The boat shop on Wrangell’s downtown inner harbor had passed through three generations of shipwrights and owners who all shared one thing in common: Wood.
The business started as Hansen Boat Shop in 1928 and later became Wrangell Shipyard and then Wrangell Boatshop, but the marine ways to haul vessels out of the water and under the protective cover of the tall, peaked roofs were a constant, visible landmark in the harbor.
The last boat was pulled out of the shop in August, ending the 97-year career of marine woodworking that started when Olaf H. Hansen emigrated from Norway to the United States and started working in Wrangell.
His son, Olaf B. Hansen, took over the business in 1963, running it until health problems pushed him to sell the operation in 1989 to Mark and Cindy Robinson and Sam Privett.
Pat Ellis purchased the property in 2007 and operated it as Wrangell Boatshop until vacating the site and moving the last boat down the marine ways on Aug. 25.
Ellis will continue running Wrangell Boatshop from his location at the Marine Service Center.
He said it would be up to the new owners of the harbor property, a couple who spend their time in California and Wrangell, to announce their future plans for the site.
Over the decades, workers repaired rot, rebuilt hulls damaged from too close encounters with rocks and performed all the maintenance required of wooden boats, said David Svendsen, who worked for Olaf B. Hansen from 1971 to 1978.
The shop was well known and respected throughout Southeast, he said of its long history.
“It’s sad,” Svendsen said of the closure. “It’s hard finding someone to do the work. … Woodworking, that’s hard work.”
Woodworking kept Ellis busy when he purchased the operation in 2007. For the first 12 years after taking over the business, “we had a crew of 8 to 12 people doing just about everything that could be done on a boat except for engine repair and refrigeration,” he said in a history lesson posted to his website.
“I was lucky enough to have several very talented local wooden boat shipwrights work for me before they retired,” he wrote.
“In 2019, I made a conscious choice to downsize my crew and project load to spend more time doing what I love, which is wood boats and interiors, and less time supervising large crews. … I get to spend more time rolling oakum and getting wood shavings everywhere.”
Svendsen, who worked at Hansen Boat Shop after school and summers in the 1970s, recalled Olaf B.’s love for wood and dislike for fiberglass boats, which the old-school shipwright called “Tupperware boats.”
“If God had wanted Tupperware boats, he would have made Tupperware trees,” Svendsen attributed to Hansen.
Svendsen strayed from wood when he left the shop in 1978 to start his own business, building aluminum boats.
“It was the up-and-coming thing,” he said.
He had started with building aluminum bulkheads on wooden boats, later turning to constructing all-aluminum craft at his shop, where he is still at it 46 years later.
Even before Svendsen went to work at Hansen’s shop, his father, who emigrated from Norway in 1953, worked for the shop when it was owned by Olaf H.
The 1970s were busy at the shop, the younger Svendsen recalled. As many as eight employees worked on boats hauled under shelter on the two marine ways — often with two more boats tied to the dock.
Elsie Harding, daughter of Olaf B. and Elsie Hansen, worked at the shop as a teenager in the late 1960s and remembers how busy it was.
She would help with cleaning up — and remembers one day in particular.
She was gathering up scraps for a burn pile and went to toss a wood pallet on the pile. But her jacket caught on a nail on the pallet and “I flung myself out” and onto the beach, hitting her head on a log and knocking herself out.
Her dad took her to the hospital to get checked out. After that, “I wasn’t too thrilled about it anymore,” she said of boat shop work.
She remembers her dad, who died in 2008, as a generous man with his talents and materials. “My dad helped out a lot of people. … He knew the people who couldn’t afford it.”
The town responded in kind. A fire in 1982 heavily damaged the walls and ceiling of the 76-foot-high main shop. The fire chief and Hansen reported that the blaze started in an oil-fired boiler, used to steam wood for boat repairs.
The community responded by helping to rebuild the damaged building.
Elsie Harding still lives in Wrangell. Her mom, Elsie Hansen, 92, lives in Arlington, Washington, north of Seattle. She and Olaf B. left Wrangell in 1996 after selling the business.
Though she had her own career as a nurse, Elsie Hansen also helped out at the shop, scrubbing boat bottoms and other chores — including bookkeeping. And like her daughter, she remembers Olaf B.’s generosity, noting that they still held several unpaid bills when they sold the business in 1989.
And though he long made fun of “Tupperware” boats, their last boat was fiberglass, Elsie Hansen said. The upkeep on wooden boats just got to be too much, she said.
They sold the fiberglass boat in 1996.
