The story of the Horseshoe Beach Ship House, by Phelan Jones
The Ship House sat on two tiny lots facing South on the Gulf of Mexico. When the lots were first created houses were built over the water on stilts so the land part did not need to be very big. Only a very few of those had survived to the 1990s. Then in March of 1993 the storm of the century with 90mph winds and a huge tidal surge took most of the remaining stilt houses out, however the Ship House upper structure wasn't quite complete, and suffered very little damage, only the lower steps and the dock were damaged. Many of the houses that had been near it were simply gone the next morning. Clearly it was the water, the tidal surge that had done most of the damage. Wind rips roofs off, breaks glass and blows down trees. If a wall of water hits a house, it is simply destroyed. It was designed to withstand the ravages of the sea as well as the land, which makes it super strong and the shape even downloads in wind instead of uplifting like most home roofs. As a general structure, it was a half-scale size of the Santa Maria, but modified to look more like a pirate ship.
This story began with me having purchased a pair of small lots on the water and building a dock for a place to take the motor-home on the weekends. I then began to doodle different house designs, but due to the thin depth of the lots, no matter what it did, it looked like a small single wide mobile-home on stilts, which really didn't interest me. One day I was doodling and drew a pirate ship on stilts just for fun... I was hooked! As I began to take the idea seriously and lay out the structural design, it became obvious that building the ribs was going to be an odius task. , which would need to be structural AND shapely in order for it to look like a ship, I realized that it was way too much work to be worth it. As I lay awake one night, it suddenly dawned on me that I knew somebody with a set of boat ribs that he had not done anything with for years! But I also realized that Capt. Clark had spent years building them and it was one of those life long, "Sail Off Into The Sunset" dreams, and those dreams are hard to get someone to part with, dare I even try, should I even try? Messing with an old man's dreams is a touchy subject, (I know, I have some!)
Thus began a long series of Capt. Clark and I getting to know each other and ideas being exchanged between me, the guy who sailed a Hobie Cat around Horseshoe, and Capt. Ephraim C. Clark, who had actually piloted commercial sailing ships in and out of Boston Harbor. His depth of knowledge was amazing and I was like a sponge soaking it up. Here before me was one of the last captains of the true age of sail. When other boats were burning coal puffing steam and oil smoke, he was still sailing cargo on some of the last of the large commercial ships with canvas sails.
Both of us knew in the back of our minds he would never finish the boat he had started, and the ribs had been sitting there now for years, and there just wasn't enough years left, but neither of us were about to say that. It is hard for a man to give up a dream, and I didn't want to be the one to break his dream, so the challenge became to get him to join my dream of actually doing something with his years of work and something where it would be put to use and appreciated. So I shared with him my ideas of what I was wanting to build and how the ribs were the most difficult part, and he promptly began to teach me how to make ribs! But it quickly became obvious that I wasn't about to put that much work into such a small house project that wasn't ever going to sea!(Well hopefully not anyway, but after all, we were in hurricane alley!)
It seemed we both avoided talking about doing something with his dream project. And when I finally did ask the question we had both been avoiding, I prefaced it with, "Capt. Clark, I'm going to ask you a question, but I don't want you to answer me!" He paused and looked at me and said, "okay". "I just want you to think about it". Of course when I asked him the question, I saw his knee jerk "NO- I WONT SELL IT!" coming... and I stopped him with a outstretched hand and a smile. "Nope!... don't answer me, I don't want an answer... I simply want you to consider the question". He said okay... but with great concern on his face.(how dare I ask such a question!)
Over the next six months as I worked on the lot and the structure we would bump into each other, smile, and I would say, "Just think about it, that's all I'm asking", and he would say, Okay! (I could tell he really wasn't really entertaining the thought). Finally he began to reply in a more gentle, "Okay, I'm thinking about it" and then finally he even started to smile when he saw me coming, and then I knew he was finally seriously considering selling me the ribs for the very first time. So finally, one day about 8 or 9 months later, I said, "Well, what do you think?" And as we both sort of held our breath, he said, "I have decided to sell it to you", and both of us felt a sigh of relief; his project would go to good use, and my project would be made possible.
The ribs are by far the oldest parts of the Ship House. The lumber they are made of has a history spanning back probably 150 years or more. The ribs themselves were built over a period of over ten years starting back in 1968. They were sawed and laminated into 2x6 ribs with up to 12 layers of 1/2" and 3/8" thick steam-bent laminated yellow pine glued and pinned 24" on center with copper rivets and washers.
The original lumber from an old 1800's plantation house in Daytona Beach that was being torn down. Capt. Clark bought the clear-heart yellow pine floor beams and brought them to Horseshoe Beach and sawed them into 3/8" and 1/2" strips on a band saw. Next they were put a few at a time into a long thin cypress "steam box" attached to the wall and going up at an angle. At the lower end was an antique Edison tea kettle which held about a gallon of water and sat on an old single burner hot plate. The steam which was put into a hole at the lower end would travel up through the box and through the carefully spaced yellow pine strips. As the steam traveled up through the box, for 12-24 hours, it saturated and softened the wood for bending.
Upon removal, the strips were immediately laid on a large 8'x16' table full of holes and movable wooden pegs, and slowly bent into a pre-determined shape, all depending on where they were going in the boat. Only about two of the ribs in the very center of the boat were exactly the same. The others were each a slightly different curved shape and width and were made in matching pairs, one for each side, and bolted to the keel, sort of like a wishbone which came from the keel up the side of the boat as a single laminated beam. It took years to build those ribs, being designed, laid out, cut, sawed, bent, matched, glued and pinned and all on an old single burner hot plate, and each being about 12 layers thick, so layer upon layer, they were bent over the first one, glued and clamped in place to dry then the next strips were steamed, shaped, dried, glued and attached to the last layer. Layer upon layer until the complete beam from keel to top rail was finished. The final frame was a product being worthy of a commercial sailing ship of Capt. Clark's day.
The skin of the ship is 1/4" "tortured" custom treated PT marine plywood using thousands of stainless screws. As I assembled the frame of the ship, there was never a single nail used, it was all galvanized or stainless steel bolts and screws. . The original siding appears that it may have been updated for looks or insulation, but underneath, it is a massive wooden structure that took thousands of hours to build. The figure head was hand carved by my friend and helper Mike Cruse and a lot of the interior work was by Richard Vories, both of whom have helped me on many other projects. Mike and I worked on my "Dream Catamaran Project" for about 5 years and other projects as well, including house projects in the Bahamas and the "Angel House" a cool little place which was later named "Tranquility Base" by the new owner. It got the original name because it is 12 feet off the ground on the Suwanee River, and during construction, it didn't have any stairs, so only "angels" could get to it (which was kind of the idea), since it wasn't the "angels" we were worried about :-)
Currently I am working on "Captain Jack's Island", which includes some interesting tropical paradise creative stuff and will be an Vrbo/Airbnb type project located on the St. John's River and a couple of more projects, like a custom pool with natural stone waterfall and stream.
The nice thing about The Ship House is it has been the source of a lot of memories for a lot of people. It helps us remember not only the people who worked with me on the project and the storms it has endured, but also the times we spent there with the kids playing on the boat and staying there when we got pregnant with our first child, so when she walks in with 4 grand-kids, I think, wow, it's been a while, I better get busy with the next project!
Houses make memories, and cool houses make cool memories and even though it gets a hurricane spanking every now and then just like it would if it were a sailing the seas, each new owner doctors it back up and has adds their own finishing touches to it, so it remains a labor of love, art and memories. And I hope it gives you a smile when you drive by!
Sincerely, Phelan "PJ" Jones, designer/ builder. www.torahboat.com