July 5, 2007

I live in southern New Jersey and back in the mid seventies I worked at a small shipyard called Dorchester Shipyard, At that time they mostly worked on Oyster boats that worked the Delaware bay, but during WW2 they built Mine Sweepers. I started out in what they called the Bull Gang, which consisted of scrapping and scrubbing the barnacles off the bottom of the boats and preparing them to be worked on, and finally caulked and painted. Incidentally, down here they call caulking the boat (Corking). Anyway, after about 8 months in the bull gang, two out of the three caulkers quit and the one caulker that was left was scrambling to find help, so he offered to teach me and with the blessing of the boss. I moved from the Bull gang to the (Corking) gang. They had a retired caulker that would come in from time to time to help them out once in a while in the busy season and he took a liking to me , probably so he could retire full time. So he set me up with a good set of tools. He had about three sets, and gave me the best out of the three sets he had. I remember him telling me that C. Drew irons were the best you could get and I managed to get almost a whole set of C. Drew Irons except for hooking iron that the black smith at the shipyard made for me; also got a beautiful Black Mesquite mallet. I left the shipyard after another year and got into union construction, but continued to caulk for many years as a side business. I haven't caulked in about 6 years now , but still have the tools and keep them clean and oiled. Your website brought back some of the best memories of my life, working at that shipyard. Did the company also make hawsing irons? That was not good memories of hawsing in the seems.