Alumni Magazine - Web Extra

In the Fall 2006 issue, we excerpted the following piece. It is reproduced here in its entirety.

The Bog Bumper’s Tale: A Pine Log Becomes a Dugout Canoe

By Derek P. Brereton, PhD
1 September 2005

When Submarine Commander Julian Coolidge, USN Ret., 70, heard I was making a dugout, he was reminded of the Russian navy’s recent attempt to rescue a disabled submersible from the bottom of the sea. Ax on shoulder I asked the Commander, “Does this project look like it needs the Russian navy?” “I just don’t know what makes you think it’ll float,” he replied. I said, “It’s wood. It’ll float.” This much most passersby were willing to grant. There were lots of them during the nine days I spent hollowing out the 13’, 1200 lb. log from a March blowdown. But the town mailman, my friend, Geoff Burrows, was not among the confident. When I was half done Geoff slowed his green Escort on his daily round and shouted cheerfully, “That thing’s gonna go straight to the bottom of the lake!” His accompanying gesture suited a kamikaze raid. As he passed on subsequent days, he settled for just the gesture.

Even those who did expect flotation did not agree as to which side would end up up. If wood is buoyant, more wood might be more buoyant. So in water my hull bottom, twice the 1.5” thickness of the sides, might rapidly become the top. Then I would suffer the ignominy of never even getting into my boat—or save face, climb aboard, and drown. Phil Holland bet me $100 it wouldn’t float. “It’s wood…” …with me in it. “You’re on.” …while paddling. “Bet!” …to Kent Island (a mile-and-a-half across Sandwich Bay). “For $100. Done!”

But we weren’t done. For the pre-launch buoyancy test, Roger Merriman, who acknowledges that with beard, bald head, and beer-induced wise expression he looks like Socrates, brought his pickup to get the would-be craft from work site to water. When I asked him to save the beer for after the job he replied, “Guess we can’t help you then.” With an old boat trailer, a roller bar, and some Yankee derring-do, he and Bob Welch, the bushy-bearded town plowman, provided the 450 lb. thing its first chance to perform nautically. Phil noted correctly that we hadn’t shaken hands. Since then I’ve noted correctly that Phil is a weasel.

Even sweeter than having friends to taunt you is gloating over their failures in judgment. Of course, I myself wondered whether my leviathan would work as a boat. It does. At the insistence of Ham Coolidge, 80, a boatsman out of the top drawer, I chain sawed out a 2” keel. I flattened the bottom and narrowed the bow and stern. I sliced 4” deep at 8” intervals from gunwale to gunwale, laid at least three thousand slices into her with a broad ax, and turned sideways again, layer by layer, to expel 800 pounds of chips with a mattock. Soaked with linseed oil the thing looks like a yellow torpedo. From a distance people think it’s a kayak, an insult to forestall which I took to wearing a jaunty captain’s cap. Wife Pam and I paddled it four miles one day, stopping at friends’ old campsteads to offer rides.

At the grand launching on 6 August 2005, Nat Coolidge, with his chorus-honed basso profundo, served as MC. To the tune of “Anchors Aweigh” he rehearsed some 40 skeptical guests for the one-and-only performance of “Bumper’s Away”. Two reporters and a photographer recorded the maiden voyage. Granddaughter Marley, 8, brandished a pink flamingo in the bows while a Jolly Roger flapped menacingly astern. Pam in her blue, bamboo, Thai excursion hat used one of my Bobcat Paddles to power the craft amidships. I did what passed for steering. Though hard to capsize entirely, the craft tips easily within a 45° arc, forcing gasps from witnesses and great heart leaps in passengers and crew. Ham intercepted the champagne intended for christening, took a few gulps, and tossed the dregs from his plastic cup over the bow. A chaplain-guest offered an impromptu blessing. Marley had put together a box of souvenirs, “Bumper Chunks”, chips from the boat’s manufacture, and several people asked me to autograph them.

But white pine dries and splits, creating a storage problem. Though northwest coast Indians still make dugouts, no one in New Hampshire knows much about them. The renowned Rollin Thurlow of Maine’s Wooden Boat School got the last word. “If it dries, it’ll split.” With this terse pronouncement the Bog Bumper’s winter fate was sealed. She now lies in 5’ of water, loaded with rocks, a feat accomplished only with a Herculean struggle and a like amount of grief. Even if the Indians did do likewise, consigning my creation to the deep struck me as a tortured mode of caring,

Waves swamped her on Roger’s and my first attempt to sink her under control. Down she went all wopperjawed, in water too shallow to ensure that ice would not destroy her. Next day, my last at Squam ‘til next summer, the skies were lowering. To try again I started removing rocks. Suddenly, and with implacable self-assertion, the bow rose up to the surface. The stern pivoted precariously on the bottom.

To my call for help the Commander replied, his voice betraying a hint of satisfaction, “I’ll be right over.” This, I realized, was his chance to make my boat like his: a submarine. Brimming with magnanimity, he hurried to provide what he was pleased to call “a rescue.” Amid rain, wind, and waves, the Commander summoned faint memories of training about pitch, roll, and negative buoyancy. I floated rocks out to him, and dumped in water, both with a 35 gallon trash can scrounged from the boathouse. But the Bog Bumper would turn turtle whether or not our hands clutched the keel, our legs flailed in water to our chests, or we graced its soul with colorful epithets. She rolled, rocks sank, we shivered. Rather than court hypothermia, we settled for a spot closer to shore.

The Bog Bumper, dubbed by octogenarian Barb Richards with a colloquial term for the American bittern, now sleeps in Davy Jones' Locker. Whether or not my boat makes it through the winter, at 60 I have realized four boyhood dreams: to chop for a week like a lumberjack, to make a wooden boat, to paddle her with my lady love, and to nap in her bilge while at anchor.

“Build me a boat that can carry two
and both shall row, my love and I.”
– The Water is Wide, American folk song