If you arrived here from the outside world, you’ve landed on a page that’s part of a bigger, personal project. I’ve tried to keep my work engagement with Brian Donovan in the 1970s to a separate page, where you’ll find more about him and his work. Another article relates to the NZ Ferro Cement Marine Association, of which Brian was one of the mainstays. There are occasional references to him on other pages here, as part of the wider project. I apologise if the remaining personal references and comments are disconcerting!
Brian Donovan was a remarkable man. This account is based on my own recollections, conversations and email exchanges with Graeme Kenyon, Graeme’s and Gary Bowen’s published efforts, and what I can find on ancestry.com and Papers Past. Those, a few passing references in books and magazines and his daughter Jane’s brief wikitree account are pretty much all I can find online.
It’s also “work in progress”. There are plenty of people still out there who can add flesh to these dry bones. If you can help with corrections, comments or more information I hope you’ll contact either Graeme or myself. Unless otherwise credited, photos, and comments on the various boats, are from Graeme, who deserves particular credit for his stories and diligent digging online. ~ Ian
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How to describe Brian Donovan? If I had a choice I’d start with a photo of him mid-belly laugh. He was a big man and he laughed accordingly, loud and hearty. Graeme’s son, a little boy, fled the room the first time he heard him.
When we first knew him in the early 1970s he was just shy of fifty and sharing a house with his son Bryn and his wife at 1 Takarunga Road, a street of yet-to-be gentrified villas looking up towards North Head in Devonport. You entered Brian’s flat through a side veranda that opened into his kitchen and dining area.
Ken Adams and I normally went to see him in the morning, to pick up plans he said he’d have ready for us — but knowing they probably wouldn’t be, and that often the first thing we’d need to do was get him out of bed. There’d be dishes in the sink, so presumably he cooked meals, but normally he’d make himself a glass of Hansell’s Instant Breakfast — a powdered concoction mixed with milk. Something else to add to the list of things I can’t abide, like Johnson’s Baby Powder and Gaviscon. Then we’d head out to his cramped office, built from a car case in the back yard, for him to work on our drawings.
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We knew almost nothing about Brian. At least I didn’t. He was what he seemed to be — self-confident, outgoing, generous, always over promising, struggling to deliver. Full of ideas.
Although we understood the Takarunga Road house was Bryn’s, I don’t really know. For what it’s worth the 1969 electoral roll had Brian at that address along with his brother Desmond, who may well have been the owner. Brian had broken up with his wife Marjorie by then — when or why I don’t know — and they were divorced in 1970. It looks like he’d been living a bachelor for a few years by the time we met him. Divorce required separation for seven years. Otherwise “grounds” such as adultery, desertion or drunkenness had to be proved. Catching people in the act so you could file for divorce was a cottage industry.
Gary Bowen once asked Bryn why Brian split from his wife: “It was no mystery. He was not a steady guy who earned a living.”
Was Brian happy, fulfilled, successful, secure in himself back then? The question never occurred to me — although it does now, the gift of maturity. I just thought he was … bohemian. Maybe freedom from domestic and business responsibilities was liberating, and Hansell‘s Instant Breakfasts and his car-case office the price to pay. He can’t have been without resources — I don’t think — because he was able to lease Span Farm and sub-let building spaces to clients like us.
Ken is confident that Brian was secure in himself. Self confident. The artistic temperament. But I think it’s a question worth asking.
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The artist
Brian’s paternal grandparents were Irish, from Cork and Limerick. His maternal grandfather was a Londoner married to a woman from Hobart. All four died in New Zealand. His mother Catherine came from Whangarei, while his father, Thomas Michael, was born in Auckland. He was a master mariner, at one time skipper of a scow called the Bee.
When Brian arrived, the third in a family of four, the family was living in Devonport.
Brian’s daughter Jane says that as a child he was “periodically confined to a hospital, the cause unknown to me”, that he “did well in school art and handwriting competitions,” was “always around boats” and “excelled in seamanship”.
Maybe Brian’s sickly childhood nourished his interest in art and graphics because next thing you know he’s won a prize for etching, aged seventeen, at the Elam School of Art and Design.
Three years later, in 1935, he’s exhibiting in the graphic arts section of Elam’s end-of-year exhibition. At that stage Elam wasn’t part of the University, so there was no prospect of a degree. It was a modest institution, founded on a bequest from Dr. John Elam, and offered tuition to adults and children, full or part time. Unlike the fine arts school it became, the curriculum was broad. Crafts like pottery were included, and Brian would have had the opportunity to hone his draughting and graphic skills.
In 1938, old enough to vote, the electoral roll had him living at 14 Carlton Gore Road in the city as an artist. Along the way he’d won the prize for Best Gentleman at a fancy dress ball in 1936 dressed as a “negro warrior”. In ‘37 he was back in fancy dress for the sixth annual Movie Ball at the Peter Pan Cabaret — a “brilliant and spectacular function” according to the Auckland Star. Brian played Oberon in a staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Desmond was one of the gnome orchestra.
He must have been on the fringes, at least, of the nascent artistic and literary community of the time, although I can’t find any direct evidence of that until after the war. Allen Curnow, Charles Brasch, Denis Glover, A. R. D. Fairburn, R.A. K. Mason, Frank Sargeson, Colin McCahon, Rita Angus and Toss Woollaston were all more or less contemporary.
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Shenandoah
A couple of other stories show that Brian’s connection to boats and the sea wasn’t dead.
Shortly after midnight on Christmas morning in 1936 he was on board the 55’ cruising launch Shenandoah when it ran aground doing 12 knots in a sudden fog near the Hole in the Rock in the Bay of Islands.
