Article 1 - A Daydream, a Tool Chest and a Blue Shed

Or making a chair from a tree without using electricity or machine tools by Allan Fyfe

Maybe the tool chest came first. It’s a cabinet maker’s kit of tools from around 1890 in a tool chest which is specially designed. I bought it from a customer about a year and a half ago and restored it and its contents a couple of weeks later – but more about the tool chest later. 

Perhaps the idea came to me while I was involved in this and daydreaming while the paint stripper took effect on the outside of the chest. Perhaps paint stripper has more to it than it says on the tin …… anyway I started thinking again about islands.

Islands are intriguing and if you have read a bit about them you may, like  me, have  mixed  feelings about  living on one. I suppose

We usually sailed from The Royal Albert docks in London. The Rakaia got priority treatment in the Panama Canal as we were usually carrying Royal Mail and, after steaming for another week or so, we would arrive at Pitcairn Island in Mid Pacific and drop off their mail.

The Rakaia would sit off shore, drifting slowly with engines off and eerily quiet without the pounding of the pistons, while we were rewarded with a grand stand view of the island. We (the cadets) were not allowed ashore by the islanders. We were given various uncomplimentary reasons for this by our superiors, but I decided  that  as  no-one was  allowed  ashore, whatever was  supposed  to be

wrong with us applied equally to the people higher in the pecking order on board. Only the two deck boys were lower than us. One of them on one occasion sat for an hour or two in a life boat on the boat deck clutching a condom on the understanding that, yes we would get ashore and, yes there were Polynesian women there with grass skirts.  

The islanders came out in their open boats – tanned, raggedy, chattering and shouting to each other – and bare footed; the only people in the world with webbed feet, according to one of the London Dockers. Their boats were loaded up with bananas and pineapples which they exchanged for household goods and Seventh Day Adventist Tracts which they handed out freely (these probably floated back to land on the next tide). They also had carvings of flying fish and birds, which they made from wood found on neighbouring Henderson Island. Each of these had a stand with the name of the carver stamped on it – Made by someone Fletcher or Christian reminded you that this was where the mutineers and some Polynesians landed up after dumping Captain Bligh and his colleagues (1787). The mutineers fell out when they arrived here – murder and mayhem ensued and the Bounty was burned, before things settled down and the islanders found out about growing fruit and vegetables, keeping bees and selling stamps worldwide. Little was heard of them until recent revelations emerged about dark doings in this small community which we don’t even want to think about. 

Pitcairn is very fertile, it’s a tiny rock in mid-Pacific and by its sheer insularity it attracts all nearby clouds and gets more than its fair share of rain. They can get several crops each year. 

As the engines started up again, the remaining tracts went over the side and our banana eating competition would have started and, although these are not big bananas, 32 small bananas is still quite a record to beat without stopping. We didn’t give a thought to the mutineers as they first made landfall a couple of hundred years before and to the arguments that were to take place, despite the idyllic setting. 

There are lots of tales about Westerners going to faraway islands and falling out but Robinson Crusoe just had to get on with it, at least until Man Friday came along.    

Robinson Crusoe is the archetype and I could just picture him discovering a tool chest like mine as he strolled along the beach one day. There it would be; washed up on the sand – a complete set of 19^th century cabinet maker’s tools. It would have been protected from the sea water by a covering of tarred canvas, otherwise many of the tools would have been ruined…… or maybe it would be conveniently attached to some floating spars that had come adrift before the boat broke up. Anyway, just imagine his delight as he goes through the trays and discovers the range of tools; lifting them out and laying them carefully on the sand, muttering excitedly as he realises the possibilities. These tools are very robust and if they had been carefully used and maintained by the “chippy” (ship’s carpenter), Mr Crusoe could have been using them right away.