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