Brian and two others managed to jump ashore, and spent the rest of the night on the rocks in their shorts and singlets. Meanwhile the Shenandoah slipped back into the sea with her skipper Harry Jenkins still on board, and floated off into the mist. When the fog cleared in the morning, Harry managed to get the engine and bilge pumps running and return to pick up the crew before motoring into Urapukapuka, bailing furiously, then on to Opua for repairs. It made the papers — all the little papers up and down the land — generally from the same “our correspondent”, but separately typeset for each press, with occasional little errors to prove it.
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Harry Jenkins was himself a remarkable man. He’d build a successful business manufacturing milking machines for the dairy industry — I picture my father, still milking by hand on some of the farms he worked on as a kid.
Harry had survived a few near catastrophes by the time he drove Shenandoah on to the rocks, including the sinking of the passenger ship Wimmera in 1917, slipping, cracking his head and nearly drowning while getting into his dinghy at Mechanics Bay in 1929, and the Great Depression. The Shenandoah had been built for him by Chas Bailey & Son in 1929. He sold her in 1937 to build an even bigger boat, a 93’ schooner called the New Golden Hind.
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Brian also made the papers as crew on Auckland’s 1938-39 entry in the Cornwell Cup, the “inter-port“ competition for Z Class sailing dinghies. The Cup was big news, and there were lots of trials just to qualify for the teams. The finals were held in Plimmerton, north of Wellington, the winners the first to chalk up three wins. It was a competition of seamanship rather than boat design, so for each race the crews were allotted a hull by drawing lots, taking their own sails and running gear with them. There were capsizes, cancellations and gear failures along the way — in fact you might say the wind won — but officially it was Wellington, and it was their wind after all.
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Shenandoah reappeared in Brian’s life during World War II, when she was requisitioned by the Navy as Q03, one of its “Q-boats” (coastal patrol vessels). Brian, a Petty Officer, served as coxswain aboard her, in charge of navigation and steering. Later in the war he saw service in the Pacific. Gary Bowen writes:
During the war years I believe Brian spent time in the tropics. He had scars on his legs he said were from tropical ulcers. He also once told me he volunteered for the Republican Army in Spain but failed the physical because of flat feet.
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Meanwhile Brian’s brother Des also served on a Q-Boat, Lady Shirley, Q11. Brian was Best Man at Des’s wedding in 1942, two years before he and Marjorie married.
Graeme Kenyon met Des long before he’d heard of Brian.
It was my first ever cruise on a boat. Islington Bay, Rangitoto. I’d just caught a kahawai and was trying to cut it up to eat. A loud foghorn voice called across from a neighbouring boat, “That’s not how to do it, bring the bloody thing over here and I’ll show you how.” My first ever invitation to see inside a proper beautiful boat, the motor sailer Athena. The full tour. Great hospitality. Very similar personality to Brian, except he was a businessman.
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The boatbuilder
During the war Brian was stationed at the Devonport Naval Base, but by 1946 he and Marjorie were back at Carlton Gore Road, except that by that time he’s described in the electoral roll as a boatbuilder.
He remained a boatbuilder in the official record until he got to Takarunga Road some time in the ‘60s — which adds up to twenty years of practical experience, give or take. What sort of boats I don’t know. New builds or repairs I don’t know. An employee or on his own account, I don’t know that either.
Surely he was working for someone else while he was living at Carlton Gore Road after the war — probably down on the Auckland waterfront — but over the late ‘40s and early ‘50s he and Marjorie were living on Herbert St, which runs down to Shoal Bay on the Shore. Wystan Curnow, son of poet Alan Curnow, describes his love of the sea as the result of
an adolescence spent on the shores of … Shoal Bay, in Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour. My father bought a property there following our move north from Christchurch in 1951. Herbert Street was a dirt road that ended at a cliff edge. The house, designed by architect Vernon Brown, was the work of boatbuilder, Brian Donovan, whose shipyard was next door. Soon we had a 12-ft clinker-built dinghy with a Seagull outboard, beached at the bottom of the section to go fishing in. A.R.D. Fairburn found it for us.1
The poet A.R.D. Fairburn must have been a particular friend of the Donovans. There is a December 1936 photo of Brian and Marjorie’s young children with Rex and his relatives on the beach at Mahurangi. He was probably familiar with R.A.K. Mason as well, another friend of Rex Fairburn.
By the mid 1950s Brian and Marjorie had moved to Mahurangi Heads on the East Coast, north of Auckland.
Graeme imagines a small outfit with a boat shed at Mahurangi. Brian gave him the impression that, at least at times, he had a partner, and they were taking on jobbing work, like replacing the stem in a clinker dinghy.
He was building clinker dinghies at some stage, and possibly dories. More than once he referred to the “mahurangi punt” – a style of dory unique to the Mahurangi area.
Working with Andrew
I don’t know when Brian started doing design work alongside his boatbuilding, but by the mid 1960s he was working professionally for his older brother Andrew, “ship broker and naval architect” of Victoria Arcade.
Sea Spray magazine’s October 1965 cover story is about Diomedea, a 36’ kauri Sport Fisherman. The owner’s requirements were met by “a combination of Mr Andrew Donovan’s wide experience with this type of vessel and Mr Brian Donovan’s designing ability, which has produced the graceful craft that you see in the accompanying photographs.”
The original drawings were copyright Andrew Donovan but drawn by Brian.
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Diomeda wasn’t Brian’s only collaboration with Andrew. A 45’ motor yacht, Arohanui, was featured in Sea Spray’s February 1966 issue. Again the design was copyright Andrew but “drawn” by Brian.
Demonstrating that all three Donovan boys were at it, waitematawoodies.com featured a 48′ Des Donovan designed and built launch called Athena, built in 1962. It was on the Athena that Graeme met Des.
Judging by the waitematawoodies stories, all three boats seem to be still active and cared for sixty years later.
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The sailor-philosopher
A story that says a lot about Brian concerns George Dibbern, a German “adventurer, sailor-philosopher, free thinker and self-declared citizen of the world”. George was 25 or so years older than Brian, and had spent time around Australia and New Zealand after jumping ship in Sydney in the 1910s.
