When Jonah Eaton and his family began building  the boat “The Aramingo” in the historic dairy bottling plant stretching the block at 4562 Worth Street in Frankford, they had no idea they’d be struck by scrap pirates before a looming 2013 launch.  After entering the building through an abandoned portion, the bandits nabbed $8,500 in valuable bronze the artisans had been collecting for eight years.  In effort to launch as scheduled in spring 2013, Eaton has started a Kickstarter campaign to recover money for lost materials for a critical rudder post, replacement portholes, and deck hardware.

 

“The guys who broke in were able to get into the building from one of the abandoned parts of the building.  Whoever it was getting in could have gotten in and just had a door to the rest of it.  We had no forced entry.  We spent a month and a half rebuilding the wall,” Eaton explained.

 

Set to move to its permanent home in Harpswell, Maine, “The Aramingo” has been created cooperatively by the historically Pittsburgh- and Philadelphia-based Quaker Eaton family, externs from Swarthmore college, and a number of friendly hands who worked tirelessly to create the craft in the tradition of Quaker shipbuilding. Founders of Eaton Batson Boatbuilding, Jonah’s parents have been building boats in the backyard as a family since the 1980s.  

For this sailboat, Robert Eaton and Wendy Batson worked on everything from design to sail construction. Sister Kate Eaton worked on casting the lead for the keel before heading off to Commonwealth Medical School in Scranton. Both Jonah and brother Zach attended Swarthmore College so recruiting externs from the alma mater was a natural decision.  Sister Jeremy Louise ventured down from her art career in Massachusetts to bring her hands on deck.  Jonah credits Jason Roberts for his valuable help as a metalworker and welder as well as Alice Hershey for planking “The Aramingo.”

 

The building at 4562 Worth Street was constructed at different stages between the late 1890s and1930s.  

”I was the first person to move in here," says Eaton. "It was probably easily 240 feet back and eighty feet across one big open space with riveted iron trusses, fifteen feet off the ground the trusses, and the actual roof goes up to a twenty-five feet slope.

"The building is subdivided up.  My neighbors are a roofer, auto body shop, and two bays down carpentry crew.  In the adjoining two story factory space, the have twelve foot ceilings.  No boat building is happening in there.  There’s also a photographer, and a guy who makes T-shirts, a silkscreener.  Whole parts are still empty and abandoned.”

 

Hewn from new materials and salvaged wreckages recovered by divers and broken down from other boats, “The Aramingo” includes locally sourced oak and some from Wisconsin at Eaton’s late grandparents neighboring farm as well as West Coast Douglass fir.  The owner donated “The Tegolin,” a boat sinking on Penn’s Landing, and Jonas, Zach, and Robert broke down the lead for the ballast keel at Pine Point, Camden on Penn’s Landing.  Annapolis’ “Sans Soucis” was just rotting away in a boatyard, and gained new life as part of a new construction.

 

“A third lot of materials came from a friend of my dad who has a salvage business on Lake Michigan," says Eaton. "He would dive after wrecks, random stuff, too big to use.  He gave us a lot of stuff accumulating in the basement."

 

“We are too prideful to use cheap plastic stuff. To replace the sentimental things is the hardest.  The rudder is going to be hard.  It’s a 60-70 pound piece of metal.  The difference is last time we could approximate it by using a piece of cardboard with a general angle.  My buddy, Jason and I got the rudder to match the bend.  Modifying the rudder at this point is very difficult.”

 

As the Eaton to reside in Philadelphia the longest, Jonah graduated Swarthmore with a political science and engineering degree.  He went on to work at the historic structural engineering firm, Keast and Hood Company in Old City which led to work on projects at Independence Hall, Christ Church, and Philadelphia's City Hall.  After putting away money, he partnered with his parents to move into shipbuilding as close to full time as possible.  Eaton kept a foot in the workforce, including his posts as a pipe fitter, a house carpenter, and currently in the office of Anne Lazarus of Pa. Superior Court.

 

As Hurricane Sandy bore down on Frankford, Jonah spoke of sea lore, “It’s a superstition.  You can’t say the name of the boat when you are with it.  We are lucky for the storm.  Now I have two days off from work to spend on the boat.  We have a few problems with the roof and a little bit of flooding.  It’s a boat.  It’s meant to be on the water.”

BONNIE MACALLISTER is a multi-media artist, grant writer and journalist residing in West Philly. Her work has appeared in Tom Tom Magazine, Toronto Quarterly, Nth Position (U.K.) and Grasp (Czech Republic). Send feedback here.