Grey-Bruce Boomers Winter2023

THE BUCKET LIST
and thread – and sometimes an old Singer sewing
machine – to fashion sails, rigging, and rope ladders
for his model ships. He does admit, however, that
despite his sewing prowess, he still accidentally jabs
himself with needles on a regular basis.
“It’s one of the hazards of the job,” he laughed.
Even after decades of building ships, it is still an allconsuming
passion. When Tom is working on a ship,
he becomes so engrossed that he often loses track of
time.
“I’ll be down in my basement workshop and suddenly
realize that I don’t know if it is day or night,” he
admitted. “The hours just fly by and I don’t notice.
It sometimes gets so bad that my partner has to drag
me out of what she calls my dungeon for meals.”
He wouldn’t have it any other way, though. He thrives
on coming up with ideas for model vessels and then
using his hands to make those ideas a reality.
There is no shortage of ideas for Tom, either.
They come from the extensive reading he does on
naval warships and marine merchant ships, and
from documentaries he watches on explorers who
ventured onto the seas to discover different parts of
the world. Or from the fact that he was one of the
volunteers who, with shovel in hand, helped unearth
the HMS Hunter on the Southampton beach some
two decades ago.
A veteran of the War of 1812, the British warship
HMS General Hunter was captured by the Americans
in 1813. Put to work for the U.S. Army, the ship
spent years transporting supplies up and down the
Great Lakes – until a fateful day in August 1816. A
ferocious storm swept across Lake Huron, driving
the vessel ashore just south of the Saugeen River.
The crew escaped, but the ship met its doom. Unable
to be rescued, the Hunter was set afire by the U.S.
Army. The vessel’s remains lay hidden for 185 years,
until April 2001, when timbers from her frame were
found poking through the sand on the Southampton
beach, like whale bones. With the help of countless
volunteers, the ship was exhumed; it was studied
and catalogued by archaeologists; then reburied to
preserve it. Today a plaque on the Southampton
beach marks the final resting place of the ancient
warship.
While innumerable people have offered “big dollars”
to buy Tom’s model ships, he has never been able
to part with one, except for his model of the General
Hunter, which is currently on display in the Bruce
County Museum & Cultural Centre. As he tells it,
he builds the vessels for pleasure, not reward, and
he wants to hold onto each of his handcrafted ships.
24 • GREYBRUCEBOOMERS.COM