Shipwrights refit a bit of Boston's Revolutionary history

Leon Poindexter is the master shipwright in charge of Beaver II. He's worked on wooden vessels all his life. He and the other shipwrights - John Hinckley, Doug Parsons, and Nate Piper - learned their skills by working in shipyards and marinas.

On the starboard (right) side of the ship, one shipwright looks at a stretch of hull that's waiting for new planking. The new planks are straight and flat, but the hull is curved. To make a plank bend to fit the hull, shipwrights soften it using steam. Steam is piped to a long wooden box from a boiler. In the 1700s, a wood fire heated the steam. Today, Mr. Poindexter and his crew use a boiler that used to heat a house.

When the shipwrights need to bend a plank to fit the curved hull of the ship, they fire up the boiler. Then they put the plank into the steam box, and wait. It takes an hour to steam an oak plank that's one inch thick. But Beaver II's planks are 2-1/2 inches thick. It takes 2-1/2 hours to steam them.

When the plank is pliable, it is put on the hull and clamped in position. Six-inch-long galvanized-steel spikes are pounded in to hold it in place. Once the plank cools, it will keep its shape.

There's very little about historic wooden ships that mystifies Beaver II's shipwrights. But if they could, there is something in particular they would ask their 18th-century counterparts. To hold a ship's frames together and to fasten the planking to the frames, 18th-century shipwrights would have used long wooden pins called trunnels (also spelled "treenails"). The original Beaver's trunnels were probably 1-1/8 inches in diameter and 12 to 18 inches long.

Three hundred years ago, shipwrights would have used hand augers to drill holes for the trunnels, which would have been pounded home with wooden mallets (beetles). Hand augers were shaped like a T and had to be twisted to gouge out a hole with a spoon-shaped bit. Braces, or bitstocks, were also used. They had a bend in the shaft so the drilling could be done with a continuous motion.

"There are thousands of holes on a boat like this," Poindexter says, "and they were all drilled by hand." Not only that, he continues, "they're big holes, too. You had to put 1-1/8-inch trunnels into them." Drilling by hand is hard work.

Drilling big, deep holes in tough oak is even harder work. What he wants to know is, "How did they have the persistence and the stamina to do it, day in and day out?"

Like their British cousins, American colonists loved their tea - imported by Britain's Honourable East India Company. In 1763, Great Britain had just taken over vast new North American territories by winning the French and Indian War, but now the nation was heavily in debt.

To raise money, Britain's Parliament passed a series of laws that hit the American colonists hard. The new laws called for heavy taxes on imported products such as sugar, coffee, printed matter (the notorious Stamp Act) - and finally, tea.

Many colonists thought the taxes were very unfair. Most of all, they objected to Parliament deciding what taxes they should pay, especially since the colonists had no voting representatives in Parliament. Some colonists became very outspoken on this issue. They began to protest. It worked, a little: In 1770, Parliament repealed many of the taxes, but not the one on tea. So many colonists decided to use their power as consumers: They refused to buy tea from the East India Company.

The boycott was so successful that it helped bring the East India Company close to bankruptcy. Parliament finally lowered the tea tax in 1773, but it was too little, too late. When the tea-laden vessels Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver sailed to Boston in late 1773, members of the rebellious Sons of Liberty concocted a plan to show their continuing displeasure.

On the evening of Dec. 16, disguised (not very convincingly) as native Americans, the Sons of Liberty boarded the merchant ships. In three hours they dumped 342 crates of tea into the water. The Boston Tea Party was over.

• The Boston Tea Party Ship & Museum will reopen late next year in Boston. The overhauled Beaver II will be joined by a replica of one of her two sister ships. The third ship is scheduled to join them a year later.

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