Thursday July 29, 2010

Welcome to the Winterton Boat Building Museum website, an on-line exhibit for you to explore the history and culture of Winterton's finest boat builders.

Throughout the 20th Century, fishermen in Winterton, Newfoundland, enjoyed a reputation for making fine boats. Using only hand tools and local timber, they built skiffs, punts or "rodneys", motor boats and schooners. The local trap skiffs and punts were perfectly suited for hauling fish from Trinity Bay. These were work boats, as practical as wheelbarrows, as graceful as antique rockers. The flutter of their oil-soaked sails and the clatter of their make-and-break engines were as familiar to villagers as the wind and the waves. 

This community museum, just 90 minutes from St. John's on the Baccalieu Trail, celebrates the skill and ingenuity of Winterton's boat builders. We have full-size boats, constructed and used in the community, all the tools employed to build and sail them. In our boat building shop, you'll see a motor boat under construction. Down by the wharf, you'll find the beautiful motor boat craftsman Ralph Coates built in 2000 as a Canada Millennium project. A photo essay by folklorist David A. Taylor of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., depicts boat building here in the 1970s along with photographs taken by Ralph Reid dating back to the fifties. The museum's second floor has a vast array of lifestyle artifacts including 
The Oldest English Headstone in the Province, Cooperage tools and techniques, a magnificent Horse drawn Hearse, Agriculture tools, Military displays, Transport & communication and domestic displays and much more.

A "killick" is the name for an anchor for a small boat that could be constructed from three or four pieces of wood, a large rock and rope/twine.

Wooden Boat News!

Click Here to Download the Lastest Edition of Wooden Boat News [pdf]
Please email us at wintertonmuseum@persona.ca if you wish to receive a copy of our newsletter.

NEW!

Dr. David Taylor’s book Boat Building in Winterton
The Winterton Heritage Advisory Board is now selling copies of Dr. David Taylor’s book Boat Building in Winterton. The cost of the book is $30.00 CAN plus postage. Postage rates are as follows: $8.54 Atlantic Canada, $11.76 other provinces and territories, $14.89 U.S.A and $13.73 International. All postage prices are in Canadian dollars. To purchase a copy of this book, please send a money order or bank draft to the Winterton Heritage Advisory Board P.O. Box 59 Winterton, NL Canada A0B 3M0.

NOTE! To ensure you recieve a copy place your order early, as we have a limited number in our inventory.

Visitor # 2080

The Winterton Boat Building Museum is operated by the Winterton Heritage Advisory Board, a committee of the Town of Winterton P.O. Box 59, Winterton, NL A0B 3M0

Special thanks to Mariner Resource Opportunities Network Inc. for their technical help and support .