THE STORY OF THE ISLE: From Sailboat to Gas Boat — Spring 1995
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Hawk Tolson
Hawk Tolson is the director of the Isle Royale Vernacular Boat Study, through which he has been examining and documenting the working vessels of the Lake Superior commercial fishing industry since 1990. This is his first contribution to INLAND SEAS.
Wooden boat at a dock from Hawk Tolson’s Isle Royale Vernacular Boat Study.
The examination and documentation of small, regional watercraft is both more and less complicated than studies of larger ships. Less so simply in terms of scale, as it is far easier to grasp the details of design and construction in an open boat of some twenty feet in length as opposed to a sailing warship or merchantman ten times the size. And it is more complicated in that larger vessels were matters of complex technology and great financial undertaking. As such, there is often detailed documentation of their construction and use, including building contracts, plans, lists of materials, and captains’ logbooks.
Small working boats, however, were more rapidly and easily constructed, generally by a team of one or two workers using innate judgement and personal experience instead of working from formal plans. Their building and sale were based on handshake deals, with the customer sometimes an actual participant in the construction. And there was no sort of formal training to building or operating such a boat, these details being learned by trial-and-error or handed down through family apprenticeships.
As a result, any true understanding of a regional small craft type must come from a variety of investigative avenues: the use of living informants (or their written recollections) who built and used the vessels, contemporary photographs, and any extant hulls. Through the taking of detailed measurements, lines and plans can be produced from a small boat hull. Old photos can add details that did not survive on the hull itself. And oral histories taken from those who actually built and used the vessel can explain exactly how the boat and its components were operated. Taken together, information obtained from these three sources will place a determined investigator as nearly as possible in the mind of the original builder.
One example of such a type of regional watercraft is the small boats built and used by the commercial fishermen of western Lake Superior. This area is defined by a set of geographic conditions which in turn gave rise to particular target species sought by commercial fishermen, very specific technological developments in fishing gear, and a unique type of watercraft which was the workhorse of the industry.
In the 1880s, immigrants from the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Finland were moving into the region surrounding the American side of western Lake Superior. There they established ethnic communities whose principal livelihood came from commercial harvesting of plentiful fish stocks. This area had a comforting familiarity, as the rocky shores and deep harbors were reminiscent of the lands they had left behind. They found, as have immigrants everywhere, that those who had preceded them had already developed types of watercraft and methods of building suited to the local conditions. Many of the new arrivals had been boatbuilders and fishermen in their native lands, so while they adopted the native watercraft, they also applied their own specialized knowledge and preferences to the building and use of the local vessel types. This resulted in a hybridization of design and construction methods which in turn produced a watercraft specifically suited to the unique combination of environment, fishing technology, and fish populations encountered by the commercial fishermen.
The Round-Bottomed Mackinaw Sailboat and Fishermen
One principal vessel type was well-established in western Lake Superior when the Scandinavians began arriving. This was the round bottomed Mackinaw sailboat, and it has been the subject of considerable study. According to some of the most highly-regarded researchers it can be described as:
A double ender of 18-301 plus in length, plumb stemmed, marked rake to the sternpost, half decked, two-masted (usually gaff ketch), round bottomed, fitted with a centerboard, and sporting a jib set on a hogged bowsprit. Planked, either lapstrake or carvel. Original waters of use — the Upper Great Lakes. Often associated with the Straits of Mackinac. Certain specific variations associated with time and place. [1]
The Mackinaw sailboat was enjoying widespread use on Lake Superior, and the Scandinavians took to it quickly. Oral histories from the early settlers contain numerous accounts of travel and work in such vessels on the sometimes stormy, always unpredictable, waters of Lake Superior. Families sailed Mackinaws along the Minnesota shore in search of land to homestead, in the harbors as pleasure craft, and as work boats out to the archipelago of Isle Royale, famous for its stocks of lake trout.
