NMHS Advisors Committee Chairman, Naval Architect, Artist, Mariner, Shipbuilder
Melbourne Smith (1930–2018)
photo by eliot hudson, c/o tall ships america
We were saddened to hear from our friend Lilith Arenas that on 2 February her husband and our good friend and advisor, Melbourne Smith, had died in West Palm Beach, Florida. Melbourne’s passion was the design and building of sailing vessels based on historic ships and traditional sailing craft. He was the driving force in the building of the Baltimore clipper Pride of Baltimore and went on to research and design the topsail schooner Californian in San Diego, brig Niagara in Erie, Pennsylvania, and the 1812 privateer Lynx at Rockport Marine in Maine. He had plans to build the Hudson River sloop Experiment here near NMHS headquarters in the Hudson Valley, and the sloops of war USS Hornet and John Paul Jones’s Ranger in Palm Beach, Florida, where he lived in his later years. And for decades he held fast to the dream that he might one day build a replica of the famous record-setting clipper ship Sea Witch.
courtesy melbourne smith
NMHS trustee and author Bill White said of his colleague and friend, “Californian, Lynx, Pride of Baltimore, Niagara, and others, recreated as only a true sailor could, represent the resurgence of the ‘Age of Educational Sail,’ and there is only one man we can credit with this remarkable revival: Melbourne Smith. He designs with the love of a fine line, and he instills each of his creations with grace, speed, and impressive Two Melbourne Smith designs cross tacks off seaworthiness. ...His legacy is his ships. In that world his memory will live as the California coast. Californian, designed long as his ships sail.” NMHS Chairman Ronald Oswald and NMHS Secretary along the lines of an early revenue cutter, and Jean Wort spent many an evening in Palm Beach with Melbourne and Lilith, Lynx, representing a War of 1812 privateer. and never tired of his wit and storytelling. He credited much of what he knew to the naval architect John Griffiths, and it was at his instigation, and through the perseverance of his friends Matt Carmel and Ron Oswald, that Griffiths’s unmarked gravesite was located and a headstone—designed by Melbourne—erected there.
courtesy melbourne smith
On a chilly Tuesday afternoon in late March of this year, a group of graying men and women gathered in Eastport, Maryland, at Dick Franyo’s Boat Yard Brig Niagara Bar and Grill to celebrate the life of Melbourne Smith. Melbourne was a Canadian boy who reinvented himself as a venerable sailor, artist, marine architect, and boatbuilder, whom we all admired for his seafaring skills and devotion to the re-creation of historic vessels that once graced the waters surrounding and within the North American continent. His longtime friend Fred Hecklinger had brought some reminders of Melbourne’s work—architectural drawings of Chesapeake Bay craft, photographs of Melbourne in earlier days—mingled among plates of raw oysters, pizza, and beer on a sidetable in a tap room draped with sailing memorabilia from half the world over. The group circled around Fred as he recounted tales of Melbourne’s remarkable life, including sagas of building the lovely reproduction Sea Witch vessels for which he is well known and revered. And we spoke of others that he might have built, such as the Hawaiian trader Fair American, sloops of war Ranger and Hornet, and the clipper Sea Witch, if he had but world enough and time. Others, like shipbuilder Peter Boudreau, told of working alongside Melbourne in both the shipyard and on the deck of sailing ships. But on one thing all could agree, that Melbourne Smith single-handedly energized the trend of building historically accurate reproductions of sailing ships of yesteryear, several of which grace our maritime museums today.
courtesy flagship niagara league
Naval historian and NMHS trustee Dr. William Dudley captured our grief in his remembrance:
Farewell, Melbourne Smith. You are missed. —Burchenal Green, NMHS President SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 47