“Occasionally, someone offers to buy the Dory Shop. They want to put in a tea house or a fitness studio, and I say the same thing every damn time: No, absolutely not. It’s not for sale.” Captain Daniel Moreland says to me while sitting in his office overlooking the waterfront, surrounded by exotic antiques, postcards, nautical books, and old ship models.
Moreland is unwavering in his commitment to preserving Lunenburg’s boatbuilding and seafaring traditions that have existed here since the town’s inception in 1753. While much of the old world faces an identity crisis, Lunenburg thrives, due to dedicated individuals like Captain Moreland, whose vision has intertwined three key marine projects: The BARQUE PICTON CASTLE, The Dory Shop, and The Bosun School.
Moreland’s passion for deep-sea adventure led him on an extensive search for the perfect fixer-upper, culminating in Norway in 1993. On his last dime, he bought and motored the steel-hulled, former steam trawler BARQUE PICTON CASTLE, to Lunenburg, to be transformed into a tall ship fit for world voyages, employing marine workers, training thousands in seamanship, and circumnavigating the globe eight times and counting—all while bringing in significant revenue to the town.
In 2005, Captain Moreland acquired the struggling Dory Shop from Kim Smith after it was nearly lost due to Clearwater’s de-acquisition. Operating since 1917, and the last of its kind, the Dory Shop has been essential to the working waterfront initiative, building everything from 10-foot dories to 50-foot schooners. It also offers traditional wooden boatbuilding classes and hosts community events.
Then, in 2008, Moreland launched the Bosun School, a skills training program operated near the Dory Shop on Bluenose Drive for those building their hand skills like rigging, boat repair and sailmaking. Students gain hands-on experience and obtain unique access to local institutions like Schooner BLUENOSE II, Michele Stevens Sail Loft, Ironbound Rigging, and The Fisheries Museum. Graduates go on to work on ships and marine industries regionally and worldwide.
Thanks to Dan, among others, Lunenburg’s working waterfront remains strong. If we lose it, we lose our heritage, our community, our visitors, and the very heart and soul of this place. So, to those still asking? It’s not for sale.
Captain Daniel Moreland Interview with Anna Gilkerson (edited for clarity)
Anna Gilkerson: Dan, I have known you for a very long time, having been a close friend to my late father William Gilkerson, you also let me tag along as a working trainee on the Picton Castle on a voyage to Boston the summer after I graduated high school. I want to learn more about how you help maintain a working waterfront, here in Lunenburg. But first, mind sharing a bit about your background?
Dan Moreland: I was raised in a US foreign service family and lived abroad during what might be called my formative years. In the West Indies, Latin America and later, New England. Working schooners and their noble crews in the Caribbean on the waterfronts of Aruba and Barbados in the 1950’s mesmerized me as a child. I am convinced that this imprinted me on to a sailing ship life. I wanted to be one of them, wanted to be part of that world, their world, now long gone. Working in boatyards as a teenager then straight out of high school, I returned to the eastern Caribbean, sailing in various old-time schooners and brigantines and worked in shipyards working on wooden ships, before sailing as Mate in a Danish built brigantine on a world voyage followed by sea time in large Scandinavian square-riggers. Later, this led to working restoring a couple of sailing ships. This all led to the Picton Castle, and Picton Castle would not have happened without these elements in place.
AG) How did you become a Captain?
DM) To become a ‘captain’ is a long process that involves accruing sea time, as a deckhand and then a mate in certain classes of vessels, studying for and then sitting for extended exams similar to law boards or exams to become a nurse or a doctor. Then this is followed by actually getting a job as “captain’ or as it is called, a ‘ship master’. Being the captain is a position, the necessary certificates do not make one a ‘captain’, the job and position do. It all took about 10 years of steady seafaring in the right kind of vessels to acquire both the sea time and gain the experience and training, in order to become capable enough to do the job well. But I was never particularly interested in becoming a captain. I was just interested in being a capable seafarer. Becoming a captain was more or less inevitable though.
AG) How did you make your way to Lunenburg, NS?
DM) I first came to Nova Scotia from Connecticut in 1971 to help friends from Winnipeg build a small house near Yarmouth. Later, I first came to Lunenburg and Halifax in 1983 from Gloucester, while researching details to restore a large fishing schooner built in 1894 that had sailed out of Gloucester, Digby, NFLD, and then later Cape Verde off West Africa, the schooner Ernestina ex Effie M. Morrisey. I worked with various Lunenburg outfits to make historically accurate gear for the schooner, Arthur Dauphinee Blocks, Walters Blacksmithing and the old Lunenburg Foundry, among others. It got to the point that I knew and worked with as many folks in Lunenburg as I did in Massachusetts. I was treated very well here and decided that if I ever were to put another large sailing ship together, I would seriously consider doing the job in Lunenburg – and that is what happened. In 1996-97 Picton Castle was a pretty big project on the Lunenburg waterfront, employing almost anyone who worked on ships and boats here at the time. While much has changed since we sailed in 1996, Lunenburg had then, and still has a strong marine skills sector.