As a result of a concentration of habitat and relative isolation, fishing at Isle Royale was particularly productive, and it became the site of at least four seasonal settlements used by Scandinavian fishermen. The island fishing season lasted from early spring to late fall when Lake Superior remained relatively ice free.
Hooklines and gill nets were the two types of rig used commercially at Isle Royale — the choice depended on season. Hooklines, a technology imported from Scandinavia, were used in the spring, at the start of the season, to take lake trout.[2] This type of rig was both inexpensive [3] and highly effective, although labor-intensive, for it involved two separate stages, both hand work. The first step was the catching of lake herring as bait by setting small-meshed gill nets from flat-bottomed skiffs in sheltered bays. The fishermen would lift and harvest these nets in the early morning, bringing the fish back to the fishery on shore, where they were cut into pieces and threaded onto several hundred individual hooks and leaders.
The heart of a typical hookline rig was the main line, a horizontal line made of size 72 maitre line, approximately 1/8 inch thick. Each main line carried 30 smaller lines (snells) which hung vertically from it at intervals of 60 feet. These snells varied from 48 feet to 180 feet, generally with an 18-foot difference in the lengths of adjacent snells. The staggering of lengths was thought to more likely catch the attention of the lake trout, which would swim curiously around the rig. A second line, with a lead weight and hook, was tied at the bottom of each snell. [4]
The main line was suspended in the water by a series of floats, each made of three lathe-turned pieces of cedar and joined to the main line by a “float string” of size 36 maitre line. The string was 33feet long with one float and float string for each snell. The float and string also worked to bob the hook and bait, which would hopefully draw a fish’s attention. [5]
At each end of the rig, the main line extended 90 feet beyond the first and last snells, where it was attached to an anchor line of size 72 maitre line, the same as the main line. The anchor line was weighted on the bottom, early on by a large, notched rock and later by sacks of gravel. At the surface the anchor line was marked by a cedar buoy. As many as ten of these rigs might be set by an individual fisherman. [6]
With his set of baited hooks and leaders, a fisherman and helper would set out from the fishery in a Mackinaw sailboat to where the hookline rigs were set. Once the rig was located, one man would grab the main line and pull the boat along it, hand-over-hand. As they came to each snell, the other man would haul it in and untie the hook and leader from the snell — hopefully with a lake trout on the end — and replace it with a freshly-baited hook.
With all the rigs harvested and rebaited, it was time for the long trip back to the fishery, hopefully with a favorable wind permitting sailing, but not uncommonly under oar power. Then, back on the land, the fish had to be cleaned and packed in ice before the work day was finally over.
After the Fourth of July, the fishermen would switch to using gill nets. These were large-meshed nets which, set on the fishing grounds, acted as underwater fences into which the fish would swim — and through which they were unable to pass. In attempting to get back out of the mesh, they would become entangled by their gills.
A standard gill net ranged from 200 to 400 feet in length; and was 12 feet wide. [8] It could be set at a specific depth, marked by floating buoys held by stone anchors. A fisherman would have several “boxes” of gill nets (a “box” contained two nets); several boxes made a “gang.” Using a crew of two, as with hooklines, island fishermen would handle as much as 10,000 feet of net a day, weather permitting. [9]
The Edith Jane And The Isle
There were hundreds of fishermen working on Isle Royale and the North Shore (as the Minnesota coast of Lake Superior is known), but for all the Mackinaw sailboats that once plied these waters, only two intact examples are known to survive. One, the Edith Jane, was last reported on shore in a rather dilapidated condition in the city of Saint Ignace, Michigan, on the Straits of Mackinac. [10] The other, named the Isle, had been resting quietly and in relative obscurity on one of the small outer islands of the archipelago of lsle Royale at the western end of the lake.
Finding The Isle
I first became aware of the Isle in 1990 while conducting a survey of small craft lost or abandoned at Isle Royale over the past 100 years. I explored the ruins of island fisheries, paddled into isolated coves, and walked long stretches of shoreline in search of the abandoned hulls of fishing craft, most of which hadn’t been used for fifty years or more. My goal was to determine just what types of boats had been built and used in the area, photograph and sketch each one, and develop lines and plans for representative examples.
