Shape up

Once connected to the keel, the ribs are only fastened by nails: that is to say, they are not really fastened, they can rotate or loosen, anc cannot play any structural role. Now a whole set of structures will be build around them, to connect them to each other and to the keel, in a way that no part will have to endure any stress only by itself.

Meanwhile, they must be locked in position, shaping up the hull as depicted in the 1919 blueprint.
By accurate measurements, the waterlines are transferred from the "garbi" to the ribs, and the latters are locked to long wooden strips, then nailed into them.
The rigid and symmetric skeleton has to be locked in a perfectly leveled position, according to the cave slope, with its vertical axis exactly plum-lined, propped up and fastened. In that position, it will be possible to work freely to remaining frames, and to the planking.

Framework, and here the boat is!

The day has come: after endless measurements, marks on the keel, and infinitesimal changes to their joints, the ribs are connected to the keel. The reply to criticism of the ones who "didn't recognize" Mast'Antonio's way of working, to build the structural part of the boat first, and then to assemble them to the keel, is in front of people peeping through the gate into the half-light of the cave: in a few dozens of minutes, strange shaped parts of wood are connected to be the "fishbone" of the boat, still staggering and irregular, with the ribs only fastened by long zinc-coated nails, rough "bialà" holding them, but undoubtedly a real wooden boat.
Michele, Mast'Antonio and young Antonio, good-will and oppressed apprentice, drill into the keel, fasten the ribs and riveting the long nails into the wood.

now everthing has changed, what was a lazy job to be done in free time acquires the sacredness of a wait that will only end with the christening and launch of the boat.
Not by chance, the first thing, after the fasteinng of bow and stern ribs, has been to nail a cross to the highest point of the prow, as the old boatwright did, more devout, but mostly more sensitive to supernatural influence.
The wooden pieces scattered around the cave have been assembled, and have become an attraction. Kids' eyes outside the cave are dreamy. Cynical Mast'Antonio's eyes are wet.

Prow, stern post and "palella" joint

The keel is is the backbone of the boat, it is the only, or at least the oldest, man built structure made to resist three dimensional forces.
Even if somebody only consider it as a "beam", when it is connected to the stempost and to the prow it becomes the center of the hull, able to resist the joint force from waves, from the load, from the oars' or sails' (or engine's) push, and its own weight.
From the very moment these parts join up, they will not be anymore just "parts", but will eventually be a boat.

Now the keel must be accurately fastened to the cradle, plumbed to the slope and level, in order to put in place any remainig part with required accuracy, to be sure of the boat's simmetry.

The keel

They can say what they want about the keel of aboat: that it is the backbone of the boat, that it is the only, or at least the oldest man built structure made to resist orthogonal forces, etc.
But truth appears clearly to me when I see it on the racks in Mast'Antonio's boatyard, ready to be refined, and it is a truth demoted from any poetic or technical rhetoric: it is a beam.
A simple big beam, made out of stone hard and stone heavy wood, on which the ribs, the stempost and the sternpost, now waiting in a corner of the cave, will be arranged.

It looks all too easy, and there must be a trick indeed, because Michele and his father are entangle for endless time in accurate measurings and drawind obscure (and esoteric?) signs along the "beam. Then they begin to cut and polish (with the adze!) the two ends, to make the "palella" joint ready, where prow and stern will be. It looks like they are making a proof, but no the contrary, the keel (the beam...) is ready. Now the wooden parts, beams and planks, will become a boat.

"If they do not lay down the keel..."

Since I began to cover "Mast'Antonio" e Michele Cafiero's work, I have often been surprised by disenchanted, incredulous or openly skeptical comments about the effectiveness of the "Santa Maria del Lauro", 2008 edition, construction work.
The most often heard comment sounded like "If they have not lay down the keel, the boat is not going to be made", almost always pronounced in sincerely sorry way.

But...

But work went on, sometimes briskly, sometimes lazily, tracing a curve that mirrored Michele and his father's mood, the quality of their relationship and the bad attitude of the Sea, many times arriving to wrestle with the cave's gate, rolling over the remains of the beach, eroded by the modern "harbour".
I could exclude that my photos were delusions, and that Michele's and his father's merry spirit had concocted an elaborate prank. The boat was cominng to life, indeed, under my own eyes, and my own lens.
But what about the keel?