AG) Tell me about the Picton Castle, also when and why you wanted to procure her, and how that came about?
DM) The object with starting the Barque Picton Castle, was to re-establish a proper, square-rigged, blue-water voyaging sailing ship, to provide that real and hands-on deepwater sailing ship experience as a sail training ship, the likes of which I had sailed on myself years ago, and benefited so much from, to recreate in cordage and canvas a “Cape Horner” on a smaller manageable scale, with the addition of up to date safety gear and communications ability. After 20 years of working on such ships, I started in on this as a project in 1992. I figured I would have to convert a vessel rather than fix up an old sailing ship tucked away somewhere; they were gone by and large. I had heard of these former steam trawlers like Picton Castle, and had seen a couple out of the water and could see that they had perfect sailing ship lines; perfect for the job and task I had in mind. I started looking for the right ship as I developed operational and rigging plans and got advice from any, and all, who knew what they were doing in the field. I talked to people who had succeeded in similar projects but also to those that had failed. The latter were very helpful in steering me away from sand-traps. I ended up looking at 40 ship listings and directly inspecting eleven ships, mostly in Europe. There was an interesting steel three masted former cargo schooner laying in the Adriatic I could have for next to nothing – but too many bullets flying around at the time – and word was her hull was too thin, and the engine was gone, too. To remedy these types of defects would have added millions to the cost of the project. The Norwegian coaster Dolmar (ex Picton Castle) was as close to perfect as I could hope for. She looked rough when I found her, but the hull was excellent, and machinery was strong; the aft accommodations were good, and the rest was going to get changed out anyway. I bought her with my last dime in 1993, then we made our way to the Danish shipyard to rebuild the main engine to make sure it was in perfect order before a transatlantic passage. Without a sailing rig, I figured this was essential. On (we travelled) to England, Spain, Madeira, Bermuda, and a year spent in New York City, before getting to Lunenburg, where we rebuilt and outfitted the ship as we see her today, and set out on our first 40,000-mile, 20-month voyage around the world in 1997.
AG) Why is she named the Picton Castle? Any other history you want to give on her?
DM) Built in 1928, one of a class of 5, she and her sisters were all named after Welsh Castles. The actual castle after which Picton Castle is named, was built around the year 1300, is now a museum near Milford Haven Wales, incidentally, still owned by the family that built the castle. The ship worked as a fishing trawler in the North Atlantic until WWII when, like so many like her, she was conscripted into the British Royal Navy as an ‘Armed Mine Sweeper Trawler’ and convoy escort for the duration of hostilities. She was armed up with a 3” cannon, machine guns and depth charges as well as mine-sweeping gear. I have read that the loss of these vessels was 65%, and this loss rate was second only to the loss rate of German U-Boats at 75% not returning from patrols. Rough stuff. I knew some crew from her Navy days. Some funny stories there. They were a rough and ready lot. After the war the HMS Picton Castle went back to fishing until 1955 when she was sold to Norway and given such a going over that she was certified a “new vessel”, steam engine out, diesel engine in, enlarged cargo hold etc. Then she was traded between Murmansk USSR and Portugal for many years carrying cargo. New built international highways and trucks put these ships out of business. I found her in Vedavaagan, Norway, looking pretty rough and her owners keen to sell her. We drydocked her and surveyed her inside and out. Her steel was thick and heavy – and her machinery purred. She looked huge on the dry-dock. I must have been mad.
AG) What was your plan for the Picton Castle initially and does it align with what you are doing with her now?
DM) The plan was, and remains today, doing just what we have been doing since 1997. While the plan has evolved some, it is essentially just the same as when we started, deep-sea voyages under sail providing that rare opportunity that was once the standard sail-training experience, providing the best in seamanship training and horizon expanding, as we sail and see the tropical world. [We] also deliver schoolbooks and educational supplies donated here in Nova Scotia, and medical supplies to remote isolated islands and South Africa, [and] get to know folks living on islands and countries around the world in the tropics. [Places like] Panama, Galapagos, Pitcairn Island, Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Bora Bora, Marquesas, Tuamotus, Rarotonga, Aitutaki, PukaPuka, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, Australia, New Zealand, Bali, Reunion, Zanzibar, Seychelles, Madagascar, South Africa, Namibia, Senegal, Morrocco, Cape Verde, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, France, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the UK, the Great Lakes and the east coast of the USA and Canada, and the lovely islands of the Eastern Caribbean, and New Orleans, Louisiana aka NOLA, [finally] anchoring in beautiful, serene Rose Bay.
