Vandals damage heritage fishing tug being restored by volunteers at Port Dover museum

The curator of the Port Dover Harbor Museum has a mystery on his hands.

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In fact, she has two.

Who bashed in the newly restored door of the heritage fishing tug moored outside the lakeside museum?

And who put plywood over the busted door to hide the damage?

“It’s frustrating,” curator Katie Graham said of the vandalism to the Almidart, a 60-foot fishing tug assembled in Port Dover in 1932 by noted local shipbuilder George Gamble.

For five decades, the Almidart sailed Lake Erie from harbors in Port Dover and Wheatley before ending up back home in the Gamble shipyard. It was sold to the museum in 2005 to be restored and displayed “as an outdoor exhibit representing the significance of the commercial fishing industry in Norfolk County,” Graham said.

Volunteers put roughly 500 hours into the boat’s restoration — including making several new doors and a wooden wheelhouse that matches the original — before the pandemic halted progress.

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The work restarted this year, with a trio of volunteers crafting a custom sliding door made of cedar that was installed on Nov. 14.

“The original door’s been missing for years. It was just boarded up with plywood,” said Brian Buller, who worked with fellow boaters and woodworking hobbyists Robert Johnstone and Bill Green.

“They’re fairly easy to make. Just a bit of time is all,” Buller said.

The newest door was destroyed sometime between Port Dover’s Santa Claus parade on Nov. 16 and the morning of Nov. 18, when the vandalism was discovered. It happened before a single photograph of the new door could be taken.

This was no momentary crime. Whoever damaged the door had to first hop up onto a thin metal ledge and hold onto the side of the boat while they took a crowbar to the hasp, a metal bracket holding the padlock in place.

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The vandals not only broke the wooden door, but tore out the metal frame into which it was fitted.

“It took a lot of effort to smash it out,” Buller said.

“Maybe they didn’t like our construction skills,” Johnstone quipped.

The wooden door has no value as scrap, and theft was quickly ruled out when Graham and the volunteers found the door’s broken pieces inside the boat.

“It’s such a weird thing,” Buller said, noting there was nothing of value stored inside the Almidart.

“There’s nothing to salvage out of it.”

There was no evidence suggesting someone broke in to spend the night out of the cold.

Buller was at the museum on Monday after the parade and did a double-take when he saw black plywood again covering the space where the new door had been.

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The plywood could only have been put in place from inside the boat, he explained, meaning whoever did it crawled through the breach and left through one of the Almidart’s other sliding doors, none of which were left damaged.

“That’s a mystery, too,” Johnstone said.

The volunteers plan to replace the door.

In total, Graham said, the museum has spent $500 on wood and $135 on other material for the new doors, with the money taken from a dedicated Almidart restoration fund.

“It’s more of a disrespectful move toward the community that donated toward this and the volunteers that are giving their time for it,” Graham said of the damaged door.

Johnstone said the “random vandalism” left him and his fellow volunteers in “disbelief.”

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“This is Port Dover. You don’t think of things like this happening,” he said.

This is the first time the Almidart has been targeted, despite the boat being out in public view around the clock.

“Occasionally we have people changing into their bathing suits underneath it, but nobody’s ever gone in it,” Graham said.

The incident was not captured on camera. Graham informed the local police, who are investigating.

She said she has been heartened by messages of support from members of the public dismayed by the vandalism.

“I hope it doesn’t happen again,” Graham said. “And I hope we can keep progressing on the restoration.”

Major work remains, including putting on a new roof and repairing “compromised” areas of the steel hull and interior deck.

“The Almidart is one of the first things you see when you come over the lift bridge into Port Dover,” Graham said.

“It’s a landmark that instantly tells visitors that this is a fishing town, and we hope to keep it looking its best.”

JP Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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