Sunk: one of Scotland's last boat builders is battling to stay afloat

Aided by a handful of local volunteers who share his passion for boats and students from home and abroad keen to learn from a master, he laid down the keel and fitted the frames, beams and gunnals.

Planks of wood used to build American Lady, a new boat being constructed by traditional boat builder Peter Matheson (Image: Peter Matheson)

He put splines into the deck, fitted the wash strake and gave the wood a wipe with oil and turps to preserve it, and a lick of paint where it was needed.

What was once a pile of wood now has the graceful lines of a 22ft long yahl, a pitch pine deck and a name, American Lady.

Christened in honour of Peter’s American wife, it has been a true labour of love that is now weeks from taking her first dip in the water at Portsoy Boat Festival in June.

It should be a time to celebrate the traditional boat builder’s skill and efforts of volunteers and eager students with whom Peter shares his knowledge for free, happy to be helping ensure his craft lives on long after he’s gone.

A wooden boat under construction at Peter Matheson's Clydebank workshop (Image: Peter Matheson) Instead, he fears American Lady may be the last boat to leave his workshop, and that Clydeside Traditional Boat Builders may be scuppered by a UK Government Home Office demand that his foreign students pay fees to learn at his side.

And that, he says, may be a fatal blow to his efforts to keep the dying craft of Scottish boat building alive.

For years students mainly from France, but also Denmark, Norway, Spain and Germany have visited his Clydebank boatyard to learn at his side for a few weeks at a time, at no cost to them and with Peter passing on his knowledge for free.

Now he fears they will face a £490 Home Office study visa fee that’s set to rise in the next few weeks to £524.

With many of the students on low incomes and his small boat building project operating on passion, goodwill and propped up by his state pension - and unable to help cover their costs - Peter believes foreign students will stop coming.

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Without their help to build his boats and no-one to pass his knowledge on to, he fears his little workshop - one of the country’s precious few remaining traditional boat builders - will simply cease to exist.

And that would mean his building skills - dangerously close to becoming extinct in Scotland - will be lost.

All that aside, he finds fees targeting foreign students particularly galling.

Two years ago, when his previous workshop was destroyed by fire, it was a group of French students keen to learn traditional boat building skills who rallied to clear the mess and build a new wooden workshop.

A wooden boat built using traditional skills at Peter Matheson's Clydebank workshop (Image: Peter Matheson)

“I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to the French people for what they did for me in my time of need,” says Peter, who likens his boat building workshop to the acclaimed Men’s Shed movement, where people gather to use traditional tools and share skills without charge.

“They came over at their own expense and did not ask for one penny for their work,” he says of their effort to rebuild his workshop. “My own government offered no help.

“It’s because of these young people I am still able to provide free tuition in this traditional trade. 

“Now in contrast, the Westminster government is demanding a payment of £490 for each European student who I teach for free.”

The issue has highlighted the conflict between people like Peter who are anxious to keep traditional skills alive regardless of borders and boundaries, and how easily modern bureaucracy can stifle it.

Peter says it also spotlights the gulf between how Scotland and the wider UK values traditional skills like his, compared to other nations.

He explains: “A French girl has just spent a month learning boat building and helping build 'American Lady' with us. She has now gone back to her state-aided French boat building school.

A rowing boat made by hand using traditional skills by boat builder Peter Matheson (Image: Peter Matheson)

“Other European nations like Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany are all funding traditional boat building.

“The only one that is not funding it, is Britain.

“And not only not funding it, but wanting £490 for each student who wants to come here to learn.”

Under Home Office immigration and nationality rules, students who wish to come to the UK to study should pay a £490 fee.

Peter, though, believes his yard plays a unique role in helping to keep a dying craft afloat. So special is the craft and so close to dying out, that he believes anyone who wants to study it - regardless of whether they are British or from abroad – should be welcomed and encouraged.

“The tuition that I provide is and always has been, free. I provide my students with soup and sandwiches,” he continues. “I pay for the running costs out of my small state pension.

