Gift of the Portland

Gil Carlson with his model of the Portland.

Gift of the Portland to be on Display for Maritime Month

Camden ship model-builder Gil Carlson worked all winter in order to present his newest creation, the Portland, to the Camden Public Library in time for Maritime Month. The original Portland measured 291 feet in total length with a beam of 68 feet. It was built in 1889 by the New England Shipbuilding Company of Bath, Maine, and was one of New England’s largest and most luxurious side-paddle wheel steamships. The steamship Portland was lost in a huge storm that struck New England on November 26-27, 1898, sinking over 140 ships and boats.  The storm subsequently became known as the Portland Gale.

The library will host an illustrated talk on “The Wreck of the Portland” with Dick Cornelia on Thursday, April 25, at 7:00 pm, as part of Maritime Month.

A Life’s Love of Building Things Large and Small

Gil Carlson’s son Jonathan writes, “This model marks a moment in a life’s love of building things large and small, and of the workshop being central to my father’s existence. It is a place where problems can be solved by thoughtful reasoning, logic, trial and error, and experimentation. Having the right tools, maintaining them, and using them properly to achieve almost anything one can dream up is the legacy my father inherited from his father, a WWI Veteran. I take those lessons, and many more forward with me, and I’m so pleased that this model, which to me carries significance far beyond its face-value, will be seen and appreciated by many in such a wonderful place as the Camden Public Library.”

Jonathan continues, “My father was a U.S. Navy submarine commander, and was on several submarines, both diesel and nuclear. He was Commander of U.S.S. Jallao, which was originally a WWII era sub, which was refitted and updated. He was also Executive Officer aboard the U.S.S. Simon Lake, which was a submarine tender. He had started a model of the Cutty Sark in the mid 70s, I believe during the time he had a tour of duty in London. That model would be completed several years later. There were to be several more moves before my parents arrived in Camden in 2006, following after me (I came here in 2003).

“Fully retired now, from twenty years in the Navy, and another twenty years of civilian work in Washington, DC, as well as the ownership of a bed and breakfast in Virginia run by my mother for several years, my parents came to Camden, and my father built yet another workshop, the best yet of the many he’d established. So in addition to the usual ‘puttering’ around in his workshop, and repairing things and building odds and ends, model making finally became a real focus. In total, over the years, Gil built 13 models, and restored or finished another four for the Sail, Power and Steam Museum in Rockland. The majority of those models were built here in his Camden workshop, and include among other things, a few square riggers, the America’s Cup winner America (now on display at the Anderson Inn, Quarry Hill), a tugboat, a Mississippi River paddle-wheel steamboat, the schooner Bowdoin, and America’s Cup J-class yacht Endeavor.

“My Dad began volunteering for the Sail, Power and Steam Museum, and befriended its creator Jim Sharp (a onetime owner and savior of the Schooner Bowdoin, having brought her back from a state of near ruin). He put in many hours prior to and after the opening of the Museum, and in addition to models which he offered to add to the display, Jim Sharp enlisted my dad’s skills to restore or complete several models. One being a large steamship which was about two-thirds complete, and for another my dad sewed a complete suit of sails from scratch as per Jim’s request, since the model had none.

“Another interesting thing, my Dad, being the very disciplined Navy man he was, kept a log of hours spent on most of these models. He would mark down the hours spent after finishing up for the day. Some of the other more elaborate models were in the range of 600-800.”

Gil Carlson has several models on display at the Sail, Power and Steam Museum in Rockland, some of which he built entirely, and some he finished up or restored for the museum. “He actually made building ship models a real focus only in recent years, though he’d done a little of that going as far back as the 70s, starting with Cutty Sark,” added Jonathan. “My Dad said about 400 hours of work went into the Portland. I think the most time-consuming model he built was H.M.S. Peregrine, a 17th century square-rigged vessel. I think that one was more toward the 800 hour mark.”