Most of the boatyards begin a boat from the keel, then they build the ribs on it, using wooden half rib models.

This boatyard has little room, it's inside of a cave that's used to shelter and hauling of many kinds of boats. More, Mast'Antonio learnt his job from the old shipwright building barks and barquentines in Alimuri shipyards. Here they do not need to lay down the keel first, for they follow the drawn lines of a real size plan, every part must correspond exactly to the plan, so the part building sequence is unimportant. As soon as the ribs, the stempost and the sternpost will be ready, the keel will be laid down, and then, like overnight, the boat will be seen. perhaps this is going to be Michele and Mast'Antonio's prank...

Bow and Stern

The keel, the stempost and the sternpost are the primary structures of a boat. All the stresses that the hull will endure will be applied to them, as to the keystone of an arch. Therefore, the wood to make them must be first choice quality, well seasoned: as the "old" shipwright taught us, the keel will be made of holm oak wood, stempost and sternpost of elmwood.
These three pieces will be connected through a special joint, the "incastro a PALELLA di primo ordine con tacco di forza e caviglia ferma acqua" ("first order palella joint with strenght dent and waterlock pin"). The main feature of this joint is to be able to spread all the stresses along the wood's bent, and not to load them directly to the joint parts, that could break apart. On the contrary, this way all the forces that will "attack" the boat will push the different parts against each other, keeping them joint and improving its resistance capability.

Wooden bones

The boat's framework will be made of "ribs", and a keel that will be the "spinal column". Differently than bones, ribs and keel must be connected to be rigid, to avoid that the boat will be deformed or shattered by the forces encountered at sea.
But at the same time, stiffness must not be stronger than resistance of her materials: in a classic boat, different woods, with different resistance or elasticity.

Taking advantage of shapes and veins of the wood, cut and joint following lines and hollows as done for centuries, the parts of the framework become a wholesome, a machine built to meet forces and loads that will stress it from every direction, and resist and react with resistance and flexibility, stronger than any single piece.

The framework

The classic picture of a wooden boat under construction is the one of a wooden skeleton, on which skin and tissues slowly grow up.
Before this, though, to cut the bones out of raw wood requires patience and accuracy.
"Mast'Antonio" Cafiero has the kind of skilled empirical accuracy that only his generation's masters commonly had.

Working with the "righella dei cardamoni", the instrument extracted from the "tracking" drawing, ribs are freed from superfluous wood that enclosed them, with shape and inclination of the boat hidden behind the drawing lines.
The smell of the mulberry wood being sawed, unfortunately, cannot be photographed, nor filmed.

Woods and dreams

Why dreams are not fulfilled?
For the very same reason that "makes the world go round"! At the beginning of every plan, specially construction plans, one must check his balance... against reality.
To build a boat is expensive. It already was at granpa's times, and it is even more nowadays. The wood to "make" out the "gozzo" must be good: mulberry and elm for framework, holm oak for the keel, pine for planking, mast and yard of the lateen. Some of these woods are difficult to find, others have become of too poor quality for naval construction purposes. All of them are expensive.
And I started to grasp why "it's not possible anymore to build boats like in good old times"... If wood is expensive, craftmanship is not cheaper, specially the specialize one. And more, many information are needed, hard to find, and harder to understand, and even harder to be put into practice.
For the construction of "S. Maria del Lauro" some sponsor have proposed to participate. But she was my father's grandfather's boat, and dad still remember her, built in this very same cave, on this very same beach... And I am the one who wants to see if it is possible to do it! To accept contribution to the construction means to renounce part of the responsibilities, and part of ownership.
Craftmanship is us, wood can be found, with time and money. Some good wood has been stored by my father for a long time: mulberry, elm, holm oak, and pitchpine for mast and yard. Unfortunately today's pinetrees are too infested with parasites and illnesses, so the planking will have to be in mahogany, but the oars will be made of beech, as they have to. We'll make the boat with our own means, if she can be done, then, maybe, we'll look for sponsors!

