Winterton Boat Building Museum

Throughout the 20th Century, fishermen in Winterton, Newfoundland, enjoyed a reputation for making fine boats. Using only hand tools and local timber, they built skiffs, punts or "rodneys", motor boats and schooners.

The local trap skiffs and punts were perfectly suited for hauling fish from Trinity Bay. These were work boats, as practical as wheelbarrows, as graceful as antique rockers. The flutter of their oil-soaked sails and the clatter of their make-and-break engines were as familiar to villagers as the wind and the waves.

This community museum, just 90 minutes from St. John's on the Baccalieu Trail, celebrates the skill and ingenuity of Winterton's boat builders. We have full-size boats, constructed and used in the community, all the tools employed to build and sail them. In our boat building shop, you'll see a motor boat under construction.

Down by the wharf, you'll find the beautiful motor boat craftsman Ralph Coates built in 2000 as a Canada Millennium project. A photo essay by folklorist David A. Taylor of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., depicts boat building here in the 1970s along with photographs taken by Ralph Reid dating back to the fifties.

The museum's second floor has a vast array of lifestyle artifacts including; The Oldest English Headstone in the Province, Cooperage tools and techniques, a magnificent Horse drawn Hearse, Agriculture tools, Military displays, Transport & communication and domestic displays and much more.
Season: June - Sept (Call for an Appointment in the off season) Call for hours

Location: Main Road, Winterton

Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 59
Winterton, NL
Canada, A0B 3M0

Telephone: 709-583-2010/2044

Fax: 709-583-2099

Website: www.woodenboat.ca