He was interned on Somes Island during the First World War, and then returned to Germany. Following a few failed business ventures he set sail from Germany on Te Rapunga, his 32’ double-ended ketch, and eventually arrived back in New Zealand in 1934.
For the next few years George sailed around the Pacific, and declared himself a ”citizen of the world” after being denied residency by the Canadians. When he arrived back in New Zealand in 1941 the authorities decided he was still pretty much a German and he was interned again for the duration.
It’s easy to imagine Brian falling for someone like George, just as he fell for Hundertwasser in the ‘70s. According to Erika Grundmann, Brian and Marjorie, who were themselves “strapped financially”, invited George and his then partner Eileen to beach Te Rapunga “in front of their property in Takapuna, across the harbour from Auckland.”
There the sailors – who still hadn’t done any real sailing – would be able to pitch a tent to live in, empty the boat of all her gear and paraphernalia then give her the complete overhaul she required. Brian and friends would help.2
That statement is odd, not least for suggesting that George and Eileen “still hadn’t done any real sailing”, but also for the suggestion that they might have beached their boat on Takapuna beach. According to Erika this was during the period 1947-9, during which Brian and Marjorie moved to Herbert St, up from Shoal Bay on the harbour side of the peninsula, and sounds a likelier place for this event than Takapuna Beach.
Erika has clearly hitched her star fairly close to George Dibbern’s, so in her book she describes him rather carefully as being aware that the people helping him were “highly skilled and his unskilled labour repaid only a fraction of what they were contributing.” And she touches on the thought that in the opinion of some people George might have been “ripping off” Brian, who was himself struggling to make ends meet. “Fully recognising that George had no money, Brian hoped George ‘would pay sometime’”.
The story goes that George won $10,000 in a Tatts lottery a few years later and gave half to the person who’d given him the ticket in return for work done. It doesn’t seem that Brian saw any of the other half, but neither did his wife and children back in Germany. What he certainly did, whether with part or all of his winnings, was purchase himself an Island off Tasmania as a haven for “hippies, vagabonds and misfits like himself” — an anachronistic comment, but vivid.
For what it’s worth, depending on who you asked, George seems to have been considered either an artist-philosopher-vagabond or someone a little more self serving. No matter what, Marjorie told Erika that “there was no bitterness between them”. However maybe there was in fact some tension. Brian told Graeme that, when he asked George for money, it was because he was under pressure from his wife — but George replied that one should “never let money come between friends”. Brian thought that was very funny, and roared with laughter.
Either way the story is typical of Brian — always ready to help and sometimes not getting paid for it. He was someone people could easily take advantage of, generally by asking for advice that he never thought to charge them for, sometimes by not paying his bills.
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Disappearing
If you’ve got this far thinking I don’t know enough about these people and those times you’re right. I hope you’ll comment or get in touch if you can add to the names, dates, assumptions and anecdotes I’ve built this story on. At Brian’s funeral thirty-odd years ago there were people who could talk vividly about him right from childhood. They’re disappearing, like the interesting times they lived through, and they don’t deserve to be forgotten.
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Practical magic
Brian’s daughter Jane thought that he’d studied architecture, and there may well have been more than an element of that at Elam. He may also have worked for a time as an architectural draughtsman in the early days, but I reckon it was twenty years of boatbuilding that turned him into the marine architect that he was — that plus his time on boats, working with his brother and his genius draughtsmanship. And study. Essentially he was self taught.
We autodidacts think being self-taught is a strength — that at university you’re taught to be middle of the road by mediocre academics. We’re generally wrong, of course — most of us crash and burn. But every now and then an original talent thrives in the open. Brian was a “marine architect” from the time he moved back to Devonport from Mahurangi Heads, signing his drawings “Designed and drawn by B.W. Donovan”.
Certainly I’d have had a guts-full of being “on the tools” by then and be content to design full time. Just like the farmers I knew, including my father, who didn’t want to spend their lives milking cows.
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To lay my philistine cards on the table, I reckon there are the practical arts and the creative arts. Sometimes they’re distinct, sometimes they overlap — but if they don’t overlap there’s plenty of room for bullshit in the creative arts. Your work may be appreciated — or not — by the fashionable, the informed, your fellows and/or the great unwashed, but the world won’t end either way.
Often they do overlap, of course. Take Michelangelo’s David. It could be an artistic disaster and still amazing. A single piece of marble, 5.66 tonnes, 5.17m tall — it’s a wonder the thing’s still standing upright after five hundred years — and after subsidence, flooding, a move across town and a hammer attack.
Meanwhile the end just fell off our friends’ stone bench top. At the very least Michelangelo selected a better block of marble.
There’s no place to hide for marine architects either. I’ve worked with two of them, Brian and Jerry Breekveldt. I’ve watched Jerry grab pencil and paper and start sketching the outline of a new tug with a client — so many things going through his head as they talked, some of them expressed, some just guiding the pencil as he drew. What she’ll need to do the job and turn a profit. How everything will fit into, and on to, the hull he’s drawing, from the deck gear to the engine to the bunks and WCs. Whether she’ll be stable enough to stay right side up in all loads and conditions, or have enough displacement to float to her marks. Where she’ll float with a full cargo. Whether she’ll look the part…
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Jerry was thinking of retiring. One day he asked me if I was interested in taking over, which proves that anyone can come up with a bad idea. I said no. I could live with imposter syndrome — and there was still plenty I could do for him — but there was no way I could do what he did.
Jerry was a professional with heaps of personal, practical experience, steering a straight course for established clients. Brian was an artist, also with years of practical experience — a creative attracted by, and to, people with dreams.
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In the early days, when Graeme was still calling Brian “Mr Donovan” — and Mr Donovan was still shouting back, “Call me Brian!” — Graeme gave him a lift home from a meeting.