AG) Can you tell us about the Bosun School?
DM) Today it is hard to find a place to get the chance to learn hands-on seamanship skills. The purpose of The Bosun School is to teach young mariners to advance their skill levels like rigging, maintenance, boat repairs, caulking, ropework and small boat sailing, etc., without the pressures and complications of being underway at sea. The Bosun School students gain skills which they can use in almost any marine situation. Once signed aboard their next ship they have that much more to offer and will be good contributors to helping the ship on her mission which is, after all, what being crew is all about. I expect that they will probably enjoy their seafaring more. We have placed Bosun School students all over the place, in different countries. This year we are opening the program up to mature folks as well as young people.
Students also get to check out local marine industries. Captain Phil Watson has shown the gang around the Schooner Bluenose II and gone into what is involved in sailing such a big schooner. Michele Stevens Sail Loft has been very forthcoming as has Captain Walter Flower and Eastern Points, and Ironbound Rigging, in providing learning opportunities, as well as the Eastern Star. The Fisheries Museum has been wonderful as well. In the past we have taken students to the slipways to learn about what’s involved with hauling ships. Former Bosun School students go on to other vessels, museums, sail lofts, yacht deliveries, the Coast Guard and recreational boating.
We have another Bosun School session coming up this summer. https://picton-castle.com/bosun-school/
AG) What are some of the challenges you face with the school?
DM) I think the biggest challenge is keeping the cost down so young mariners can afford the program but otherwise I love doing it and I know how well it works. The Lunenburg Waterfront is an ideal place for the Bosun School and Bosun School is good for Lunenburg too, bringing in young people to get inspired – this has countless payoffs over time for the community. The object is to grow Bosun School into a year-round, ongoing educational institution standing on its own legs here in Lunenburg.
AG) Tell me about the Dory Shop. A little history? When did you become interested in running it and why?
DM) before the waterfront went into crisis, I bought the Dory Shop from Kim Smith. He had been building dories for some time but wanted to go back to sea and I wanted to keep the Dory Shop going and grow it into a sustainable operation – and after all this going to sea, get my feet on the ground as well.
The Dory Shop has been a local boat building location dating back, as far as we can tell, well into the 19th century. These old “fish stores” that are The Dory Shop were once part of the cod-fish industry and were formerly set up to build dories and other wooden boats as a dedicated business in 1917. ‘Fish Stores’ once dotted the shores of bays and coves along the coast of Nova Scotia – these are the last ones in or around Lunenburg. The Dory Shop has been building wooden boats ever since, through thick and thin, providing dories for the vast schooner fleet of only yesterday (most likely including providing dories for the original BLUENOSE) and later the dragger fleets of recent memory. Now, dories are mostly sold as recreational craft. We still build wooden work boats for Grand Manan and have built two 48’ schooners. We have also built dories for the Canadian Dory Racing Team and did so at no cost to the team, having found sponsorships for the build. Threats to the continued existence of The Dory Shop kicked off the movement to revitalise the working waterfront here in Lunenburg in 2005 and that’s also when I bought the business myself.
The Dory Shop is more than an antiquated drafty old shed that built dories. The DS sits on the last original natural water’s edge of what would become Lunenburg Harbour. We welcome visitors and events for area residents; last year my son organized “The Haunted Dory Shop” on Halloween, we have hosted the Nova Scotia schooner races in the past, (and we’ve) launched schooners, Viking boats and bark canoes build by indigenous crafts folks. We have had a few weddings too! We like to shear the Dory Shop as we can.
I look forward to growing and securing the Dory Shop into a long-term self-sustaining heritage boat shop as the unique boat shop that it is in the coming years; building boats, holding boat building classes, engaging in vocational boat building and repair courses, and to engage in various ways to make this wonderful setting available to the public as we have historically done for years.
Threats to the Dory Shop remain. Every now and then someone thinks that maybe the Dory Shop would make a nice Tea-House or Fitness center and could do with some landscaping and picnic tables and are willing to invest in those notions. The Dory Shop is a boatyard and has been one for so many generations.
AG) How important is the Dory Shop to the Lunenburg waterfront?
DM) The venerable and unlikely Dory Shop is the Jewel in the Crown – when Clearwater decided to move their new large vessels closer to the fishing grounds, the wharves and warehouse that they had acquired, along with scallop quota became redundant to their business requirements. The Dory Shop, at that point with Kim Smith building dories here, became threatened as part of this de-acquisition. This threat triggered the movement to save, and restore, the working waterfront of Lunenburg.