Alimuri, the boats' place

The tuff rock cliff of Sorrento's plain is connected to the limerock hills of Mts. Lattari in two places on the shoreline. One is Marina Grande, at Sorrento, the other one is the Marina di Alimuri, in what now is Meta.
Despite fantastic and misleading etimologies, mostly based on imaginary victories on Barbary pirates, it seems that its name comes from greek words, like many other toponyms in Magna Graecia, indicating a waterfall flowing, or the absence of a harbour. In any case, this names pointed out what ancient seafarers could value.

The width of the seaside, some hundreds meters long, and some fresh water springs, made it possible to haul ships for repairing and resupply, and later to establish shipyards. until the end of XIXth century Alimuri's shipyards were famous, and Meta's seamanship one of the richest and best in Italy. Nowadays, seamanship has decaded to the last, a hotel stands on the shipyards place, attesting the shift to a touristic economy, and a witless and fanciful project has buried the harbour and eroded the beach, threatening what once was a seamen's hamlet.
There only remain the wooden boats, hauled on "Meta" beach, just below the cliff from which the town took its name, and the caves carved into the tuff, hosting the "monazzeni" where boats are recovered, and where Michele Cafiero's boatyard is.

A name for a fishing boat

Antonio Cafiero's "gozzo", in 1919, was a working boat.

Work at sea is affected by unpredictable matters, often unrelated to sailors' and fishermens' skills and good will. And only supernatural powers can control the unpredictable.
Seamen's faith and superstition have always been proverbial, and to entrust a boat to divine protection was the only possible insurance against danger and misfortune. Naming a boat after an onomastic Saint, or a sacred image, meant to identify her with it, calling the Saint to share her fate, while renouncing a part of the owner's pride.

The very existence of the hamlet of Meta was due to the presence of the "Lady of the Laurel", a statue worshipped as the seafarers' protectress. Dozens of votive offers from returning seamen attest the importance of the cult for local people, and even the main church, originally dedicated to "the Savior", is known as the church of the Lady of the Laurel.
Antonio Cafiero's fishing "gozzo" was named after her, too, like many other boats, and the replica that Michele will build will respect the tradition and bear the original name.
She will be named "S. Maria del Lauro".

"To make a boat like in good old times..."

My one, it wasn't really a dream.
A kind of curiosity, though: I am a carpenter, I am a fishermen and carpenters' son, and I work on wooden boats. In my boatyard we do maintenance on wooden boats, and often we also repair them, better, we "restore" them, as now they say, like talking about grannies' furniture.
We don't know much about boats construction theory as it was at "good ol' times", and many scholars have understood ancient techniques from our daily job.
What intrigued me was something often repeated: "it is not possible anymore to build a boat as they did in good old times". But why? I wonder to myself.
My father's uncle had left a scheme of the "gozzo" he used to fish with, and a friend had made a model out of that scheme.
My father is the last shipwright still working at Marina di Alimuri, and he remember well even what he hasn't taught me yet.
And so, with so many restored or rebuilt "gozzi" racing in lateen sail races, why could not we rebuild the "S. Maria del Lauro", 1919?
"It is not possible to build such a boat with old times techniques". I have called a photographer, and I have told him "Let's see if it's true".

Birth of a boat

Wooden boats have always been extraordinarily fascinating to me. I think it is from many reasons, some of them definitely personal, like my family history, as it was told, or my boy's readings.

But many of us endure the spell of old boats, and it's intriguing to look for this seduction's magic: their aspect is what strikes photographers' hearts, and their non-euclidean rigorous geometry, obviously complying to rules hard to be sensed by our right-angles-addicted eyes.
In a cavern, on the beach where so many of us have grown up by the sea, the smell of brackish tuff rock and just sawed wood takes the breath off, as to remind that this is a different world's entrance.
For as long as human memory goes, this cavern has housed boats, even its shape has been carved according to the sea crafts' evolution. Galleys, feluccas, gozzos, speedboats, lateen sails and outboard engines, and the whole paraphernalia of equipment used for their construction and maintenance, have required adjustments, carvings, reinforcements or modifications.
The vault still shows pickaxes scars, in some point blackened by oil lamps smoke, where now pipes and wires hang loosely.
As sleds remaining from a ice age, cradles are queued along the cavern's slope, that was accurately carved for them, loade with boats of any kind.
In such a place a friend of mine, a carpenter, has called me back to my forgotten childhood's feelings, and to smells, efforts, initiations from others' forgotten lives.
He told me about his dream, and asked me to tell how it will come true.