“It is a privilege to be able to pass on my skills on to whoever needs them.

“There is now a question over whether I can continue,” he adds.

Clydeside Traditional Boat Builders workshop at Rothesay Dock, Clydebank (Image: Peter Matheson)

“If I cannot teach foreign students, then out of principal I will not teach anyone.”

Peter, born in Bettyhill in Sutherland, has a lifetime of expertise in boats, sailing and building.

Having left school at 15, he spent a year’s sea training in North Wales before embarking on years spent travelling the globe.

He was worked in the Caribbean on a Norwegian passenger ship based in Miami, when he met his wife in the 1970s.

When he swapped the sea for dry land he began building furniture, before branching into building boats.

Peter Matheson works on his boat (Image: Gordon Terris/The Herald) In the years since, he reckons he has built around 170 mostly commercial fishing boats, including a schooner that he sailed around the north and west coast and to Orkney and chartered in the 1999 Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race.

One of his handmade boats, a 10m fishing boat called Boy Peter, is operated by his daughter Lorraina, a time served shipyard welder. Another is based in Gibraltar where it flies the white ensign of the 'Royal Yacht Squadron', the Isle of White yacht club considered among the most prestigious in the world.

His latest build, American Lady, is based on another remarkable wooden yahl, The Aegre, built in 1966 in Wick by Unst boatbuilder Tom Edwardson using mahogany and larch planks, copper fittings and constructed purely by eye.

Although just 21.6ft with no engine, radio or modern navigational aids - not even a lifeboat – The Aegre accomplished a mammoth 1970s’ journey from Scourie Pier in northwest Sutherland to Tahiti.

On board was skipper Nicholas Grainger and his then girlfriend, Julie. Their journey had started as an adventure down the west coast of Scotland, and, despite the cramped conditions on board the little fishing boat, continued for thousands of miles.

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The epic voyage was documented recently in Nicholas’ book, The Voyage of The Aegre, and led to Peter resolving to make a near copy of the heroic boat in tribute to the remarkable journey.

Speaking from his home in Australia, Nicholas says there is a danger that Peter’s boat building skills may now be at risk of being lost.

“Once, Britain must have been full of boat builders, the skill and experience passed on from generation to generation, but sadly no more.

Peter Mathieson's traditional boat building workshop (Image: Peter Matheson)

“Boatbuilders like Peter Matheson, who is still building boats the traditional way on Clydeside, are a rarity. In timber, his Orkney style fishing boats come together by eye, painstakingly, plank by plank, the apparent ease the deceptive illusion of a master craftsman.

“His latest one, based on the lines of a Stroma yahl, the most seaworthy of all the Orkney boats, has consumed him for the last 14 months, and will probably take him another three to finish.

“He often works alone, but willingly takes on students, at no fee, who want to learn the craft.

“He loves to talk, to show them how it’s all done, and appreciates their company and help with the heavier work, such as steaming and fitting three quarter inch planks to the curved shape of the hull.

“Students from Scotland, England and the EU, particularly France, come to learn from Peter, recognising his deep understanding of how to build these boats, the choosing of each piece of timber for its intended role, the subtlety of working it to maximise its strength and longevity.  

“It’s not something that can be learnt from a book,” he adds, “but leads to the creation of the most sea kindly and long-lasting of boats.

“But how much longer can the likes of Peter Matheson continue to freely pass on his skill and experience?”

“He’s 78 now,” he continues, “operates on a shoestring and his volunteer students from overseas, whom he willingly teaches while they do the heavy lifting, will be no more.

A wooden rowing boat built at Peter Matheson's workshop (Image: Peter Matheson)

“Will another boat builder on Clydeside close? Not for lack of interest, or leadership or skill, but due to a seemingly pointless, needless government levy?”

At his yard, Peter and a few local volunteers are putting the finishing touches to American Lady, without the helping hands of the foreign students he loved to teach.

“I’m an old man,” he adds, “all I want to do is pass on my skills to people who have helped me.”