Did You Know? - Ticonderoga Part 4: Life at Shelburne Museum
The VT Folklife Archive is full of amazing first-person accounts of everyday life in Vermont and New England–past and present. In this feature, we share these stories with you.
This month, we continue with the fourth and final article in our four-part series on the steamship Ticonderoga, currently in retirement at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, VT, and portraying life onboard in 1923, 100 years ago. Vermont Folklife is proud to have a collection of interviews of many of the people who lived and worked on the Ticonderoga during its 47-year life on the lake between 1906 and 1953. In this month's article, we hear recollections from Lynn Bottom–a former captain on the Hudson River Dayline, but with a long history with Lake Champlain–about how the Ti was moved from the lake to its current location on land at the museum. Then we hear from Chip Stulin, the project manager who oversaw the restoration of the Ti in the 1990s. Both are recorded in interviews with VT Folklife founder Jane Beck in the mid 1990's.
Here, Lynn talks about the process that was used to move the Ti overland from its home in the lake to its new home at the Shelburne Museum:
Lynn: But I can remember Mrs. Webb talking about the possibility of having the boat floating at the shipyard in the harbor and then running some kind of bus service or trolley even out there to see it, to keep it in the water, and then they decided that if they were gonna do anything, they should bring it ashore, they could maintain it better. And of course, it was some project to bring the boat two miles overland, which I watched as a kid and took pictures of it. And Mr. McCallister who was the official photographer for Mrs. Webb, L.L. McCallister in Burlington, later on, he gave me a whole set of photographs, 8 x 10 black and whites. So, I have every stage of the moving operation cause I got to know him and sorry I didn't get back to see him more often. He was kind of lonely up there in his house but he enjoyed having me come up. And he said anytime if I came back he'd try to find photographs of some of the older boats. But I never got back to see him. And those things happen and you look back and wish you had maintained contact with people more.
Jane: Well, what did they do, built a special railroad, is that…?
The Ticonderoga being moved to Shelburne Museum, January 26, 1955. Photo by L.L. McCallister. University of Vermont Libraries. Special Collections.
Lynn: They built a roadbed, a double roadbed, as you would for a train, from the mouth of the LaPlatte River, which is, if you take the road down by what I call Lady Shelburne still, or Brookside Restaurant which is now an antique emporium, and go down there toward the end of the bay, you'll see a boat launch site. And that's where the dirt was taken out and they actually made what looked like a double lock chamber. There was a lower lock chamber and an upper lock chamber, and the boat was floated in the lower chamber and then diked behind it, and water was pumped in, and it came up to the second lock chamber and then floated into that, on to that level. And then once they got the water up to the height they wanted in the second lock chamber, it was floated off on to kind of a cradle affair which were like rollers, on to this double railroad track. And rather than spend money laying track all the way to the museum, they would just make use of the track as they went along. So, the boat would be towed maybe a couple of hundred feet a day, and then the track would be taken up behind it and put ahead of it so that it could be towed the next day a couple more hundred feet or however much they did per day. And they had--
Jane: I didn’t realize that.
Lynn: Yes, they had to do it in, during the winter when the ground was frozen. So, they started in October of 1954, as I remember, and then it was all completed by around April or so of '55 when they got it to the museum grounds, but they had an early spring thaw, which wasn't forecast. And I can remember seeing it in a barnyard, which had to pass through this cow yard. And these Holstein cow of course were there, looking up at it, wondering what in the world had landed there. But that's about where it wound up and almost was lost because it was very serious a situation, the thaw came early, and the boat was starting to settle, so that they were really worried about having it topple over there. So, they were very fortunate that the ground froze again. And they were able to move on, down to the museum.
Jane: And got her the rest of the way.
Lynn: And got her all the rest of the way okay.
Lynn remembers the emotional impact it had on him, even as a young child, seeing the boat taken off of the lake for the last time:
Jane: Well, a lot of people I've talked to just have kind of a reverence about the Ti. Can you describe that at all? Or did you feel that way?
Lynn: I did and I cried and cried when they took if off the lake, you see, however old I was, eight or nine years old, because it was losing a friend. I mean it was going to be saved but it wasn't the same. And I can remember going up with my sixth-grade class to visit the museum and I almost hated to go aboard, it just wasn't the same. But I did and I wound up telling the kids, who had never been on it something about having the privilege of, the experience of riding the boat. So, I guess that made me a big wheel that day but anyway. [laughs] Marty [Fisher, former captain] told me that it was a long time before he'd go on the boat again, after it was taken off the lake. There's just something about it, it didn't seem natural but we're all very happy that it was saved as the last of its kind. Which it's gone through, this is the second restoration since it came ashore.
