Arapahoe craftsman finds pleasure in building

ARAPAHOE -- Bruce Harrison Jr. likes to build things.

He doesn't have a specialty item. He has used mostly wood or steel along with an occasional deer antler to make everything from 98-foot boats to grandfather clocks, chairs, antique table replicas, walking canes and knives.

These are creations just since he retired as a boat builder at the old Barbour Boat works in New Bern 35 years ago. During 35 years before that, as an employee at the storied New Bern boat yard, the items ranged from 20-foot pleasure boats to ferries and tug boats to mine-sweepers for the British Navy.

"I think when you are able to do the things you enjoy, then you are indeed fortunate," he said, opening the door to his shop at his home in Arapahoe. "And I've been very fortunate."

"He's the smartest man I've ever known," offered his wife, Dorothy.

Harrison smiled, adding that the smartest thing he ever did was marry her 62 years ago after the two met during a Saturday night dance at the old Minnesott Beach pavilion.

"That was the lively spot," he said. "I picked her out of the crowd, more or less. A friend of mine had his yacht tied up at the dock and we walked down and I introduced him to Dot and told him ‘This is the girl I'm going to marry.' My wife snickered, but eventually we did get married."

He got his knack for building from his boat-builder father, Bruce Sr., while growing up in a rural settlement called Marine, which later became the site of Camp Lejeune.

His great-grandfather was the local entrepreneur, with a general store, machine shop and a sawmill.

"We were at the end of the road off the New River, three miles upstream from the inlet," he said. "It was a fabulous out-of-this-world place to grow up. Everybody knew everybody and there were lots of kin people. We had big picnics and there was the church up the road and there were two or three cars in the neighborhood when I was a boy."

He was 13 when the family moved to New Bern in 1936, after his father took a job at the Barbour Boat works. Bruce Jr. worked there during summers, and eventually dropped out of school to work full time.

"I was too interested in going to work and making some money," he said. He did a variety of jobs at the boat works in what he called "the little boat shop" before going to welder's school in Durham.

He joined the Navy at the outbreak of World War II and worked as a welder on an auxiliary destroyer, which was a repair vessel.

"They got banged up bad over there on D-Day," he said. "It was so foggy that morning, you couldn't see anything and they were running into one another."

After the war, he returned to New Bern, met Dorothy and they married. But there were layoffs while the New Bern boat works made the conversion to post-war work and he worked for a while in Virginia.

He returned to New Bern, where the company worked on tug boats, fireboats and even ice-breakers.

"We could have worked on larger vessels, but we were limited by the railroad drawbridge, getting the boats in and out," he said.

After the war, and into the 1950s, his family lived in a house that was situated where the left wing of the rebuilt Tryon Palace now is. He recalls that the original palace foundation was in the yard.

"There's an old pecan tree that is still there, near the Metcalf Street side," he said.

He and Dorothy bought a house and lived in the Trent Park area before moving to Arapahoe, site of her family's home place. He has done extensive renovations on the house and has a second house next door. That house, he said, has been available over the years as a starter house for the couple's children and grandchildren.

He became superintendent at the boat yard in the 1970s before deciding to go into the boat-building business for himself. In his backyard shop, he built 13 vessels, from 42- to-98-foot steel trawlers, before he stopped around 1980. He employed as many as 38 workers.

"I've built a 65-footer with a helper and myself," he said.

There is no navigable water near his shop, so he hired a house-mover to take his boats for launching in Bayboro.

The last of the 98-foot vessels was unsold about the time he decided to close up shop.

"There I was with an $800,000 boat that I needed like a hole in the head," he said with a laugh.

He hired a captain and made it a working vessel, basing it out of New Bedford, Mass. He named it the Joan Carol after his wife and one of his daughters.

"We moved up there for a while and when the boat was out, we traveled all around (New England) and had a wonderful time," he said.

After three years, he sold the boat and retired - sort of.

Over the past couple of decades, he has made chairs and tables and canes and knives in his little shop. He's also made 10 standing and hanging clocks for his three children and numerous wooden ducks for his five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. His most recent work is a 5-foot grandfather clock. He has only a photograph as the basis for his design.

He's never built a car from the ground up, but he has restored some, including his prize - a 1952 Jaguar. The old photos show a gray, rusted shell. The finished product was a shiny red machine.

If something interests him, he'll make it a personal project.

The cars and his wood-working creations have showroom quality.

His favorite?

"I still like the 98-foot boats," he said.