There are many excellent wooden boat building operations around North America, The Dory Shop may be the last “production” wooden boat building shop. The Dory Shop is the certainly the very last historic dory building shop. Between New York, along the coasts of New England, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, almost every small cove, bay and seaport had its own dory building shops. There were hundreds of such shops building dories up and down the coast. At its peak Lunenburg had three shops building dories. The schooners needed new dories all the time. They got smashed up a lot, and folks fishing from shore used dories all the time as well. The Dory Shop is the last such independent commercial production dory shop, “sailing on her own bottom”. The Dory Shop of Lunenburg, a heritage business from way back, if there ever was one, operates without subsidy.
AG) Who works at the Dory Shop? How can one learn about dory and local boat building?
DM) Right now, we are on a winter break. It has been a cold bitter winter. The Dory Shop can get pretty drafty. We have an opening for a boat carpenter as well. From time to time, we hold two-week dory building classes – watch www.doryshop.com – looking to grow the wooden boat building here. (We) need to stay ashore to do this.
AG) What are you most proud of?
DM) The deep-sea voyages have been monumental for those that have been able to sail with on these trips, (with) eight voyages around the world and fascinating trips to Europe and Africa and the Caribbean. Tall Ships festivals and a few TV shows have been interesting and challenging as well. Over 3,500 trainees and crew have sailed with Picton Castle, some of these are now Captains or Chief Mates, or in management positions of some of the finest ships in the world. I am proud of that. I am proud of all the crew who have made something out of their time on PC. The ship has sailed about 400,000 miles at sea since 1997. I suppose the thing of which I am most proud is the Barque Picton Castle herself. There is now a fine, 300-ton, age-of-sail type Class-A Tall Ship sailing the seas. A rock solid, seriously seaworthy, fine steel ocean going square-rigger is at sea today, which can sail for ages to come, when she could easily just be gone long ago. The ship is the magnum opus.
AG) What has been the economic impact of Picton Castle on Lunenburg?
An interesting question. Well, probably about $25 million in direct economic impact into Lunenburg area, maybe more, since the ship first tied up at the Foundry in 1996. And a few ship projects have come to Luneburg due to PC. Quite a few young folks from all over who came through Picton Castle have moved to Lunenburg, some have started businesses, and/or started families and joined the greater community more used to losing younger people than attracting them. This is a good thing.
AG) What you have done for the Lunenburg waterfront is incredible and you have dedicated a huge part of your life to these causes. Why do you do it?
DM) Well, you have to believe in something. Thanks for this, but I did not do this or much else, by myself. Concerned citizens who knew the essence of the waterfront and its intrinsic and even critical value, got together to make the case to keep the waterfront a working one. The main thing, I guess I did, was to get folks in one room and help some see the possibilities and not surrender to fear or inevitability. Time and space preclude getting into too many details here.
Why? Well, the ship and seafaring in classic sailing ships taken people sailing and teaching is just what I have always done, and Picton Castle was a logical result and extension of that.
AG) How important is maintaining the Lunenburg waterfront and Nova Scotia’s heritage in general?
Why? The waterfront? It was the working waterfront of Lunenburg that built the Schooner Bluenose and Bluenose II, Bounty, Theresa E. Connor and any number of other hard working schooners and draggers, which in turn built this beautiful town overlooking the harbour – and made the Picton Castle what she is today, a proud seagoing square-rigger. Not every old waterfront in every old waterfront town, is in a position to keep its working waterfront. To pull this off, certain elements must be actively in place. Lunenburg had these elements. In addition to the many year-round living wage jobs the working waterfront provides the marine industrial sector embodied by the working waterfront remains central and key, even critical, to the economic engine of Lunenburg and area. Tourism and a destination economy has become big here in Lunenburg in recent years. It is the authenticity of our working waterfront, and the identity as a real seaport, that is the foundation of this attraction as a favoured destination for visitors and travelers. The hospitality sector benefits immensely from this understood authenticity, and so does everything else. Lose the working waterfront, lose the hospitality industry here and Lunenburg also loses its soul.
AG) What is so important about Lunenburg?
DM) Lunenburg, even as it evolves, as it inevitably will, remains the iconic Maritime seaport – and the one with enormous ability to absorb visitors from all over Canada and the world. The key to this, was, is, and remains the working waterfront. We disregard this at our peril. Lunenburg is Canada’s seafaring “out port”. Lunenburg exemplifies and personifies the Atlantic Canadian identity.
AG) Thank you for your time. Anything else you want to add?DM) hmmm, what to say? I am blessed to have an adventurous seagoing wife in Tammy and a 12-year-old son who takes it for granted that most of the world does not really look like him and that’s just fine. Tammy is more of an adventurer than I am. Of course, we cannot really talk about Picton Castle without mentioning the ship’s famous cat Chibley, an alumna of SHAID. She sailed with us for 5 world voyages and could either read our minds or simply understand English. Too many stories about this cat to get into here.
