 |
|
|
| |
 |
SHIPSHAPE ON SMALL SCALE |
For a man who retired from the U.S. Navy with the rank of master
chief petty officer, Jon Sorensen sure spends a lot of time
swabbing decks and mending rigging.
Good thing these ships his tend are only 2 feet long and weigh
no more than a sack of flour. Not that Sorensen feels any less
responsible for this fleet, which will never sail outside the
harbor of the Brown Palace Hotel's Ship Tavern.
Sorensen, who spent 26 years in the Navy - 18 at sea - is in
charge of restoring the scale models in the venerable bar. Thirteen
small craft line the walls and sit in the windows, vestiges
of a turn-of-the-century craftsman whose identity is a bit of
a mystery.
Today they're in the hands of another master small-scale ship-wright.
"This is a real challenge, because you're not creating
your own model ship, you're trying to do a perfect restoration
of someone else's idea for a ship," says Sorensen, an Arvada
High School graduate who returned to Colorado after a career
sailing the world. "I wanted to take this project on for
so long, and it's a privilege to do it."
The ships are a part of a collection bought decades ago in Cape
Cod by C.K. Boettcher, the former owner of the Brown Palace
who lived in the hotel penthouse and enjoyed all things nautical.
Sorensen says 20 ships are in the collection; the hotel has
13, the Governor's Mansion has six, and Boettcher's granddaughter
owns one.
Restoring one of the ships takes 1.5 months. Years of tobacco
smoke have grimed the hulls, which were carved from solid blocks
of wood. The sails, snugged to the masts with intricate rigging
and miniature blocks-and-tackle, are as brown as tobacco leaves
in a curing barn.
Still, for all that aging, you almost expect to see miniature
sailors clambering in the masts and yelling "Avast!"
or whatever it is miniature sailors yell.
Most of the models are clipper ships, some of the finest sailing
vessels ever made. During the 1850s, these ships were the Concordes
of their time, setting records for transoceanic voyages.
"The clipper ships were so fast that the owners could charge
huge sums to carry cargo," Sorensen says. "They could
make up the cost of building the ship on the first voyage. Everything
after that was pretty much pure profit."
But the heydey of the clipper ships was brief, doomed by completion
of America's first transcontinental railroad in 1869.
Sorensen has restored two clippers for the Brown, the Flying
Cloud and the Lightning. He's building his own model of the
latter ship, which made its maiden voyage from Boston to Liverpool,
England, at a then-record 18 knots an hour. "I've wanted
to build my own Lightning for 15 years and have already spent
a year researching it," he says.
Restoring a model ship takes time and money. The Brown Palace
has a deep sense of its place in Denver history and commissioned
Sorensen to restore nine ships, the ones most in need of refurnishing,
for $9,800.
Good money, yes, but the job remains a labor of love for Sorensen,
who wears a small gold anchor around his neck and a muddied
anchor-and-eagle tattoo on a left forearm bronzed the color
of walnut.
These days he's refurbishing the Yorkshire and Lawson. The only
seven-masted ship ever built, the Lawson will go back to its
place over the tavern's kitchen door.
"I tried to track down who made them but only got a last
name - Rosenqvist," Sorensen says. "He was supposedly
a captain on sailing ships a century ago. Some of these ships
in here probably took him 2,000 hours to build."
Now Sorensen is the old salt with time on his hands>
"If I get this refurbishing started up a an actual business,
I'd love to go back to sea again," he says. "Just
get a big old yacht and do the restoration right on the ship."
Sorensen gazes out the tavern window at the cars hurtling along
Broadway. "What am I doing back in Denver?" he says.
"I'm a sailor."
«
Previous Page |
|
|
|