The oldest intact boat I found was the little Isle, which had been hauled out on the shore of Johns Island for nearly twenty years. Her story actually began much earlier on the North Shore. Details about her builder and construction are scarce and must be augmented by what can be obtained from contemporary photographs, information on old registration certificates, the recollections of the owner and his son, and of course, the boat herself. We do know that in the early 1900s a French man named Paul LaPlante lived in Grand Portage, Minnesota, with his Native American wife. A boatbuilder by profession, he constructed a number of small sailboats for the local Indian fishermen. [11] One of his customers was a man named Edgar R. Johns.
Edgar Johns, Son Of John Johns
Edgar was the son of a Cornish bard rock mining captain named John F. Johns. The elder Johns had come to Michigan to work in the copper mines of the Keweenaw Peninsula and on Isle Royale, where he homesteaded several islands in Washington Harbor in 1861. These included Barnum Island, where his family established the first hotel and post office in the area, and Johns Island. [12]
Captain Johns began the family’s involvement in commercial fishing, and his sons Edgar and William went on to own and operate the Johns Brothers Fisheries, using both the Barnum and Johns islands as bases of operation. Edgar’s son Robert Johns recalled:
“… my father used to own a tug and a few other boats……… he did have quite a fleet of boats at one time with his brother……. and his father……. They did commercial fishing and then, after the mine shut down, and they did that for many, many years. And they would stay on Isle Royale all year around. They thought nothing of staying over there through the winters. And they would fish under the ice with nets and they would do some hunting, trap ping, and so forth. And I imagine they acquired a moose or two”. [13]
It was Edgar Johns who purchased the Mackinaw sailboat Isle for use in the commercial fishing business. [14] The vessel was built in approximately 1912 and was in use as a sailboat at the town of Grand Portage. According to Robert Johns, his father contacted LaPlante, purchased the boat, and the two sailed her some eighteen intimidating miles — from the Minnesota shore to Isle Royale. Robert pointed out:
In those days they thought nothing of taking a small boat and going across the lake, but today people shiver and shake when they think about doing that. It’s all what you get used to. [15]
Once he had his new vessel at the family fishery on Barnum Island, Edgar customized her for commercial fishing and the harsh and isolated conditions found at Isle Royale. Again, according to his son:
He built it up higher for commercial fishing. And he put a gas tank in, and a marine motor, a small marine motor. And — it used a battery. Six-volt battery. And he did his commercial fishing for years with the Isle I. And it’s one of the old-time fishing boats …
In addition
… after he built it up and became a commercial fishing boat, then he only used the sail from time to time just to save gasoline if the wind was right.
Along with the boat’s hull, Robert Johns has also preserved the engine and sailing rig from the Isle.
I have the spar for it in Duluth, here. And there’s a place near the bow where the mast would fit. And there was a sail for it. I still have the sail, but it’s rather old and it’s not very good any more. But I still retain it as a memorial-type thing. But the mast would fit near the bow of the boat and it was one big sail with a rope at the end to hold it when the wind would blow. And he used that at times to save gasoline. But otherwise it wasn’t used. [16]
The gasoline engine, though tiny, was thoroughly reliable. It’s only a one-cylinder motor that ran the boat … And it ran on regular gasoline, and you mix the oil and the gas together. And they had a few oil cups on the motor that you would put oil in, and that would lubricate the motor a little more. But that motor and boat ran for many, many years.
Edgar also performed routine maintenance, replacing planks and ribs as necessary with whatever lumber and other materials were at hand, his son recalling that he “… used to repair it quite a bit.” [17]
One of these repairs was a completely new rudder. Prior to the invention of powered net lifters which brought the loaded gill nets in over the bow, such rigs were set and hauled from the sterns of the fishing Mackinaws. To avoid entangling the nets, rudders were unshipped and brought inboard. The Isle’s original rudder, heavily reinforced with metal straps, had been brought inboard during one work run. The running gill net caught it and carried it overboard into the deep water off the north side of Barnum Island, where it still rests today.