I told him that I owned an 18’ mullet boat, and then added that of course a boat that size could never have standing headroom. “Is that what you think?” he said. “Well, when we get back, I’ll show you something.” What he showed me was a timber prototype of the Nulgarra, which has standing headroom because you stand on the wide keel, in the bilge.3
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Brian’s car-case office was a masterpiece of making do in a tiny space, the drawing board across one end with everything to hand — splines, weights, rolling rulers, pencils, pens, scale rules, erasers, scrapers, sheets of draughting paper and vellum — all the tools of the draughtsman artist back then. Plans stowed in tubes and on shelves under his drawing board. A stool to sit on while he worked and one or two more for visitors like us, waiting for the work he’d overpromised and underdelivered. He was overflowing with ideas for other people‘s plans and dreams, and too disorganised or disinclined to manage his work or make a decent living from it. So you pestered him, and waited, and took it all in — the little tins hanging under leaks in the roof, the postcards and photos and messages pinned up on the walls.
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Within the bounds
It’s an overused expression, but in a way I fell in love with Brian. He was this eccentric, generous fount of ideas, practical artistry and confidence — in both himself and you. I’m not going to repeat what I’ve just said but boat design doesn’t take kindly to bullshit. The sketch plan your architect shows you isn’t a pretty picture, or not just a pretty picture — it’s the setting down of an idea on paper. Not fully elaborated, just the concept. Like watching a one minute cooking video on YouTube. The novice wants the recipe. The experienced cook watches, likes, understands and has a go.
That’s the architect’s quandary. He’s put all this work into what is essentially a proposal, a pitch — and he hasn’t even made a sale yet.
That’s the client’s quandary too. He’s bought into the idea, but he needs the recipe — detailed plans elaborated out of the sketch plan — to build the boat.
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Most of Brian’s design work fell within the bounds of what was common at the time or in the recent past. For example, take a look at the catalogue of stock designs we did with him. There were Bermudan-rigged yachts like the Amiri alongside gaff rigs and traditional hulls like our double ended Colin Archer, but nothing outside his experience. He wasn’t afraid of workboat practice either, like hot dip galvanised steel fittings, or anchors you could fabricate yourself. Those things made him unusual, eccentric in New Zealand’s yachting culture, but nothing more.
He always stressed that pleasure craft needed to be designed for their intended purpose, whether that was “for coastal work or to cross oceans, as a weekender or a life afloat. These and other differences in basic function, as modified by the experience of the client and architect, would result in entirely different craft.”
And cruising yachts were of necessity a compromise between their functions as a mode of transport and a home.
Although long ocean passages (for example) have been undertaken in all types of craft, many boats which have been successful in the ocean crossing have at the same time fallen down in other respects.5
A cruiser shouldn’t be slow and cumbersome, but neither should she fatigue her crew, and “she should supply comfort when the stress of weather is against it.”
There should be the ability to reduce sail rapidly and with the least effort. Since there is not generally a lot of manpower available, the gear should be designed with this in mind and simplicity may not always be the answer. She should be able to work to windward under reduced sail and be able to handle the draft limits of her cruising waters. She should not draw a large quarter wave and should have buoyant ends.
Ferrocement was a heavy building material. but the influence of increased displacement on the performance of yachts wasn’t necessarily bad.
The primary requirement for speed in displacement craft is not light weight but low wetted surface and low windage, with sufficient lateral plane to combat leeway (assuming that sail area is sufficient, and efficient). A heavy yacht is steadier in her motion, but she will be wetter when driven hard. She will sail at a much less angle of heel, but will be harder on her gear. She will not give to puffs of wind or shoot ahead as a light yacht will, but she will have much more room, and can carry more of everything, including stores, while at the same time allowing more variety in the layout of the accommodation compared with a light craft of the same linear dimensions.
Costs and benefits. Trade-offs everywhere.
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Pushing the envelope
But there were ways in which Brian did push the envelope. The first was ferrocement. Not just his adoption of it, but his self-assured understanding of it as a reinforced shell structure in which slab sides and unnecessary frames were weaknesses — it was a hull’s beautiful curves that gave it strength.
Even the “flat-bottomed” houseboat got its strength from its unique wave form hull — a catamaran shape forward, with the motor and propeller mounted between them, transitioning into a trimaran aft.
To me, Brian’s use of ferrocement and galvanised steel both came from the same place — his desire for his boats to be affordable and accessible for as many people as possible. People like us could build a hull with minimal professional help. “Third world” aid projects, like the one in the Solomon Islands I worked on, made a virtue of employing unskilled and semiskilled labour — “appropriate” or “intermediate” technology.
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Then there was scale. There are sketch plans for larger yachts of 70′ and more, although I don’t know whether they were ever built. But the 136’ cargo ketch Markson, built for Athol Rusden, was well outside his experience. It was built out of hardwood timber in Fiji, its keel laid down in 1978, the year Heather and I arrived in the Solomons.
And then there were the rigs. He certainly knew how the old gear worked, and not just old school schooners but brigantines! Ten years earlier I’d help care for a 93 year-old man who’d sailed round the Horn in an “old windbag”, but that was an experience long gone. Square rigged ships and scows were rarities.
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Where did Brian’s frequent focus on the old ways come from — from gaff-rigged sloops to brigantines? Two things, I think. First, his familiarity with and love of them — study of them. Not just their aesthetic appeal but his genuine belief that they were often the practical solution. But this was also in the spirit of the times. There was powerful interest in do-it-yourself boatbuilding and offshore cruising, and this was one expression of it. The romance of the past. A reaction against conformity.
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But is it a good idea?
There’s no denying that by and large Brian’s ideas worked. I’ve already mentioned Dennis and Nancy Broad, Roger Taylor and Kerry Dwyer, among others, as examples.
Dick Mouat built his houseboat with the corrugated bottom6. Graeme Wyatt and his family sailed their centreboard yawl around the world.
