At the Boat School in Eastport the work of a former teacher hangs reverently on the wall in front of the marine drafting and design classroom: a large chalk drawing on a chocolate brown blackboard.
The drawing was rendered by Ernie Brierley who joined the faculty when the school was operating in the former Coast Guard station near Quoddy Head Park in Lubec. Ernie taught an introductory course in marine drafting, which included teaching the use of the T-square, triangles, scale rule and various curves. He taught students how to read and draw a boat’s blueprint so they could see the beauty of the shape of a hull as it is revealed through its lines.
Ernie continued to teach a design component of the boatbuilding program after the school moved to its present location in Eastport in 1978. One lesson was the study of the sternpost, shaft log and deadwood of a traditional wood powerboat keel. Ernie drew a large chalk diagram showing construction details. The diagram, drawn to scale, remained basically unchanged from one year to the next. Since the drawing represented a traditional approach to wood boat construction there was no reason to alter or update its content.
After Ernie left the school in 1984 to pursue other professional interests, the next drafting instructor saw no reason to erase and then duplicate the chalk diagram, so it continued to serve the same function that it did when Ernie was teaching the course. A row of desks, positioned for student use, limited access to the area in front of the board and over time the drawing acquired an aura of authority that protected it from change. Only once was a detail of the drawing erased – a number one – and then it was quickly redrawn when the instructor thought twice about what he had just done.
The chalk drawing is around 20 years old now, and it is something like a legend in the history and culture of the Boat School. It is a relic of Ernie’s mastery of the art of marine drafting and a monument to his teaching. By 1996, Ernie was employed by Palmer-Johnson shipbuilders in Georgia. Around noon one day, employees of the yard saw Ernie walking about the helipad of a large yacht as they broke for lunch. When they returned Ernie was unconscious on the cement dock below the pad, apparently having fallen unnoticed by others during lunch break. He died of his injuries a couple of days later. Nobody knows how the accident occurred. At the Boat School, news of Ernie’s death made preserving the drawing even more compelling.
The chalk drawing is still used as a teaching tool. Students receive a brief explanation of its origins, and none of them have ever defaced or tampered with it. A digital image now provides a record of the work. No fixative has been applied to its surface so the drawing remains vulnerable. We can’t always plan how a man’s legacy will be preserved, but we can honor what time and fate have seen fit for us to spare and protect. The Boat School has preserved Ernie’s chalk drawing for now, but it is unsettling to know that a part of his legacy could literally be erased in less than a minute’s time.