Noah's Ark as Model for Boat

1920

Lake Erie Fisherman Had Faith Enough in Idea to Build One

Saudusky, Ohio — Ed Lampe, a fisherman at Vermilion, a Lake Erie port town twenty-two miles east of this city, was reading a story about Noah's ark to his children one night several months ago, when it occurred to him that were the craft of Noah's time resurrected and modernized a little it might have a tendency to lessen the toll that storms take annually in the Great Lakes section.

Lampe is a gillnetter of many years' experience, and in the picture of Noah's ark that embellished the story he was reading, he recognized wonderful possibilities. The storms of the Great Lakes section rage furiously in spring, following the opening of the navigation season, and again in fall, just before the season closes. Many men lose their lives and much valuable property is destroyed.

The gillnetters, as those fishermen who fish with gill nets are known, are oftener the victims than are the members of any other body of men engaged in fishing; their work is more hazardous. When disaster comes it is usually the gillnetters' boat, or "tug," that is destroyed.

A Real Success

Lampe designed a boat on the plan of Noah's ark. With the aid of several fishermen friends he brought his design to materialization. He tried the craft out and it met every expectation. It ploughed the most vicious billows, going out and returning when other boats had to be kept in port.

Lampe's craft attracted the attention, of the commercial fishing interests of the Lake Erie section and investigators were sent to Vermilion. If it were true that a Vermilion fisherman had invented a boat patterned after Noah's ark that would lessen the risk of spring and fall season fishing they wanted to give the fishermen the benefit of the discovery, they said.

The Vermilion gillnetter would not listen to a proposition to sell his idea, nor would he talk of royalty.

"If you can save some poor devil's life by using my style of boat, go ahead and use it," he said.

The United Fisheries company of this city, one of the largest organizations of its kind operating on Lake Erie, recently completed the first of six gillnet tugs of the type designed by Lampe, at a shipbuilding plant in this city. The other five are to be ready to be commissioned at the beginning of the spring fishing season of 1920.

Lampe christened his boat Victory, for the reason that she is believed to have triumphed over the storm. With a bow like that of a battleship, and a body otherwise that resembles the conventional pictures of Noah's ark, she has been successfully combating the roughest seas that the Lake Erie nor'easter has been able thus far to kick up.

Victory is fifty-five feet long, with a fifteen foot beam. She is equipped with two power plants, so that if one should happen to "go bad," the other will be available. Her upper works are so constructed that they can be made almost water tight and her hull bears the weight required to right her immediately if she should happen to turnover.

"I would as lief be sitting in the cabin of Victory as in my office or my home, no matter how severe the storm," said Charles F. Mischler, president of the United Fisheries company, discussing the new gillnetting craft.

Fishermen say that boats of this kind will, in the near future, replace the old-time gillnetting tugs now in use, and that a big saving in life and property will result.