So Brian’s ideas worked, yes, but you needed the determination and skills to turn them into reality — that and the plans! And one other thing — to ask yourself, is this a good idea?
I said that boat design doesn’t take kindly to bullshit, but neither does building and sailing the finished vessel. I think back to my parent’s friend Ev Sayers’ response to our 45’ brigantine. It’s not a good idea, he said.
Brian could explain how his design was the logical outcome of what we’d asked of him, down to her original brigantine rig — expressed through the romantic imagination that had appealed to us in the first place. But Ev bypassed all that. It’s not a good idea, he told me, you’ll regret it. A more conventional designer than Brian would have said the same thing — it’s not a good idea. On the other hand, to be fair, Norm and his family managed to pull it off.
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Another aspect that could get builders into trouble was weight. The weight of a steel, aluminium or timber hull built to plan can be calculated, although as someone who did a bit of it in pre-computer days I can testify to how laborious that was — just one part of the tedious calculation involved in boat design. But the weight of a ferro hull is also more variable, dependent on the compactness of the armature and how much plaster is applied to it, which means that keeping weight down requires scrupulous attention from both designer and builder. Builders could certainly add weight by building unexpected elements like bulkheads in ferrocement, by not compacting the armature, or by fairing the hull with plaster, but the fact that there were a number of overweight failures, a few of them seriously bad, inevitably called into question whether those tedious calculations were adequately done. I remember one early example in particular of a boat that was otherwise beautifully built, but floated well below her marks.
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Finally Brian oversold how cheap and easy to build his scows were. They were inspired by the old flat bottomed coastal cargo boats that his father used to sail, and they were highly practical — Graeme lived aboard his 33 footer for years. Brian drew the lines for Graeme on the back of a calendar, handed it to him and said, here, that’s all you need to build it. After a push he added a gaff schooner sail plan, and much later I added a construction and fit-out drawing for the 28’ stock design. “All you need to build this,” Brian said, “is a hammer, a skill saw and a broad axe!” But he oversold the use of cheap materials in the hull. The ferrocement sheathing might be impervious, and maybe these were the only scows ever built not to have worm in the centreboard case, but, as Graeme puts it, boats deteriorate from the deck down.
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Graeme reckons I’ve dismissed ferrocement sheathing with faint praise — and that while Brian mightn’t have been the first to think of sheathing an old hull, he was probably the first to design a boat to be built sheathed from new:
The concept just sort of gelled in his mind one day. I don’t know what triggered it but he said, “I wish I’d thought of it before starting this one” (referring to his live-aboard design, which was starting to take shape at Riverhead, a much more sophisticated shape than the 28’ scow). “I couldn’t have done it, I suppose — people would have laughed at it.” The only time I ever heard him show any self-consciousness…
He might have got the idea from his habit of designing ferrocement decks to be vibrated down onto plywood shuttering. He noted the surprising sheer strength between the two layers, especially if the plywood was rough, and told me that when it came to sheathing there was no need to worry too much about staples — that anyone who’s stripped down boxing knows that the cement sticks to it “like shit to a blanket” (possibly the first time I’d heard that expression). But he was characteristically over-optimistic when saying that. I made sure I used plenty of fastenings for sheer strength, the only way those two quite different materials can add strength to each other.
Brian was anything but fussy about some things. Dennis and I used to laugh about his expression, “That doesn’t matter, it isn’t structural”, which he tossed around a little bit too easily at times. When I was building my scow, the wooden plug was rough (very strong, but not watertight) and the joke was — it’s not structural, the ferrocement will take care of everything. Then, when the sheathing was laid over, he’d say — she’ll be right, it’s not structural, the real strength is in the timber!
Later, when I built the scow I’m living in now, I made some ply/ferrocement panels and tested them to destruction under different scenarios, and found that the hybrid material can be a great deal stronger than either of its components, and that is only possible if there is real strength in sheering between the two layers.
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Graeme did a trip to Motuihe Island one weekend:
I found Ted Ashby anchored in the bay, and anchored alongside for a photo op. I thought, “First time in decades two scows can be seen together… Yippee — I’ll be invited aboard…” But the crew on the Ted Ashby took not the slightest notice of another scow alongside. Not interested. I pulled up the hook and streamed around to the bay on the other side. The photo didn’t come out very well either.
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Greybeard
The picture’s not complete without Brian, the old greybeard, stalking the boat yards and building sites proffering encouragement and practical advice to all and sundry.
The Ferro Cement Association ran a pre-plastering inspection and certification scheme. Richard Hartley inspected boats built to his designs but Brian did most of the rest.
He’d often turn up for occasions like plastering day, a launching, or moving a boat to a new site.
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Graeme was working on a 36’ Herreshoff design at the time, nothing to do with Brian, and proposing to build it with water pipe frames. This was an early method that both Brian and Hartley disapproved of as a corrosion-prone weakness in the hull. Graeme was convinced, and changed to make the pipe frames removable, but in retrospect wished he’d used timber moulds instead. Brian also suggested widening the keel, and offered advice throughout building the armature.
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Gary Bowen had a good story of how panicked he was when, in the final stages of laying up and tightening the armature, the reinforcing was pulled so tight that the hull had the dreaded “starved dog” look.
Brian had said on a number of occasions that it would not be a problem and not to worry about it. The next day was plastering day and I was feeling frantic. Brian arrived in late afternoon and we started the fairing process … with a sledge hammer! It worked perfectly and Brian took much pleasure in seeing how fair my boat turned out.7
Gary’s boat was a Bert Woollacott timber design, and nothing to do with Brian, but Brian was always ready to help. Graeme Kenyon watched them forge the fisherman’s anchor for Gary’s boat, the first and last time he saw blacksmithing first hand:
— Brian full of confidence as you might expect. Got the charcoal embers glowing red with the bellows, and demonstrated how to get more heat out of it by splashing fresh water onto the embers, which burst into flame as you would expect from a handful of meths or kero but not from water. I was most impressed. Gary handled the big hammer and on Brian’s orders took the role of “striker” while Brian held the red-hot iron in tongs, on the anvil, moved and turned it as required, the striker’s job just to bring the hammer down on the same spot each time Brian called for it. Gary reckons that anchor saved him during a hurricane somewhere. After galvanising the result was, as we used to say “just like a bought one”.
