To Build A Ship

The Oregon Trilogy #3

by Don Berry

In To Build a Ship , Don Berry explores the extent to which a man can betray himself and his morality for a dream or an obsession. It's the story of a handful of settlers who take up land in the fertile Tillamook Bay Valley in the early 1850s-defiant dreamers battling the wilderness. With impenetrable mountains at their backs and the open sea as their sole road to trade, they are suddenly isolated from the outside world when the only captain willing to enter their harbor dies. With the survival of their new settlement threatened, they decide to build their own schooner.At first the challenge brings out the best in the men, but soon the tensions inherent in this monumental task engulf them. Obstacles accumulate and complications a death, a murder trial, trouble with restive Indians, and finally a travesty of justice. Excitement, shock, and gripping drama mark this story of men pushed to the point of madness as they see the Morning Star of Tillamook slowly take shape on the wild Pacific shore.Don Berry's three novels about the Oregon Territory — Trask , Moontrap , and To Build a Ship — are as rich and compelling today as when they were first published more than 40 years ago. The new OSU Press editions of these books include an introduction by Jeff Baker, book critic for The Oregonian .

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 1977

About the author

Primarily known for his historical novels of early Oregon country -- Trask, Moontrap, and To Build a Ship -- Don Berry lived and worked from 1974 until his death in 2001 as a writer, painter, musician, sculptor, instrument maker, poet, and Zen practitioner on Vashon Island, in Seattle, and at Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island. He ventured into educational software in the pioneering days of computers, authored scripts for adventure films, wrote commissioned books, and built a website called Berryworks for his own unpublished fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and philosophy. Berry developed his writing skills with science fiction stories in the 1950s, but it is his trilogy of novels and his non-fiction history A Majority of Scoundrels (all written and published between 1960 and 1963) for which he is best remembered. With them, he helped create a new Northwest fiction style. Journalist Jeff Baker has called him "Reed's Forgotten Beat" for his work, his practice of Eastern metaphysics, and his longtime friendship with poets Gary Snyder (b. 1930) and Philip Whalen (1923-2002), an association that began at Reed College in Portland in the 1950s. Berry's novels, and Scoundrels, were republished between 2004 and 2006 by Oregon State University Press.

Reviews

[jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

the third and final of don berry's "trask novels," to build a ship is the least developed of the three works. set mostly on the oregon coast (tillamook bay) in the early 1850's, the story centers upon a small territorial settlement left stranded following the death of the man who served as their sole contact with the outside world. while many of the elements that made berry's first two novels so enjoyable are present, to build a ship suffers from an uninspired, predictable plot and lackluster narrative arc. the characters are thinly composed, especially when compared with elbridge trask and johnson monday from the first two books. to build a ship is not without its high points, and there is, indeed, much to like about the story, but it is not nearly as captivating and well crafted as its predecessors. it may simply be that with trask and moontrap berry exhausted the creative impulse that made those works seem so effortlessly fantastic. were it not for being the concluding volume in an otherwise exceptional trilogy of novels, perhaps to build a ship may have forever languished in obscurity.

to learn humility, a man must stand in the midst of the oregon forest.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trask nearly earned five stars, its sequel Moontrap did, while this conclusion to Oregon's trio, about three years after it began, shifts from dense prose which filtered the frenzied attempts of mountain man turned pioneer settler Trask, and then alternatively his colleagues wild Webb and tamed Monday in a middle volume, to contort their consciousness as their bodies fought off hunger in vivid vignette.

The pair of narratives overlapped 1848 and 1849 neatly. The clashes of intruding land-grabbers and native tribes pushed aside created believable conflicts based on real events. The compression of solid sensation and stolid resistance to the continental changes shoving westward the few European or U.S. predecessors upon their longtime inhabitants and unwilling hosts or rivals created heady pages, now and then demanding a respite for this reader, so evocative and expressive their reactions might tally.

