War Canoes

One of the fun things about camp is the occasional treasure that is discovered in one of the barns or storage sheds. Most of the items that are uncovered are interesting and inspire a sense of delight and awe as the history of that nick-nack is considered. The very best, coolest, and most awe inspiring find of my life was the two war canoes that have been hiding in our warehouse for a very long time.

Camp has always had a wonderful canoeing program. Dr. Sevier bought the very best: canvas covered Old Town canoes manufactured by the Old Town Canoe Company in Maine for the Greystone girls of North Carolina in the 1920’s.

We used these canoes for everything. Not only perfecting basic lake canoeing strokes and techniques, but also taking them on whitewater rivers (where they were often damaged by shallow rocks) and even decorating them for camp play days. The girls loved the canoes and this fact probably led my Great Grandfather to make a “crazy” purchase: two 26 foot War Canoes (the Cadillac of the Old Town line of expensive canoes). A war canoe can fit about 10 campers side by side, propelling the canoe very quickly through the water AND providing a wonderful platform for conversation. Imagine the wonderful timese that were shared by friends in these lovely boats!

These canoes are works of art, using the finest of materials and craftsmanship. The mahogony planking and ribs are joined by ashe stems and oak thwarts and gunwales. Custom bronze bolts and hardware details abound… they are lovely and they require a master craftsman to repair.

This is why our canoes fell into such a state. Grady, our camp maintenance worker for 50 years, died a long time ago and nobody else knew how to fix the canoes up… nobody until Perry White.

Perry was a Greystone counselor in the 70’s, Program Director in the 80’s until he left to persue other interests about 30 years ago. Perry was always a skilled carpenter and taught himself the art of canoe repair; working on the fleet of old town canoes at Mondamin (a neighboring boys camp). Perry stopped by this summer and offered his services to repair our boats and I accepted! That process started today!

I will give you updates on the progress of this exciting repair as the winter progresses. It should be exciting and will be a delight.