-2002, if all goes well. When finished, they will resemble the kind of commercial sailing vessels built between 1870 and 1910.

“We are using the best materials available and we have spared no expense,” Gladson said. “If we take care of these ships, they should last 100 years.”