The Heritage of a Craftsman

We anchored for a couple of days at the sandy beach in beautiful, but windy weather after the cold front. When the next front approached, we moved into the harbor and took a mooring for a couple of days.



Our first visit to Man-O-War was 35 years ago with Peter's parents. Then as now it was a boat-building center. Back in the seventies, craftsmen still built sturdy boats of native woods, now they have switched to fiberglass.


This island was settled by the first Albury who came ashore at the age of 16 and married an Archer lass. Today the Alburys still dominate Man-O-War. They run the marina, the major ferry service in the Abacos and they still build boats; the Albury women bake bread, work in the gift shop and run the sail loft which now makes canvas bags of all sorts for the tourists.


One evening during our stay, we went ashore to the Island Take-Away to order some fish in a bag. While we waited we wandered down the main street of the settlement past the sheds where the boats were built and repaired and noticed that someone was still working.


Peter stopped at the door to say hello and that is how we met Andy Albury. We had a wonderful chat as Andy described his background in woodworking. His grandfather built boats of wood and was the craftsman we had watched back in the seventies. Andy's father died when he was sixteen so Andy and his brothers worked for the grandfather helping him in his boatbuilding shop.


Andy, himself, became a master craftsman who built furniture, coffee tables, chairs, etc. and now he also makesbeautiful half-model boats which he sells at craft shows and art auctions here in the Abacos. When he learned of Peter's interest in woodworking, Andy invited us into his shop to show us something special. The floor was ankle deep in wood shavings. Tools and scraps of wood and projects in various stages covered every horizontal surface. This was the same shed that his grandfather had used when building some of the beautiful wooden boats of days gone by.



What Andy showed us was a small piece of aromatic cedar. He and his brother had discovered a fallen cedar tree which, he said, is a rarity here in the islands and they salvaged and used the wood in several projects. This was his last little scrap.


The cedar smelled wonderful and he gave me the piece to take with me. It's an odd souvenir, but to me it symbolizes the spark of human spirit that struggles to keep the old ways alive in the face of a changing world.