Grey-Bruce Boomers Winter2023

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THE BUCKET LIST A MODEL Mariner TOM MARCOTTE A MASTER SHIP BUILDER BY DOUG ARCHER Tom Marcotte, 88, goes to great lengths to research and build model ships. 20 • GREYBRUCEBOOMERS.COM
At the age of 88, Tom Marcotte spends his days designing and constructing three-mast schooners, Royal Navy vessels and even warships. He has been a master ship builder for decades and despite his age, the octogenarian has no plans to turn in his tools. Of course, it helps that the ships he builds are no more than three feet long and four feet high. The Saugeen Shores resident fabricates model ships, using wood, glue, thread and cloth to craft detailed miniature replicas of sea-going vessels – and some rather famous ones at that. Tom has created small-scale versions of the twin ships the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which were captained by Sir John Franklin on his ill-fated search for the Northwest Passage. He’s constructed a bathtub-sized version of the USS Constitution, the world’s oldest commissioned naval warship still afloat. He has even built ships of local renown, fabricating a scale model of the Nemesis, a schooner built and sailed by Captain John Spence, one of the men who helped put the town of Southampton on the map back in the mid-1800s, and another of the HMS General Hunter, a British ship that battled in the War of 1812 and now lies beneath the sands of Southampton’s main beach. In 1845, Captain Sir John Franklin and a crew of 128 men departed England aboard two ships known as the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Their mission – to find the Northwest Passage, a sea route that would link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Tragically, the expedition was fated to become one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration. Becoming icebound in Victoria Strait, near what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut, the two ships remained trapped for more than a year without rescue when the surviving crew members abandoned the vessels and set out across the ice for the Canadian mainland. They never made it. The men disappeared. It would be more than a centuryand-a-half before search teams finally located the wrecks of the Erebus and Terror. The locations of the sunken ships are now protected as National Historic Sites. Tom blames his passion for model ship building on summer camp. When he was seven years old, his mother worked as a cook at a YMCA camp, and Tom would spend his summers helping her in the kitchen by washing dishes. “After the dishes were done, I would join the other kids in all the camp activities,” he said, “including canoeing, taking out the rowboats, and learning how to sail.” That started a lifelong love of boats, and Tom became an accomplished sailor. He took canoe trips deep into the wilderness of northern Canada and, for a while, he even became a canoeing instructor. He also started building tiny ships. “My then wife and I ran a bed and breakfast for WINTER 2023/24 • 21
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Grey-Bruce Boomers Winter2023

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