Seumas: athome at sea

IN the 1870s a 16-year-old Finnish sailor, Frederick Doepel, jumped ship at Sydney. He had a dream: to build his own schooner.
The champagne bottle smashed at the launch of the Alma Doepel in 1903, to name the ship after his little girl.
It is the only commercial tall ship of its kind to survive in Australia today.
Seumas MacLeod helped sail the Alma Doepel into Melbourne from Port Macquarie early this year.
He started as a volunteer and now earns an income from his work.
It was his passion for the sea and for the engineering mastery of the tall ships that inspired him to join the team, under the guidance of the non-profit organisation that manages the ship.
Seumas, 35, grew up in Berwick and went to Berwick Primary School and then to Beaconhills College before continuing his education at Melbourne High School.
He always loved volunteering. In the early 1990s he was among four finalists for the City of Berwick young citizen of the year award, for his participation in youth leadership.
He was also a volunteer at the Berwick Mechanics Institute Free Library and at Wilson Botanic Park.
The respect Seumas has for the old sea vessel places him in the company of the poet Longfellow, from whose poem The Building of a Ship come the words: “Build me straight, O worthy master!”
The Alma Doepel is much the worse for wear these days as she rests at Docklands, where Seumas is supervising repairs and refurbishment.
He describes himself as an “attachment to the ship”, living on board since he first became involved in the project.
“It has been a 24-hour job most of the time.”
He studies the history, checks fittings, scrubs the beams and stern posts, and oversees young volunteers and trainees.
What fascinates him is the intricacy of the ropes, the masts, and the sails, and the ways they interact with the forces of nature.
“My dad, Alex, was an electrical design engineer, and from a young age I was surrounded by gadgets,” he says.
Mum Rosemairi, a Berwick resident, recalls: “Seumas was always wanting to see the mechanics of things. Instead of watching the television, he wanted to take it apart. And when his dad built a computer, instead of using it, Seumas wanted to pull that apart too, to solve his questions about how it worked.”
An observer can see that Seumas’s ability to fix equipment, scramble up the mast, tend to the gear, and trouble-shoot, are what make him valuable on board.
Seaworthy but not in survey, the Alma Doepel is destined to sail again as a youth training ship and for public tourism, but not before massive work and cost.
“The restoration project will cost about $3 million,” Seumas says.
When it does sail again, Seumas will look back on the part he played in the saga.
The Alma Doepel took more than a year to build. A forest hermit known as Big Mick carved the 30-metre keel from a single tree, scraping out the central rot and ensured there were no knots in the timber.
At first the almost flat-bottomed ship, effectively one single floating cargo hold, carried timber and sheep along rivers and up and down the eastern seaboard from Port Macquarie to Melbourne and Hobart, and across to New Zealand.
Then in 1943 the army contracted it for war service, returning it to private trade afterwards.
As they say with ships, the old lady lost her dignity more than once, first when the army demasted her and installed three bus engines, and again in 1959 and 1961 when the owners stripped her down to the hull, left her nearly mastless again, and used her to carry limestone on a four-hour run with a crew of three.
Like Frederick Doepel, the ship’s modern day owners have a dream and a story to tell.
Those owners have included Elders IXL and a couple of Melbourne enthusiasts: 1956 Olympic silver medallist and Scotch College master of rowing, David Boykett, and another Scotch College rower, Michael Wood.
Boykett and Wood acquired the derelict ship by negotiation from Elders for the price of a five cylinder and an eight cylinder engine.
A supporters club, sponsorship, and the hard work of Michael Wood ensured that, just in time, the Alma Doepel would sail splendid again, in the bicentenary fleet on 25 January 1988.
The organisation Sail and Adventure now operates the ship, with chairman Alan Edenborough, appointed master of the vessel John Carrol, and refit committee head Peter Harris.
For Seumas, the ship’s future is a consuming passion.
“These days it takes a crew of 10, including a captain, a first and second mate, an engineer, leading hands, and a cook, and up to 36 trainees,” he says.
“But it would have been rough in the early days when the boat was full of sheep as well.”
Seumas is gaining qualifications in marine transportation through his work on the ship.
“While growing up in Berwick I never would have thought my life would take this interesting direction.”