The Gondola: Meher Baba’s Boat Part Two

When Daniel Montague first saw the gondola at the Center in 1974, it was rotting, peeling paint and leaky, a victim of South Carolina’s humidity, heat and rainy weather.[1]

“I thought it was a goner,” he said, in a recent interview.

It was Daniel’s first visit to the Center, and at that time he’d also heard that Elizabeth Patterson had been one of the first women to venture by sea to the South Pole. Daniel was in the Coast Guard, a longtime sailor and professional boat builder and so he was intrigued but also was not one for rumors. So he asked to speak with Elizabeth directly.

Elizabeth was usually so busy, she rarely met with people individually after they first arrived, leaving that task to Kitty Davy. But for some reason, she invited Daniel to Dilruba’s back porch for a CocaCola.

“I just started by saying that I heard you were the first woman to go to the South Pole,” says Daniel. “And she said, ‘Oh no, no, dear. It was the North Pole.’” [2]

Thus began a special relationship that flourished and culminated four years later when, at Elizabeth’s urging, Daniel undertook the monumental task of restoring the Center’s gondola. Elizabeth had bought it back in 1949 to remind Baba of their glorious times in Venice, Italy. By 1978, when Daniel began the restoration, at least 80 percent of the wooden vessel needed to be replaced. [3]

Daniel was an experienced shipwright. In 1976, when he first moved to Myrtle Beach he had even built a Herreshoff-designed dinghy for the Center with Elizabeth’s support. It was while discussing that project, that Elizabeth told Daniel her real motive.

“Oh, this is well and good. I’m very happy. I want you to do this,” Elizabeth said, according to Daniel.“But what I really want to know is, do you think you can restore the gondola?”

Knowing absolutely nothing about the unusual Italian boats, Daniel said, “yes.”

Over the next year, he finished building the Herreshoff dinghy and then moved back north; he also began a steep learning curve. This was before the internet and there were no “how-to” books on building gondolas or their unique construction. With a flat bottom for stability and an asymmetrical hull, they were designed to make it easier for a single oarsman to navigate Venice’s narrow canals. [4] Only a few specialized boat yards in Venice, Italy built them and their secrets are handed down generation to generation. Gondolas are considered by many to be “works of art as well as masters of nautical engineering.”[5]

Daniel eventually found a line drawing of the basic structure of the gondola and then he hit gold. Martha Baum, a friend he’d enlisted to help him with research, discovered an authentic Venetian gondola at the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia. It was one that may have been owned by the poet Robert Browning and later brought to the United States by the painter Thomas Moran. [6] Daniel contacted the museum and was given permission to come study the boat’s structure. He was able to take dozens of photos of the exterior and interior as he studied the gondola’s unique asymmetrical design.

“This was vital for understanding the construction and applying that to Baba’s gondola restoration,” according to Daniel.

When he returned to the Center in 1978 to begin the work, Daniel was again shocked by the boat’s poor condition. It was worse than he’d remembered, the boat’s hull had been tarred, pitched and nailed over with sheet metal to try to prevent further leaks. Unfortunately, that just caused the wood to rot even faster. [7] He spent the first 25 hours just trying to undo all of the well-intentioned repair work.

Over the next year, with a break during the winter, Daniel spent more than 400 hours meticulously replacing plank by plank and rib by rib. Volunteers put in another 40 hours. Gondolas are made of eight different types of wood. Some had to be shipped down from New England, others had to be substituted. Certain rotting parts were carefully removed and replicas made. He also added two sets of oar locks so the boat could be rowed sitting down, instead of sculled along the water with a single oar. And, hoping the elderly Elizabeth would be the inaugural passenger, Daniel also built a special step to make it easier for her to get into the boat. Overall, it was the most “interesting and complicated” project he’d ever worked on.

Throughout, Elizabeth also kept close watch on it. When there were cost overruns and Kitty, the Center’s treasurer at the time, complained to Daniel, Elizabeth told him not to worry. “Don’t you mind about that, I’ll take care of the whole cost,” she told him. And Elizabeth was also very proud, according to John Haynes. One cold winter morning, when the boat was under wraps, she told him she had something for him to see.

“And she took me down to the boathouse, and she lifted the plastic,” says John. “[Daniel] was about half done, and you could see the skeleton of the boat. She smiled, you know, she gave me that big smile. She was very proud of this whole process.”

In June of 1979, the restoration was finally complete. And on the 24th, after Baba’s House, a large crowd gathered down by the boathouse for the launch. Daniel believes there hadn’t been so many people there since Baba’s last trip in 1958. After he and several others lifted the gondola and put it in the water to shouts of “Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai,” Daniel jumped in, circled and brought it up to the dock. Someone in the crowd started singing “Santa Lucia” and others joined.

Elizabeth was helped in, along with Jane and Charles Haynes, and Daniel’s wife Carol. As Daniel began rowing, Elizabeth said, “See how she glides!” She appeared to be in a “whole different space, the memories just must have been flooding through her,” said Daniel. After some time, he rowed the gondola over toward the bridge where Baba used to stand and wave when people were out on the lake.

“And Elizabeth said, ‘Oh my, look, there He is waving to us now,’” Daniel recalls. “Baba had taken the form for her. None of us saw it. It was only Elizabeth. So that moment was so heart-full and fulfilling, and Baba’s grace, His blessing on His Dilruba.”

After a few moments of quiet, Daniel leaned over to Charles and said very quietly, “Now I know why I rebuilt the gondola.” [8]

Over the next thirty plus years, the gondola plied the waters of Long Lake, charming many of Baba’s close ones who came to visit, from Bhau Kalchuri to Katie Irani to the twins, Rustom and Sohrab Irani. It also gave great pleasure to hundreds of new Baba lovers and their children and grandchildren as well as the children of Happy Club. In Part Three, the Gondola’s Second New Life.

[1] “Meher Baba’s Boat” an album compiled by Daniel Montague, copy in Saroja Library
[2] In July of 1931, Elizabeth was “one of five foreigners taken on a scientific artic expedition on the Soviet ice breaker Malygin, going within 400 mile of the North Pole.” Meher Baba Travels (https://www.meherbabatravels.com/his-close-ones/women/elizabeth-patterson-1/)
[3] Montague, Daniel, “Meher Baba’s Boat: Its History and Restoration, Glow International, August 1987, p. 21-23.
[4] Erla Zwingle, National Geographic Traveler: Venice, (The National Geographic Society, 2001) p. 62.
[5] ibid
[6] Kelly Russo, June Artifact of the Month – Gondola Mania! (The Mariner’s Museum, https://www.marinersmuseum.org/2013/06/june-artifact-of-the-month-gondola-mania/, 2013)
[7] “Meher Baba’s Boat” an album compiled by Daniel Montague, copy in Saroja Library
[8] Interview with John Haynes