The recollections of father (now deceased) and son are supported by a copy of the Isle’s registration, dated June 19,1939, which describes her as an open “gas screw wood boat” having a length overall of eighteen feet, a beam of five feet, and a maximum draft of two feet. She was assigned a registration number of 36B898. At that time, she was fitted with a four horsepower Detroit Marine Waterman Company engine, serial number 12108. She was valued at two hundred dollars, a significant investment for that time. [18]
Although fairly young during the years when she was in use, Robert Johns did have some experience riding in and operating the Isle.
“. . .Edgar Johns is the one that ran the boat. I did commercial fishing. He had pond nets, deep water nets, herring nets, and what they call gill nets… And so, he carried all of his fish in Isle I. And he used to carry a lot of fish. They used to catch them by the ton. Anyway, this boat has done a lot of commercial fishing for years and years, and Edgar Johns, like I say, ran the boat for most of the time. And I was with him a lot of times, but I was growing up at the time. A young kid.”
He recalled, “A wooden boat of any kind will ride nicer and better in the waves than aluminum or fiberglass. In addition this boat . . . took the waves real good. It would rise up and down on the waves real gentle-like. It didn’t come down with a crash, like some boats do”. [19]
One of his earliest memories of the Isle is the following:
Well, we went out to raise nets one morning, and I vaguely recall the incident myself. But my father was fixing the motor. We were half-way out to the nets, out by the Rock of Ages Lighthouse, and my father was sort of greasing up the motor while it was running. And I was steering. In those days, we used to stand up in the back end to steer, because you could see ahead of the boat, if there was any debris in the water or any shallow reef. So, by standing up, you could see it further ahead. Whereas if you sit down, it was hard to see over the bow of the boat. Anyway, my father said that he looked up and I wasn’t there; I was gone. So, he just quickly looked over the side, and he said my hand was along the railing in the back end and I was hanging on, dragging myself in the water. That I’d fallen over somehow and he didn’t notice me at the moment, but when he saw my hand there, he came back and pulled me in the boat. But that’s what he told me. That happened around 1934, ’35. Like I say, I don’t recall the incident. Very vaguely, anyway. But he told me that that’s what happened. [20]
And he has other vivid recollections as well: We were down at McCormick’s Reef fishing, and we caught some rather large fish. On our way back, we ran into a storm and the boat went through the storm OK, but when we were outside of Rainbow Cove, outside what they call the Head–that’s the point that sticks out there–the sea was awfully, the waves were awfully high. I imagine around ten, twelve feet high. That’s pretty high for a boat this size. And we almost had to beach it in Rainbow Cove. But we managed to get through, all right, and came home safely. But it was rather risky out there in the cold water. In the wind and the high waves. But the boat — the motor kept going and the boat rode along real nice in the water, and after we rounded Cumberland Point, why, we were on the lee side of the wind, so we came into the harbor OK.
But we, like I say, went out in the cold water and raised the nets — deep water nets. And it was a beautiful sight to see those big fish coming up from the deep blue to the surface of the water. And then a lot of times we were in deep fog and had to slow down and find our way into the harbors. [21]
The Johns family probably continued using the Isle until the 1940s. Ultimately, she was laid up in the family’s boathouse on Barnum Island.