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Brian was often around for grouting too. Grouting was the process of filling any voids in the plastered hull with a cement slurry — leaving them unfilled invited corrosion problems, spalling plaster etc. There were techniques for locating voids, like tapping the hull and listening for hollows, or filling it with water. Once you’d located a void you’d drill a hole and pumped the slurry into it at high pressure. You’d see it progressing around the hull as wet patches appeared on the surface.
The association had a grout pump that it rented out for this purpose. It was built for the Association, to a Donovan design, by a client who was rather annoyed at getting no compensation for his time — Brian proving as careless in this case as he was in his own interests.
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Madagascar
NZFCMA wrote up an FAO project in Madagascar, which Brian supervised for six months in 1973-4. It was a rough experience. After a few weeks in Rome for a briefing, he arrived at Majunga in northern Madagascar to supervise the construction of two ferrocement hulls. A second man, John Fyson, arrived from FAO to assist a couple of months later, but until then he was supervising a completely unskilled workforce by himself. After John arrived, one of them was able to leave the site, for example to get materials or tools, while the other continued to supervise. Until then the men would stop work if the supervisor left, or make mistakes that slowed the job down.
I can’t help comparing my Solomons experience, where we had a management team, and people working for us who at a practical level had far more experience than me.
And then there was the scrounging and making do, which to be fair came naturally to Brian.8 For example:
…[He] had his men construct a cradle and carriage for the slipway from timber, bolts, spikes, etc. that he had salvaged from the cradles of other hulls. In the meantime a welder was building a mast, gallows and other rigging items, and repairing cast steel wheels salvaged from a wreck… He fitted the shaft, rudder stock and intermediate bearing himself and salvaged several fuel tanks from another boat because no suitable steel plate was available for tank construction in Majunga… A steering gear was adapted from one that Pêche Maritime had available. There was no chain to fit the gipsy so Brian managed to find a short length which he used over the gipsy and to which he welded some other chain to run over the lead wheels. From there wire was used to the quadrant. There were no grooved wire pulleys available so Brian used pulleys from a sliding door.9
Brian came home expressing his admiration for FAO personnel doing a tremendous job against great odds. He stressed the importance of providing supervisors with an assistant, and the difficulties they would face adjusting to the attitudes and difficulties of the work force, and the constant need to improvise in developing countries. He told Graeme that the labourers in Madagascar were good intelligent people, but they had no cultural concept of a straight line or a right-angle, and had to be taught — Graeme thought Hundertwasser would have liked that.
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The caravan
Graeme and Alison Kenyon had a piece of land in Riverhead, a little place about 30km north west of Auckland. It had a tennis pavilion that they lived in for a while, but by the mid ‘70s the site was effectively unused. It was about then that Brian asked Graeme if he could move a caravan out there, build a shed and start work on a boat of his own to live aboard.
This must have been about 1975 as I spent a lot of time driving between Glen Eden and Riverhead after that, working with Brian to set up a catalogue of his designs, organising drawings and creating standard detail drawings to flesh them out.
Brian lived there for several years, and work progressed slowly on the armature of his boat. Graeme never charged him, and Brian never moved into the tennis pavilion where Graeme and Alison had lived. It must have been difficult living and working out of that caravan for several years, especially when for at least part of that time it was with a woman. Strangely enough, despite all my trips out there I can barely remember the caravan.
“Two more wives”
Brian’s daughter Jane wrote on wikitree, with remarkable brevity, that “[Brian’s] first wife was my mother. After my mother divorced him, there were two more wives.”
So it was that Brian brought home from Madagascar, not just his experience with FAO, but also a young woman called Lydia. Having no residential rights, she was promptly repatriated, but in due course Brian managed to return to Madagascar, bring her back to New Zealand and immediately marry her. Graeme was a witness.
It’s common to speculate on the motives and common sense of the people involved in a relationship with a 40-odd year age difference, but in any case Lydia, not her real name, became a New Zealand citizen in 1978. By then the relationship seems to have been over, which was probably a good thing, as Lydia seems to have been something of a firebrand.
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In doubtless unrelated news the cops were called to the caravan on one occasion, and on another Brian was taken to hospital.
His daughter Jane had another take:
Unfortunately, he was quite unable to manage his money, offering most of it to the many people visiting, and supporting his second wife traveling around the world.
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1978 was also the year in which the keel was laid in Fiji for the Markson, the 136’ schooner Brian had designed for Athol Rusden. Brian was so keen to be involved that he offered to supervise construction without charge. If you’re to believe Athol, on his second trip up to Fiji Brian came down to the boat one day with a Fijian girl on his arm. She was there again on his third trip, and Athol started to worry that it was serious. Brian became so distracted by the girl and her tendency to disappear without warning that Athol eventually decided Brian’s services weren’t much use him.10
The Fijian girl too ended up in New Zealand and lived in the Riverhead caravan for a while. This was probably after my time, and I don’t think I met her. Brian Donovan (retired) appeared in the 1981 electoral roll living on School Road, Riverhead, with Tokasa Tinai (housewife) at the same address.
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Retirement
Graeme had decided to go commercial fishing. To do so he needed to buy a boat, and that meant he needed to sell the Riverhead property. That in turn meant telling Brian he’d need to move on.
He hated having to do so, but Brian was understanding — don’t worry matey, he said — and he was promptly packed up and gone. His boat was shifted out to Kumeu somewhere as an armature. No one seems to know for sure what happened to it after that.
