Local man helps solve decades-old model boat mystery

(Dec. 12, 2019) The restored three-mast model schooner on permanent display at the Ocean Pines Yacht Club is familiar to many, but few know the true story of its origin.

When members of the 50th Anniversary Committee hosted a dedication and unveiling of the restored and newly encased model in November, they told the large crowd present that Boise Cascade gave the boat to Ocean Pines during the opening of the first Yacht Club in 1975. Committee member Sharyn O’Hare said her research suggested the boat originated during the mid 1950s, but its builder was unknown. 

As chance would have it, Farrell John Lynch read local newspaper coverage of the dedication and reached out to Ocean Pines with surprising new information. 

“My father built that boat,” he said. “My father’s name [was] Farrell Wrendel Lynch and that boat was built right over here on Gum Point Road.” 

As evidence, he produced a faded clipping from an old newspaper that shows the model boat. The size of the model and shape of the bow, bowsprit and stern line up, as does the location of the cabin. Mark Hordeman added the sails during a restoration, years later.  

The clipping’s caption reads:

“The result of an interesting hobby of Farrell Lynch is pictured above...a three-masted schooner 7 feet long. The model boat took nearly two years to complete. On the table below the model are pictures of Farrell, Jr. a paratrooper at Fort Bragg and Ronnie, a navy man on the destroyer USS Blue.” 

“That picture was taken right in my mom and dad’s house on Gum Point Road,” Farrell said. His uncle, Roland B. Powell (no relationship to the former Ocean City mayor), took the photo around or just after 1965. 

“My dad was very handy at crafts,” Lynch said. “He could carve decoys, but he was an exceptional boat builder. A lot of my dad’s family on his side and his mother’s side were all boat builders, back in the day. My dad, somehow, inherited skills to build boats and whittle and carve.” 

Farrell Wrendel Lynch was born in 1914 in Taylorville, right behind the church. The elder Lynch was a fisherman who occasionally worked for the Martin Fish Co, according to his son. He also was a carpenter for E.S. Adkins & Company and owned the campground formerly on Gum Point Road, and he was a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard and served during World War II in the Navy. He passed away about 20 years ago.  

The younger Lynch, now 74, recalled as a child hunting on what’s presently Ocean Pines. The community wasn’t developed until 1968. 

“There was nothing here when I was growing up, nothing but a forest and a swamp,” he said.  

Lynch said his father built the model boat in the garage next his childhood home, near the present location of the Worcester County Boat Ramp. 

“We used to live in an old farmhouse up in the field. All of that’s gone now,” he said. “Almost everything we’re talking about’s long gone. There’s hardly anybody living [from] the family except for myself and my brother. You’re lucky you got us before we died, or you’d never know where that boat comes from!” 

His best guess is his father built the model during the late 1950s and early 1960s.  

“I went into the Army in 1963 and I kind of remembered that boat being in the house when I left,” he said.  

After building the first 7-foot schooner, Lynch’s father crafted a sister boat to the model, which his brother, Ronnie, still has. 

Lynch said he’s uncertain of the details, but the boat somehow changed hands and became a display piece in a local bar. 

“This boat went from mom and dad’s house … to the Yankee Clipper Motel in Ocean City, which is no longer there,” he said. “The boat ended up at the Yankee Clipper Motel in the Pirate’s Den lounge. I can’t tell you whether somebody bought that boat from dad. I can’t tell you if dad gave it to them. I can’t tell you if it was family.  

“My father was the type of person, he probably never would sell you this boat – he’d probably give it to you before he’d sell it to you,” he added.  

Lynch also is unsure how the boat might have traveled from the motel to Ocean Pines, but more than half a century after he last saw it in person, he opened up

a newspaper in November and recognized the model that once sat in a chicken house next to his childhood home.  

His first reaction? 

“Jesus, I know who built that boat! That’s dad’s boat,” he said.  

Lynch said he talked it over with his wife, and later called his brother to ask what he should do: reveal the boat’s origin or “let it be a mystery forever.” 

“He said, ‘I want them to know where it came from … Ocean Pines probably deserves to know and dad needs to get the recognition,’” Lynch said of the conversation.  

Lynch was not surprised the boat became a showpiece in Ocean Pines.  

“I figured it would end up on display somewhere,” he said. “I always knew where the sister boat was, but I kind of lost track of the first one dad built.” 

As for those missing years between the Pirate’s Den and the Yacht Club, Lynch believes someone, somewhere has a clue to what happened.  

“Whoever had it in the Pirate’s Den, who knows what they did with it. Where did it go all those years from when it left mom and dad’s house, I don’t know,”

Lynch said. “It could have traveled all around different places until it ended up in your Yacht Club … it just didn’t sail over there, I’ll tell you that!” 

The model boat amassed many other stories between 1975 and the present day, but exactly how it traveled from the Pirate’s Den to Ocean Pines remains a mystery. 

If anyone has more information, email [email protected].