At that time infestation of the parasitic sea lamprey into Lake Superior was decimating the lake trout population, and the increasing regulation of the fishermen’s lives that came with the establishment of Isle Royale as a national park combined to force many of the old-time island residents out of the business. As a part of their property settlement with the park, the Johns family abandoned all their claims to Barnum Island and moved across Washington Harbor to Johns Island. The Isle remained in the old boathouse on Barnum Island until around 1976, when the structure began to collapse. The little boat had suffered from years of neglect, particularly in having a large hole where a visitor had jumped through her bottom planking. Undaunted, the Johns family nailed a piece of asphalt shingle over the hole and floated her over to Johns Island, where they hauled her up on shore. Her tiller and sail were put in the rafters of the Johns’ cottage; engine, mast, and gaff were carried back to the family home in Duluth; her rudder was screwed to the wall of the Windigo Ranger Station. [22]
While unsafe to use, the Isle was still an important part of the family’s history. They kept her covered and protected from the vagaries of weather and human mischief until the summer of 1990, when Robert Johns, hearing of my interest, invited me to examine her there. [23]
At that time, I was examining a large number of vessels. Time permitted only a few photographs and some quick sketches. But as the survey progressed, the Isle’s uniqueness and importance as an example of transition in technology became apparent.
Around 1910, with the increasing availability of the inboard marine engine, Mackinaw owners began placing them in their boats for supplemental power. Later, boatbuilders constructed craft with a traditional Mackinaw-style hull design but both engines and sails were standard equipment. Ultimately, the sailing rigs were abandoned and a new variation eme1·ged, with a semi-traditional Mackinaw hull and inboard power — the gas boat. Its hull shape would vary according to the builder and user preferences dependent on particular working and sailing conditions; but the Mackinaw origins would always be apparent. This type completely superseded the Mackinaw sailboat and continued as the primary industry workhorse until the Island fishing industry collapsed in the 1950s.
Perhaps a dozen gas boats remain in the western Lake Superior region, laid up on shore or abandoned when another season’s work could not be coaxed out of them. But examples of the Mackinaw sailboat are much more rare. And the Isle’s significance exceeds its value as a surviving prototype. She is now the only example of the transition between sail and power in the Lake Superior commercial fishing industry. As such, it is not an exaggeration to say she is one of the most significant Lake Superior small craft in existence.
In the summer of 1994 it was my privilege to stay at the Sivertson Fishery on Washington Island, Isle Royale. I commuted by kayak to Johns Island, spending my days taking detailed measurements of each plank, hole, and fastening in the Isle’s hull. This painstaking examination enabled me to know the little vessel like no one now living. I was able to distinguish additions and repairs from original construction, revealing how she had been changed over time. As a result, I could discern her original lines and determine what features were the changes made by Edgar Johns. I am currently in the process of using my records to draft a set of lines and plans for Isle, which will in turn be used in the construction of an exact scale model. In this way she will be preserved, at least, on paper and in miniature.
At first glance, Isle is unimpressive — a small open boat, only eighteen feet, five inches overall length, with a maximum beam of five-and-a-half feet. In the stern is a tiny afterdeck on which the helmsman stood, turning the heavy wooden rudder by holding its tiller between his legs. Just ahead is the engine bed, a framework of heavier timbers that supported the tiny engine; beyond that an L-shaped box seat. Forward is the mast step atop the keel, and a metal collar that held the mast braced against a thwart. There is a tiny foredeck covering the sheet metal tank that held about four gallons of fuel. A single set of oarlock pads mounted forward of amidships provided one means of auxiliary power. The mast could be stepped or struck by hand, and carried a gaff rigged mainsail. She would have been a crowded little vessel, carrying oars, sailing rig, engine, fishing gear, and crew. The small ribs and thin planks do not seem much of a bulwark against stormy Lake Superior. However, imagining her miles out in the rough waters, with several hundred pounds of fish packed into her tiny hull, and two cold and tired fishermen slowly guiding her home makes her impressive indeed. Even more so the men who daily entrusted their lives to her.
The hull was strip-built, having a thin shell of narrow planks into which were set a series of curved ribs or frames. The bow was full, and the straight raked stem was formed by steam bending or a natural bend in the keel. A backbone formed from a one-piece keel and stem is a somewhat unusual occurrence, although eminently preferred because of the lack of weak points that occur in joining a separate stem and keel. Below the waterline, the hull has a traditional Mackinaw-style double-ended shape. A double-ender had the advantage of being able to ride up and split the waves of a following sea. But the Isle had what became known as a cut-away stein, which used a flat, raked transom above the water line. It was a compromise that retained some of the advantages of a double-ender while providing the additional work space of a square sterned boat. The freeboard of the hull has been raised through the addition of a wide strake of planking at the sheer line on both port and starboard sides. This is supported by a series of sister frames which are attached to the original ribs and extend above the old shear line — some of the alterations reportedly made by Edgar Johns. The physical evidence provided by the hull does indeed agree with Robert Johns’ recollections of her history.