Next, we hear from Chip Stulin about his excitement and trepidation on being hired in 1993 to oversee the restoration of the ship:
Chip: When I first saw the Ti and had taken a tour through it with David and then left on my own–this was in the wintertime, so the museum was closed–yeah, I was overwhelmed by the size of it, but I was also really excited. I mean it was--you know it just kept coming back to me, I mean what an opportunity. And there's a lot of just great woodworking potential, a lot of great work that was on the boat and it was also in really bad shape. And I could see all of these things that needed to be repaired and fixed and addressed and immediately my mind was scheming as, you know, how to do it. But like you said, I was, yeah, I was saying, "Geez, what am I getting myself into?" But, on the other hand, if you don't take a leap, you know, you're not gonna get anywhere and grow so this was, it looked like just a great potential opportunity.
Although Chip had extensive boat building experience, the restoration of a paddlewheel ship that was the last of its kind was a completely new challenge. Here, he talks about some of the issues around doing a restoration correctly: (starts around 6:55)
Chip: And as long as, as long as it's being done right, then the satisfaction is there. The other thing that is very difficult I think–and it's very difficult in any sort of restoration project–is the balance of preservation, and in bringing in new materials. And taking out old and, and not preserving old for, for in some situations because of just deterioration has gone too far for a structural member and you know you've got to take it out, you got to put in new material there. And to build it back up and in other situations it's not so clear cut. And a lot of the work is very tedious, it's that type of work. Of mundane processes in order just to get it to the point where you can actually do what I would consider real restoration work. And that is, restoring the wood elements and the structure elements and then.
Jane: And I would imagine matching materials, and a or substitute.
The Ti’s unique etched and engraved windows. Image (c) 2013 to Still Learning to See.
Chip: Substitute…matching materials we're still at a time period, I think where we can get the woods that we need to be able to do the restoration. There is–we're not at a point yet where I can't come up with good quality Douglas fir, for example. A lot of the Ti is built out of Douglas fir. Or good quality white pine, I can get that locally. It takes some effort and it takes some searching and it sometimes takes buying more materials then you need to do the job, so you select and cull out the bad. But, other elements like double acid etched windows for the turtle deck. The T within the wreath, it took a phenomenal amount of time just to try to find a supplier. A lot of time was spent on that. And it ended up that we had to go to Austria. So it took a lot of time talking with a lot of glass people all over the country to find somebody that would do it, they would, many of them would say, "Oh yeah, we can do that, we can duplicate it." And you send out a pattern and it comes back and it's just not there. That all fell into place because the other pattern that's around the turtle dome deck is a wheel cut piece, cut glass piece. It's a circle like a bull's eye. And there was a glass artist in, outside of Corning, New York, Thomas Tisch, who's Austrian. And that took that on, took that project on. And it was through him and contacts of his family who were in the glassworks in Austria, that they were able to find a firm there to do the acid etching. So we did have to go far afield for that.
To balance the challenging restoration issues, there were also wonderful surprises that came up during the restoration. Here, Chip shares one of those surprises:
Chip: And we're tearing, and we're opening it up, we're taking elements of the Ti apart, taking off panels, quite often we come to, no real messages, but we get a signature of the workmen, probably the workmen that put it in, and a date. And that's always a real highlight, just to tie in from that, with that earlier time period. There haven't really been any, when we've done that and opened it up, there haven't been anything, from a, from a documentary standpoint that's helped us for the restoration, but every time that happens, we take a photograph of it. We don't put a primer coat of paint over that, we leave that blank. And try to preserve it. And record where it is.
Finally, Chip shares his own sense of tremendous satisfaction in having played a role in keeping the Ti alive for future generations:
Chip: I mean getting, getting these little bits and pieces of the puzzle put together and the whole history that you're bringing forth. I mean, it's those stories that bring the Ti alive. Cause it's really one artifact here at the museum that's within living memory of so many people in the area. When the museum opens for its season, we constantly get people coming on board, saying "Oh, my parents rode on the Ti." Or, "I rode on the Ti and it was just great." Or, "I had my class trip on the Ti." And it really brings it, it brings it to life. And I think if you go around to any other structure here at the museum, you don't have that same type of relationship with the visitors to that object.
The Ti was–and still is–a very special ship to those who live around Lake Champlain. Vermont Folklife is grateful to all of those people who lived and worked aboard her, and who shared their firsthand accounts of those experiences.