The Boat > Ship Model

Spirit of South Carolina
model built by Bill Baum of Brevard, North Carolina

March '02... " Building a model is a creative adventure made worthwhile by the benefits of the end result. The project initiated by the South Carolina Maritime Heritage Foundation seemed worthy of the challenge, namely to build a visual image for potential contributors to justify their involvement.

I come to this venture by reason of a life-long interest in the sea and ships. An interest quite apart from my profession as a physician and an educator. In my life time the two seemed forever in competition for my time and energies.

The Baums of Seebach, Bavaria were farmers who escaped Bismark's conscription by migrating to the Great Lakes in search of land in the mid-1800's. Grandfather was the first to test the boatbuilding 'waters' by building a 30 launch with the only single cylinder internal combustion engine in the community. The "boat virus" thus initiated, my father built a William Atkin designed sloop that necessitated removel a the basement wall before launching. This was followed by a 32' racing sloop, and, in turn, by an Atkin 36' ketch that gave our family summer cruising on the Great Lakes.

My brother and I started with two sailing dinghies built by father and later in life graduated to some 14 sailing auxiliaries by Atkin, Rhodes and Mason, all of which were improved, rebuilt and sailed over the Lakes and the Atlantic to the benefit of numerous banks and the deprivation of our collective estates.

Father retired from the sea to a home on the Lake Huron built by my brother and me in high school-- like a steamboat coming out of the dunes. It was known by the locals as "Baum's Folly". Our own retirement found us sailing and farming in Maine with a year in the Caribbean living aboard our 32' ketch. Fearing loss of her entire estate, my wife, in her wisdom, chained me to a hickory tree in the mountains of Western North Carolina where my only contact with reality has been found in the construction of ship models, a hobby begun in youth and continued by my father, my brother and by me through a life time.

--William C. Baum