Preservation on paper and through scale models is all very well, and sometimes the only practical solution. But nothing excites interest and imagination like the actual historical fabric of a vessel. It was with this in mind that I negotiated an agreement between Robert Johns and the directors of a museum proposed for construction on the Minnesota North Shore for displaying the Isle — provided I could get her off Johns Island and back to the mainland.
Recruiting Volunteers
With no money or organizational support, I begged and borrowed equipment and rounded up a crew of enthusiastic volunteers. We plugged all the major holes in the Isle, rolled her into the water, and towed her five miles to the head of Washington Harbor, at the west end of Isle Royale. The crew of a work barge docked there on a construction job generously used its crane to lift her out of the water, then gave her and me a free ride across fifty miles of Lake Superior on the barge’s regular trip to the Michigan mainland. Another volunteer met us there with a borrowed boat trailer, and we hauled the Isle around the head of the lake and up the North Shore to the shop of a wooden boat builder and restoration specialist.
So, the Isle will spend this winter on a different shore than she has been used to. Where once she had only the wolves and moose of Isle Royale for company, concerned humans now watch over her. It was a rare privilege to sail in her on her last voyage, and to bring her to her final destination. After eighty-two years, the Isle has at last come home.
NOTES:
- Rodger C. Swaruion, “Edith JOM’.A Search for the Real Mackinaw Boat,• WoodenBoat 45 /March/April 1982):100.
- Theodore J. Karamonski, Timothy Cochrane. and Richard Zeitlin A History of Isle Royal, Natw11al Part, unpublished ms. (Houghton, Michigan: Isle Royale National Park, 1991), 86.
- Hokan Lind, interview with author, 20 July 1990, interview 80, transcript, Oral History Collection. Isle Royale Notional Park. Houghton. Michigan.
- Stanley Sivertson, interview by Timothy Cochrane, 6 December 1990, interview 84, Transcript, Oral History Collection, Isle Royale National-Park, Houghton, Michigan; telephone convention with author, 16 April 1992.
- Stanley Sivertson, telephone conversation with author, 15 April 1992.
- Stanley Sivertson, telephone conversation with author, 15 April 1992.
- Theodore J. Karnmnnski, Timothy Cochrane, and Richard Zeitlin, A History of Isle Royal • National Park, unpublished ms. (Houghton, Michigan: Isle Royale National Park, 1991), 93; Lawrence Rakestraw, Commercial Fishing On Isle Royale,(Houghton, Michigan: Isle Royale Natural History Association, 1968).
- Roy Oberg, interview with author, 24 July 1990, interview 82, transcript, Orel History Collection, Isle Royale National Park, Houghton. Michigan.
- Theodore J. Karamanaki, Timothy Cochrane, and Richard Zeitlin, TM Enticing Island: A History of Isle Royal• National Para, unpublished ms. (Houghton, Michigan: Isle Royale National Park, 1991), 93.
- Rodger C. Swanson. “Edith Jare: A Search for the Real Mackinaw Boat,” WoodenBoat 46 (March/April 1982):100.
- Edgar R. Johns, interview with Helen M.White.12 September 1968, transcript. Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul, MN.
- Robert E. Johns. ‘A Brief History of the Johns Family Harbor, Isle Royale, Michigan (unpublished ms.. Isle) Royale National Park, Houghton, Michigan, 12 November 1987.
- through 21. Robert E. Johns, History with author, Duluth, Minnesota, 26 September 1992.
22. Robert E. Johns. interview with author, Duluth, Minnesota. 25 September 1992.
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