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The Naming of the Alma Doepel Frederik Doepel was of German descent, but some of the family immigrated to Finland, where he was born. He went to sea, and as a young man jumped ship in Sydney in the 1870s, with a good friend, Big Mick. After their ship had left, they joined a coastal ship, and came to settle in the Bellinger Valley. Big Mick became a woodsman, but Frederik became involved as a shipping agent, and soon acquired a timber mill as well as starting his own little company of coastal sailing vessels. Most of them he named after his daughters, for he had several. In Finland there had been a well known sailing vessel named ALMA, with some possible link with the Doepels, and this may have influenced the naming of the youngest daughter, a babe in arms at the launching of her namesake, on 10 October 1903. When Henry Jones & Co bought the ship, Alma was 13, and she wrote to Henry, asking that he please retain the name. This he did, as we know.
Frederik employed one of the best of the shipwrights who had for some years been busy on the Bellinger River building wooden vessels for local trading. Frederik’s timber mill supplied all the sawn material for the hull and masts, and it only had to be carted a hundred yards or so to the building way, which lay very close to the end of all tidal flow. (The river had to be dredged for the launch.) The timber was of the most durable kinds, Grey Gum, Spotted Gum and others. It took perhaps a year or more to build her, starting with the amazing keel. This was `squared’ in the bush by Big Mick, from one half of a tree, after the tree’s central rot had been cut out. Imagine it! A keel cannot have knots in its timber, or it will quickly rot. The keel (still original) measures 14 inches by 6 inches (35.5 x 150 cm) and is 100 feet (30.5m) long. One piece! The tree it came from had no branches less than that length above ground.. Big Mick cut and shaped it some miles from the slipway. Though a good friend of Frederik, he lived as an active hermit, in the bush.When Mick died in 1936 he was described as the biggest man in NSW.For beams and knees, stem and stern posts, breasthooks and stringers, frames, masts and all, searches were made in the widespread forest for suitable trees. Then bullocks and horses would haul the timber to the yard. The saws whirred, and huge heaps of sawdust grew up nearby. The massive keelson, of two scarfed lengths of some ninety feet (27m) was bolted atop the hefty framing, inside the ship. The frames were not bent, but cut from solid timber, then secured, with nine inches (230mm) of frame, then a gap of the same width, all along her length. Thus the ship was almost flat-bottomed, to negotiate the sand-bars at the river mouth, but with inordinate strength internally. From bottom of keel, to the top of the keelson was a thickness of some 38 inches (0.92m). This has, on four or five occasions, saved Alma from breaking her back on grounding. Originally there was no engine, and she was effectively one single, floating cargo hold, with a bit of accommodation forward and aft, three masts, and square sails on the fore.
Last modified:August 5, 2010
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