THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 19, 1994 TAG: 9410190050
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
IN A COLUMN years ago, I wrote about August Crabtree, the ship carver, and failed to do him justice.
I said then that if all the world's ship carvers were assigned values - in the way that values are assigned to cards in a deck - August Crabtree would be the Ace of Spades.
Crabtree, a gentleman who was never a sailor but had the blue of the sea in his remarkably penetrating eyes, died Thursday near his home in Grafton at age 89.
It was John Hightower, the president of the Mariners' Museum in Newport News who - upon learning of Crabtree's death - described him best.
``August Crabtree took the state of ship model making to a level of exactness that transcended accepted definitions of excellence. . . . In Japan, he would would have been known as a national, living, intangible treasure.''
Lean, with sinewy arms, large hands, a Vandyke beard, and a high forehead, Crabtree resembled a hero from a Melville or Conrad novel.
Carving and sanding in a workshop containing a sign that proclaimed ``Quality Forever,'' he produced models of scrupulous accuracy with details so minute that they required a jeweler's eye to be fully appreciated.
He spent three decades on a collection of diminutive masterpieces known as the Crabtree Collection of Miniature Ships at the Mariners' Museum. The collection of 16 vessels depicts the evolution of water transportation from the wooden raft through the age of sail to the steamboat.
The collection, which the museum acknowledges is irreplaceable, includes an Egyptian galley with sail from 1480 B.C. and progresses to the steam-sail vessel Brittania of 1840.
Crabtree carved at a slow yet diligent pace while listening to classical music on phonograph or radio. Wood curls smaller than the ``o'' on a typewriter key, fell from his blade, each knife stroke the result of scholarly research.
A voracious reader, Crabtree gathered information on old vessels from such diverse sources as the reliefs in a temple in Thebes, Egypt; a passage from the ancient writer Lucian on the proportion of ships; and libraries around the world, including the Marine Department at the Louvre and the Science Museum in London.
``Once they know you and your work, they do everything they can to help. Perfect strangers, many of them,'' he once said, shaking his head in wonder.
He was the grandson of a Scot from Glasgow who built ships on the River Clyde and the son of a railroad man from Portland, Ore. He made his first model for an elementary school art contest. It was rejected, he said, because the judges didn't believe it was the work of a child.
One of Crabtree's favorite works from his museum collection was a royal Dutch yacht from the 17th century. It was five years in the making, 19 inches long and 1/48th actual size. The lantern on the yacht's stern was about an inch high and required 300 hours to carve.
Having learned early that no tools were available for the precise replication of vessels that he sought, Crabtree made his own. He created a chisel, for instance, which was 1/2,000th of an inch wide - by filing down a dentist's tool.
He began work on a vessel just as a full-size shipyard would have: with a keel, ribs, framing, planking and, finally, more detailed work. He collected and cured the woods needed for his ships. His wife, Winnifred, sewed the sails and did the painting.
His easiest models were those done for Hollywood in the 1940s, he said.
Asked to produce miniature fleets of ships for movie battle scenes - models needing very little authenticity or detail - he contributed his skill to films such as ``That Hamilton Woman,'' ``Captain Caution,'' and ``Reap the Wind.''
``It was like a vacation,'' he said.
And, as a lark, the ship model maker created what he believed to be the smallest gallery of U.S. presidents in the world - the heads of all our heads of state. Each was 1/48th actual size, about as tall as a pencil eraser. FDR, he said, was the most difficult to execute because ``he was always laughing, tilting his head from side to side, or had a cigarette holder in his mouth.'' His presidents are also at the Mariners' Museum.
During an interview in the 1970s, Crabtree denied that he loved creating model ships. ``I wouldn't say I love my work,'' he said. ``Or even that I like doing it. It isn't fun, and it's very hard. It's more like a need, a drive. However, I love the finished product, and I've just never been happy doing anything else.''
Hightower got it right - he was a nonpareil. ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTO
August Crabtree, in 1976, working on a 1650 Dutch state yacht.
by CNB