Professional Skipper Magazine from VIP Publications

and built that were hard to tell apart from Harvey and Lang designs. In 1936 the Devonport Steam Ferry Company put out a tender for a 140ft x 34ft x 8ft diesel vehicular ferry. This huge vessel was of composite construction, in steel framing with wooden blanking. He had submitted the tender along with Auckland���s oldest marine engineering company, Seagar Bros and at the age of 38, Percy Vos won this tender. There was another winning factor to this: the job was to be supervised by none other than Charles Bailey Junior who had built the majority of ferries on the Waitemata over the years. This was just another day at the office for Charlie and he selected men like Roy Steadman and Bill Eaddy who had worked on the construction of other Bailey-built ferries. These men were true shipwrights who were used to working with huge sections of timber like the 14in x 14in hardwood keelson and the 24in X 24in stem and stern posts. The Poore St yard was useless for this job as there wasn���t enough room to set up the stocks, nor was there enough depth for launching. So Percy enquired about a site on the Western Reclamation extension at 38 Hamer St. We understand that the workshop from Poore St was relocated there and they were in business in a very short time. This monster of a vessel was built outside on the north-western end of where the shed is now. Percy held a massive launching party and the who���s who of Auckland were there. Lady Leys christened this vessel and named her Korea Hukarere, built to Percy Vos��� own design in 1937 for Stephen Menzies of Hastings IMGES COPYRIGHT: PERCY VOS TRUST Clinker motor runabouts under construction at the new Hamer St yard in the late 1940���s boats of two skin construction. They were powered by two 630 hp Hall Scott marine engines that gave them a top speed of around 18 knots. At this time the yard employed 41 staff in total including Percy���s daughter Fay. Many of the men had come from the building industry and associated wood working trades, and had been ���manpowered��� into boat yards under the Emergency Regulations Act of 1939. My father was one these men. Percy would not have just any one; most of these men from other trades had a strong interest in yachting. To Percy this indicated they had a passion for boats and if they were any good they might be suitable candidates for future employment. Percy was also on the board of United Ship and Boat Builders formed in 1943, who had a huge workshop about where the Microsoft office is now. They built ten 114ft powered lighters, 64 45ft tugs, and five 60ft Island traders for the Fijian Government. Not a bad effort for about three years of hard toil. The yard was closed in 1946. During these years the Auckland waterfront was a hive of industry. Just a shame no one caught this on film! Right from the beginning, back in 1922, Percy had another goal. That was, in today���s terms, to teach young men the art of best-practice boatbuilding. Before 1950 there was no formal apprenticeship for boat builders and all a young man had to do was to serve five years under a recognised boatbuilder and he could call himself a boatbuilder. Some of the early tradesmen were indentured after a native Japanese bird. Quite simply, Percy Vos was seen as the superstar of wooden boat building. Most likely, Percy being the humble man he was, would share this acknowledgement with his close network of knowledgeable friends. He was a master of what we now call ���networking��� or creating knowledge centres. He possessed a magnetic attraction for people who saw a future in the marine industry; his leadership was exceptional. Winning this tender also broke the ice after the Great Depression, and from here orders rolled in from customers wanting pleasure launches and yachts, and from commercial operators like Waitemata Fisheries, owned by the Devcich family, who wanted fishing boats. He designed and built the Waipawa, an absolutely lovely looking 50ft seine boat that had big volume and steamed well. Soon after, Devcich���s ordered a second boat of almost identical design named Waimana positioning Percy Vos Ltd well in the fishing boat market. World War II began to rev up and Auckland boat builders were asked to build boats for the protection of the Pacific region, it was all good for Vos���. Under the banner of Associated Boat builders, P Vos Ltd built two 112ft Fairmiles, Q 410 and Q411. These were very narrow with their employers. All this was OK if the people teaching you knew what they were doing, but this was sometimes not the case. So in 1950 Percy Vos, Jack Brooke (designer of the Frostbite and Spirit of New Zealand) and Alec Collins set up the ���The Auckland and Whangarei Ship, Yacht and Boatbuilding Committee���. They drew up a paper containing a set of skills that an apprentice had to be able to perform by the end of their time, normally around five years. But at P Vos Ltd there was another goal that had to be mastered: a clinker dinghy had to be built to a good standard in a given time. Percy was passionate about clinker work and personally taught a lot of these boys himself. The stocks were right below his office stairs, and it wasn���t often that he came down those stairs and did not get involved, even when things were, okay. Although he always retained the utmost respect from his men, when it came to technical advice, Percy Vos didn���t work on the shop floor after about 1936. He worked on his business, not in it, a quite different practice to that of others in the industry, and it set him and his business apart. Percy Vos Ltd created a business model for other in the boatbuilding industry to emulate. January/February 2013 Professional Skipper 27

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