From Riverhead Brian moved in temporarily with Bryn again, and from there to a place in Onehunga called Garside Village — single bedroom pensioner flats that had been opened in the 1960s.
The Garside units were recently demolished to make way for apartments, but Brian’s was in a row of brick units set in expansive green lawns — one of the best.
Brian settled in well according to Graeme, who continued to be a good friend and occasional visitor. There were still lots of people calling, “all asking for advice”.
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Brian was good friends with a man called Bill, a convicted fraud who lived in one of the other units. According to Graeme the relationship appeared to go way back.
I first met Bill back in the Riverhead days. Brian approached me for money so Bill could make bail. I turned him down. Brian said he “understood” and showed no surprise or objection. It is clear that if Brian had any money of his own, he would have given it to Bill. Bill was wanted by the police (had not yet been convicted — perhaps he was on parole). Dennis noted how Bill would disappear and hide behind the hedgerow if any car approached the property at Riverhead. I did observe this once myself…
The part that gets me is the incredible variety of unusual, interesting and often quite disreputable people who seemed to be a part of Brian’s life. Brian greeted and welcomed everyone with enthusiasm, but moved on from one to the next, as they arrived. The same with prospective clients, I think. I can’t think of the word which describes this compulsive personality in regard to friendships and relationships, as he appeared to have no discrimination between people who genuinely cared for him, and people who were on the scrounge. As long as you were hard up you were a friend. Yet he could hobnob and speak well of business people too [although] there was a certain type of wealthy businessman he would despise.
In any case Bill was certainly supportive of Brian. Bill had a little enterprise going, buying and selling out-of-date pies, and they were a hit with Brian, who got his at mates’ rates.
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I lost contact with Brian after the Solomons, obsessed with our own affairs, but I like to think of Brian secure in a place where he felt comfortable, albeit eating stale pies. Whether it was still Hansell’s Instant Breakfasts at the start of the day I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. But he still had mates, was still getting the visitors he loved, and still helping them if he could.
Graeme says Eurico knew Brian to a tee, and his cartoon was acutely observed.
There is a lot of detail here, if you study it. I always liked the boxes labelled “poison”. Note the cobwebs, the old fan, the calendar pin-up as well as the drawing canisters – all true… Note also the stacks of junk and the box labelled “Fiji”… For years Brian used to collect junk to send off to the “the Islands”, where he felt people would need that stuff… I do know that he sent stuff to Tocasa’s family members in Fiji, at one time – old washing machines, that sort of thing.
It was during this time at Onehunga that Brian had to give up drawing.
His hands began to shake badly as soon as he put drafting pen to paper. So he gave up drafting about that time, but continued to write letters to his many friends, in his careful long hand…
I was barely visiting at this time – only occasionally – obsessed with my own things, and visited Brian only when it suited me. Alison chided me for this. I did, thank goodness, visit him when he was quite close to dying. In bed in his home. He said I’ve got something for you matey, and he gave me one of his old ivory scale rulers, with a chip out of it. I didn’t get the significance even then, was just mystified at the gift but accepted it anyway. He died a couple of days later, and I suppose it was his way of saying farewell. Bill was still seeing him at that time. And Eurico still treated him like a father – I think Eurico was probably his most loyal friend in those last few days.
Jane says, “he continued working as a boat designer until a succession of strokes stopped him from holding a pen.” He died in hospital on May 15th 1993. His constant friend Graeme saved what he could of Brian’s drawings and passed them to the Maritime Museum, along with the chipped scale rule.
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And much more
There’s much more to be said about Brian Donovan by people who knew him better than me. He was a brilliant, generous man, flawed like the best of them, filled with confidence, as I said earlier, in both himself and you.
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Gary Bowen was a senior lecturer in the Auckland University’s School of Engineering in the ‘70s. Gary owed a lot to Brian, as did Brian to him. An article he wrote in 1986 about New Zealand’s ferrocement pioneers includes a generous tribute to Brian, and this little sketch:
I remember sitting with Brian over a drawing board one hot day working out an accomodation plan for my boat. His dog, Sam, was on the floor and a line of ants crossed the papers and walked up the wall. There were water stained papers all about and dozens of messages, postcards and notes pinned up… It has been said that Brian never sent a bill out. Naturally, he kept very busy.11
I’ve quoted Gary’s article more than once, I can’t remember Sam the dog and I never saw any ants, but that does remind me of the man I knew and, really, loved.
Gary says he “still loves ferro”. The hull of the boat he built at Span Farm and lived aboard with his family for nine years required no maintenance apart from anti fouling, and he’s now building a second, a 22’ double ended ketch with an exceptionally thin hull — just over 1/2” — modelled on John Hanna’s Tahiti design.
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Yes, there was a quiet magic in the way Brian moved through the world. Not loud, not boastful, just steady, thoughtful, and deeply human. This should be a tribute to that magic. Should be a journey through stories, reflections, and even the small moments, as of the cat’s existence, because they reveal the heart of a man who never sought the spotlight, but somehow became the centre of it for those lucky enough to have known him.
As I see it, whether you are reading this as a friend, a curious stranger, or someone who has heard whispers of Brian’s way, I want them to capture the essence of our friend Brian. Because this isn’t just about honouring a friend, it is about the values he lived by, the people he has touched, and the ripple effect of a life well lived. — Eurico Charraz
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Graeme, the best of loyal friends, has compiled and self-published a downloadable PDF portfolio of Brian’s ferrocement designs, along with follow-up photos and stories about them in many cases.
He hopes that, by circulating this among Brian’s many friends and clients, more photographs, text and drawings will be forthcoming, “and might lead to a small glossy publication commemorating Brian Donovan and his ferrocement designs.” I hope so too.
