The Goldendale Sentinel, Goldendale, WA., September 29, 1938, page 1
LYLE MAN WHITTLES OUT BOATS; RECALLS DAYS SPENT AS SEAMAN
Once a sailor always as sailor describes Jake Tol,
sixty-year-old Holland born seaman, who for the past 25 years have lived
quietly at Lyle reminiscing over the days he spent roving the seven seas
as an A.B. in the Dutch and British merchant marine.
In his spare moments Jake Tol has continued his hobby
of carving out sailing ships, three masted brigantines and barks and schooners
like the ships he sailed in around the world.
During the past week an exhibits of these model ships,
some of which mounted inside bottles in the time honored manner of the sea
and some mounted inside a elaborately carved pine frames and painted glass
covers, have been on display in The Sentinel office.
WENT AROUND WORLD
The ships exhibited by a Tol were carved out entirely
by hand. The frames of these ornate ship mountings shown in The Sentinel
window were carved by Tol with an ordinary pocket knife from pine wood.
Born on a small Dutch farm near Rotterdam, Holland, Tol,
like so many of the hearty man of his race, went to sea as a boy of 15. By
the time he was 17 Tol was an able bodied seaman and was on the British bark
Nibsdale bound around the world.
HAS KEEPSAKE
Sailing ships traveled slowly in those days in the early
1890s and Tol's ship did not again reach its home port of Glasgow for three
years. During that trip around the globe Tol's ship rounded the Cape of Good
Hope, touched Cape Town, Madagascar, several points in India, the East Indies,
Australia, Chile went around theHornand back to Scotland. Fifteen dollars
a month was sailor's pay in those days and considered good at that time,
Tol recalls.
As a keepsake of that trip, Tol has a small model of
the ship Nibsdale under full sail mounted inside a small whiskey bottle.
This ship model was made by Tol more than 40 years ago while he was bound
around the world.
Today Tol operates the Holland café in Lyle and
in his spare time carves ships, mounts them inside bottles, whose openings
seem altogether too small for the model sailing ships inside them, and spins
yarns about the sea.
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© Jeffrey L. Elmer