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 _ Whig 2007-02-06(Updated: 2007.02.06 10:36:15 AM) |
Group’s priority is ship’s shape
Brock Harrison
Local News - Tuesday, February 06, 2007 Updated @ 11:24:52 PM
A 93-year-old steamboat that dates from Kingston at the time of the First World War will be back in the public domain later this year – but she needs a home first.
Thanks to a dedicated army of volunteers, the Phoebe – a 48-foot luxury steam launch big enough for 15 built by the Davis Dry Dock company in Kingston in 1914 – has been brought back to the city after more than a half-century in the United States and is now fully restored.
That volunteer army, officially known at Friends of the Phoebe, poured 20,000 hours into its restoration and raised enough money to buy a trailer for the boat to rest on while they set to work completing the final stage of the repatriation project: building a $110,000 wooden shelter to house the boat at the Pump House Steam Museum.
“She’s just waiting to come back out and be seen,” said Henk Wevers, chairman of Friends of the Phoebe. “She’ll be a terrific addition to our waterfront experience.”
On Sunday, Wevers and his team held a silent auction at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library on Johnson Street to raise money for the shelter.
Despite the hefty price tag, the project appears to be well in hand.
The group has $20,000 raised already and Wevers says it has secured $80,000 in gifts and in-kind donations towards the project. Only $10,000 more is needed to have the shelter fully funded and on the lake by September of next year.
“For once, we don’t need money from the city,” Wevers said. Friends of the Phoebe, formed in 1998 when Wevers took the boat’s restoration on as a retirement project, is in partnership with the city to get the Phoebe back in the public domain.
The Phoebe was built as a retirement gift for John Brashear, a world-renowned astronomer and president of the University of Pittsburgh. Brashear named the pleasure boat after his wife.
The Brashears owned it for almost 25 years. After it passed from their hands, it became a collector’s item for wealthy boat enthusiasts. Various owners, mostly American, acquired it between 1939 and 1979, restoring it in bits and pieces along the way.
The Phoebe was brought back to Kingston in 1979 when Jack Telgmann and the Frontenac Society of Model Engineers acquired it. In 1984, it plied the Rideau Canal as part of the famed waterway’s 150th anniversary.
After that, though, the Phoebe was mothballed behind the newly restored Pump House Steam Museum and fell into disrepair. By the time Wevers, who retired from Queen’s University as a mechanical engineering professor, took up the cause of restoring the boat, it was starting to rot away.
His group of 14 set to work immediately. Over the next five years, volunteers worked year-round on the boat. The restoration involved a near-total dismantling of the craft, reducing it to a skeletal frame before piecing it back together with new materials.
The restoration was completed in 2003 and Friends of the Phoebe went from being shipbuilders to fundraisers. First, they bought a $17,000 trailer that would move it from the waterfront to a storage facility at the Alcan property. Now they are on the verge of raising the last $10,000 needed to realize their vision.
Building materials, design and architecture work, and engineering consultation have all been donated, mainly from local companies and firms, to the tune of about $50,000.
Sean Conboy, the head of Queen Elizabeth Collegiate and Vocational Institute’s heritage carpentry program, has agreed to make the boathouse construction his class’s semester project. The in-kind labour donation is worth $30,000 alone. Construction is slated to begin in September.
“We’re getting close,” Wevers said. “When we have Phoebe in the shelter, she will be there permanently – what a terrific enrichment of Kingston’s heritage.”
To donate and help push the project over the top, contact Wevers at wevers@me.queensu.ca.