Shamus O'Tool and the Boat

Shamus O'Tool was working as a carpenter in St. John's and decided he wanted to build himself a boat. Every day he would bring home a few nails or a board or some scrap of wiring from the electricians and every night he would work on his boat. Countless hours were spent in planing and sanding and fitting pieces of wood together. Since the longest board he was able to sneak home was no longer than his pants leg, he got to use a variety of materials. He could discuss for hours the merits or disadvantages of spruce, fir, pine, oak, walnut, cedar and plywood. Since the hull of his boat was built using all of these materials and not one of them was over 1 meter long and most of them about half that, Shamus became pretty good at fitting wood. When he ran out of boards, the plywood would do just fine. And when he had a problem making the boards fit exact, he would tack a piece of linoleum over the holes.

After 6 months of hard work he finally finished the hull and after some serious pleading, he managed to talk his wife, Martha, out of her 1970 Ford Pinto. Another week of work and he had the 4 cylinder motor mounted. It was really ingenious the way he got the drive shaft to come out the bottom of the boat - and a Walmart 3-speed fan blade saw new life as a boat propeller.

Thursday, last week, Mick O'Brian and they guys came down to help Shamus launch his boat. Martha broke a bottle of beer over the bow and with banners flying, a new 30 foot boat was launched. Later that afternoon, after Shamus got her back up off the bottom, he was able to get most of the holes patched and finally got a good launch the next day. "Well bye's" Shamus said, "It's the fisherman's life for me. I've driven me last nail".

The little Pinto motor popped right along and only backfired every now and then, off he goes out of the harbor. Along about 3:00 o'clock that afternoon, Mick and some of the other fellers decide to take a run out and see how Shamus was doing. Shortly after clearing the harbor mouth, they see Shamus heading by them at about 70 KPH. As best we can tell, the U.S. submarine, Nautilus, came through about that time and Shamus must have snagged'er. As he comes roaring by, he yells out, "By the ever Laird Jaysus Bye's, if I can ever get this Codfish up, whack'er with a board or something!".