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Meanwhile I’ll leave the last word to Ken Adams. In an email he describes Brian as understanding the engineering and architectural significance of shell concrete structures like no one else, and personally refining and applying those principles to marine structures.
His genius, I think was that he combined highly refined engineering principles with a historic knowledge of naval architecture and the practical experience of a seaman on small scale commercial vessels. He had the capacity to innovate within the practical application of historic traditions with truly extraordinary aesthetic creativity.
It was those qualities, I think that drew us to his designs. And as far as I am able to tell, in this he was unique in the world, and NZ is deserving of respect for achieving the most refined examples of nautical concrete shell structures. Brian deserves to be remembered for being the foremost practitioner of this art form.
A truly remarkable man, a kind, generous human being like no one else in my life. These attributes are highly sophisticated, and he stands comfortably beside Colin McCahon and Frederick Hundertwasser in my opinion.
Footnotes
- Wystan Curnow, Journal of New Zealand Literature, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2019, 26-43 ↩︎
- Dark Sun by Erika Grundman ↩︎
- “A friend of mine, Marcus Ramon, ended up owning Roc. He bought it off someone in Ohiwa Harbour (south of Whakatane), rolled it over completely on the bar coming out, and was lucky not to drown himself. Later he had to scrap the boat — didn’t know what else to do so he buried it in his mother’s garden. A few years later the property was sold and the new owner discovered it, complained, and Marcus had to dig up the broken parts and pay for it to be transported to the Whangarei tip — had to pay by weight, of course. He thought at the time that the keel was bloody heavy. Later, he got a copy of Roger Taylor’s book, and learned that the keel had been filled with lead. He went back to Whangarei tip to see if there was any chance of recovering it, but of course there was not. Bugger! Marcus is a personality not unlike Brian would have been when younger, burly, loud laughter, a generous heart and usually short of money. He used to be a boatbuilder. He is currently restoring my old scow. I have corresponded with Roger Taylor from time to time too. He has a croft in Scotland now.” — Graeme Kenyon ↩︎
- Graeme Kenyon remembers Mike Hudson living on an H28 on a mooring at Greenhithe. “On the trip to Tonga Mike and Dennis worked the sun sights, having both recently been to navigation classes. The navigation was mumbo jumbo to me as I never learned celestial navigation. On approaching Tonga — I think Vava’u was the expected landfall, although we actually entered at Nuku’Alofa — there was no sight of land. We could pick up a radio station, and it was all church music, which seemed strange because it was Saturday. I climbed the mast to try to see land. The mast had climbing rungs, but I was unable to go higher than the spreaders, because I got vertigo and couldn’t make myself go higher. Still no sight of land. Then Nancy came up with a brainwave. It was definitely Saturday, because she had an accurate count of the days — she was on contraceptive tablets, so she had to be correct! — but the music on the radio suggested it must be Sunday. Finally, the penny dropped — we must have crossed the International Date Line! So, either Nancy was out in her calculation or Dennis and Mike were out in theirs. We decided it must be the latter. An hour or two later, the peaks of Vava’u hove into sight on the horizon. And it was a good feeling too, just like they describe in the books!” ↩︎
- These quotes are from the introduction to the NZ Ferrocement Services Ltd Stock Designs catalogue, ca. 1976 ↩︎
- Graeme says, “This boat ended up as an outside bedroom or ‘tiny house’, far inland somewhere in Northland. Gary and I drove by one day and saw it in the paddock.” Brian would have appreciated the “waste not, want not” attitude. ↩︎
- Ferrocement Pioneers in New Zealand, Gary Bowen, Journal of Ferrocement, Vol. 16, No. 2, April 1986 ↩︎
- “Speaking of collecting junk, Brian was a master at it. Do you remember the days when there was an annual hard rubbish collection, and every gateway would have a pile of unwanted stuff for collection, usually just for a very short period. I invited Brian to come out with me one evening to have a look at all the hard rubbish out for collection and see what we could find. Brian accepted with great enthusiasm — in fact it might have been him that suggested it. He had an eagle’s eye for treasure. I remember him advising me — If you’re in a hurry, grab everything in tins, or in rolls. I think I still have a few half full tins of paint, and few half-rolls of mastic tape, cloth or anything else that comes in “rolls”. On this occasion I think we might have grabbed a washing machine that just “needed a little bit of fixing – they’ll fix that up in the islands!” Towards the end of the rubbish run, Brian was bending over and had his head immersed in an interesting pile, and I turned around to see an approaching policeman. “What do you think you are doing?” The cop hadn’t noticed Brian actively rummaging at first, and he thought I was on my own — then he fixed his eyes on Brian. I was paralysed for a moment, and all I could say was Brian! Brian! Brian stood up, assessed the situation in an instant — and broke the tension with a great roar of laughter. The cop ended up laughing too, and advised us it would be a good idea to go home. Which we did. Brian was elated, and not the least bit embarrassed.” — Graeme Kenyon. ↩︎
- NZFCMA Bulletin, April/May 1974 ↩︎
- Athol Rusden, Rascal of the South Pacific ↩︎
- Ferrocement Pioneers in New Zealand, Gary Bowen ↩︎
Probably the most complex writing task you have attempted. I think that amidst the collected fragments it provides a remarkably realistic account of a complex man who bridged the ‘do it yourself’ as a means of survival and getting ahead of the generation of our fathers and our desire for freedom from the dictates and restraints of our fathers and to build a ‘world’ according to our own desires. The document draws together resources not only about Brian but about the era that has the potential be valuable in writing a polished, coherent account of Brian’s life and work. The next stage is probably beyond the brief, I think, that you set yourself. I enjoyed the read, but saddened that this remarkable man who served a small group of men who espired to do things differently was constantly thwarted by circumstances and is a forgotten figure, despite being a remarkably enterprising pioneer in his chosen field – naval architecture and amateur boat building. The rich crowd who mill around the America’s Cup, rule the waves.