A model ship - too valuable and fragile to entrust to couriers, says its builder - is sailing across the country this week in a minivan before anchoring at Kingston's Royal Military College.
Nanaimo resident Louis Roosen spent 4,000 hours over four years to build a 1.2-metre-long, one-metre-high replica of the formidable HMS St. Lawrence, famous for scaring off the Americans during the War of 1812.
Mr. Roosen is donating the model, appraised at $62,000, to the college.
On April 16, Mr. Roosen's son Peter left Nanaimo with the battleship. He was in Ottawa yesterday and plans to arrive in Kingston today, which happens to be Earth Day.
Plans to use a Ford hybrid vehicle, to make it a truly green journey, had to be ditched because the model ship is too big to fit in a compact automobile, said. Instead, a Ford Freestar minivan has been provided for free by dealers in Nanaimo and Kingston.
Louis Roosen can't make the six-day trip due to serious back problems. Peter Roosen stopped off at maritime museums along the way so people could look into the van and see his father's work.
The Royal Military College is contributing $2,000 to the 4,800-kilometre Nanaimo-to-Kingston trip.
Courier companies weren't keen to deliver the model, Louis Roosen said. Insurance alone would have cost about $1,900 for the one-of-a-kind ship. "Everything was built from scratch," he said.
The retired building contractor cut down a cherry tree on his tidy rural property to supply wood for the ship, built to 1:84 scale.
In his compact workshop, he used several small fabricating machines to make the ship's components, such as tiny three-centimetre-long brass guns and five-millimetre wood wheels.
Bearing a British flag on the bow, cotton sails and intricate rigging, the miniature HMS St. Lawrence is missing only the 700 crew members who set sail in October, 1814, from Hamilton harbour.
Kenneth Bassam, one of a handful of model ship appraisers in Canada, wrote in his appraisal of the St. Lawrence that Mr. Roosen's construction methods, attention to historical detail, scale and authenticity are absolute.
"It is safe to say there is no finer craftsman building these models," North Vancouver-based Mr. Bassam wrote.
Self-taught, Mr. Roosen began building model ships in the mid-1950s when he was a sailor with the Royal Netherlands Navy.
Back then, his ships sat inside Johnnie Walker whisky bottles. Demand by sailors and longshoremen for the miniatures was so great that names were drawn from a hat. Winners coughed up as much as $45 for a bottled boat.
"I made more money selling ships than I did being a sailor," Mr. Roosen said.
After five ocean voyages around the world and a brief stay in his wife's homeland of Switzerland, he settled in Nanaimo and worked in construction.
By 1986, back problems rendered him almost immobile, so he rebooted his naval hobby.
The English frigate HMS Flora was his first project, a big challenge because only Italian blueprints existed for it. An Italian friend translated the complex plans.
Since then, Mr. Roosen has made 13 model ships by hand. Collectors and museums in Canada, the United States and Korea boast a Roosen.
The menacing reputation of HMS St. Lawrence attracted Mr. Roosen, an aficionado of the British navy.
With a claim to being the only freshwater battleship to ever set sail on the Great Lakes, HMS St. Lawrence, one of the largest ships in the world at that time, never had to fire a shot in anger.
"When they saw that ship on the horizon, the Yankees took off," Mr. Roosen said.
The 112-gun, three-deck, 20-storey tall ship was built at the Kingston Royal Naval Dockyard at a cost of $500,000 in 1814, equal to about $22-million today.
Mr. Roosen figures he spent about $1,200 for materials.
The curator of the Royal Military College's museum, Ross McKenzie, is delighted to add the model to its collection.
"We've wanted one [HMS St. Lawrence]for a long time," said Mr. McKenzie, a museum employee since 1989. "The opportunity came out of the blue. We were tickled pink."
A much less intricate model is on display at the Hamilton Military Museum.
Mr. Roosen won't be paid for the ship, but he will receive a tax receipt for the $62,000 donation.
Because the model is relatively large, it's a challenge to display, Mr. McKenzie said. Plans are to showcase it permanently in the college's main administrative building.
The actual ship was decommissioned in 1815 shortly after the war. Ignominiously, her hull housed a brewery until 1832, when the St. Lawrence was sold for 25 pounds to be used as a coal bin, Mr. McKenzie said.
Eventually the hull broke apart and sank off Kingston. Today, divers venture down about 10 metres to swim among the ship's ruins.
Mr. Roosen, meanwhile, has started work on his 14th ship, the British warship HMS Leopard - one he intends to keep.
"One person plays golf, the other one gambles. For me, it's a joy to build."