Therefore, easing in younger (23) Ben Thaler (note Franklin/ dollar ring of his name) in first-person, sassy, self-deprecating, wry, genial voice of a newcomer cresting the final pass over the Coast Range shows Don Berry's awareness of the benefits of giving us a callow, but fresh, engaging tale-spinner. The Territory has been established, the fur trappers of Webb, Monday, and Trask's pathfinding era go obsolete, and the heavy hand of American progress presses down as wagon trains, loggers, farmers, or ranchers flatten Pacific ridges, scrape the Willamette Valley under plows, and chop down old growth.

Yet, just as its storyline finds its rhythm of hard labor, rough camaraderie, and dazzling settings, as with too much of life, once our backdrop appears nestled single amidst stunning atmospheres and raw vigor, the tenth commandment's broken. For nobody in Berry's enclave escapes innate, primal flaws.

What's nimble? Berry ~40% in, each of the Oregon Trilogy, segues slyly into a tit-for-tat exchange, a spin on "blood money," what's demanded as rendered in pounds of flesh, an edgy moral balance that between the unrestrained "bad actors" whether foreign or born-and-bred (I waffle vaguely to avoid spoilers), must restore itself, as a wayward individual must meet fate, as massed, communal justice. Which may or may not align with whatever Yankee arrivals deem proper to a preacher or a lynch mob.

Back to the title, this landlubber got a primer in shipbuilding, and the eerie tie between the influx of the Western rush to hammer virgin timber into vessels to be christened and launched into the already globalized trade, and its reverberating echo as it hits against those huddled mourning on the ocean's shore, fittingly joins the two peoples together. I wondered if Berry would manage to sustain the giddy mood of novice carpenters with the somber mien of their neighbors turned rivals. He pulls a plot taut.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a tiny book, just 220 pages long. It shouldn't take a long time to read. Right? I didn't count on the tiny font that almost required a magnifying glass.

The story was interesting and at times had me quite engaged. It clearly portrayed the tensions between the indigenous people and the encroaching white man, intermingled with the repercussions of obsessive love - one man for a woman, and another man for a ship.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berry, Don. 1963. To build a ship. Viking Press. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis,Oregon. 2nd edition: 2004. ISBN: 0-87071-040-0. 3rd of a series on Oregon history centering around Tillamook, Oregon. 1st title: Trask : the coast of Oregon, 1848 ...., 2nd title: Moontrap. Paperback, (This book ordered through Barnes & Noble: around $18)
With the death of a New England ship captain, the struggling pioneer community on Tillamook Bay (1852) finds itself isolated from the white world. The New England ship captain had made annual visits bringing in badly needed supplies. The solution to this problem was for the community to build a ship of their own. The highlight of the book is the magnificent descriptions of boat building.
Historical happenings get in the way and bring realistic problems to the task. This, in my opinion, is the best of this triology by Don Berry.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

An wryly funny, enthusiastic portrait of settlers in Tillamook Valley in the 1850s. From word one you’ll be hooked. It’s a masterful book that revels in toungue in cheek humor. The characters treat themselves with utter seriousness, while Berry slyly highlights their absurdity, at the same time using that to intensify the darkness of their eventual obsession.

A couple of the best bits:
-Regarding the wild reputation of folks in the nearest town: “These fellows in Yam Hill were probably all fine boys, but they were the scum of the earth.”
-As he waits for spring when he can make his way to the Bay, the main character says he “…prepared my pack and unprepared it, counted my single frying pan a dozen times. It always came out One.”

[Sissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could not put it down although I did not find it as enjoyable or fulfilling as Trask or Moontrap. Read sequentially, this final installment is told from the eye of the settler instead of mountain man or Native. The careful tones and natural descriptions of landscape are muted, single minded obsession with money heightened....it seemed to mirror in the writing style the immature , single-minded capitalust.

[Sandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having grown up in Tillamook County, Oregon I was aware of Don Berry’s books. This was one I hadn’t read, and now I have!

The sense of place with the density of trees, the wet fogs that block the sun, the wind and rain were all accurate & well written.

The plot is intriguing, however some of the macho man-centrality has not aged well. I am sure that would be true with Trask also which I read in college.

Many recently authors would look to greater nuance and find ways to give greater respect to the Native People.

If you have seen The Morning Star ship replica in Tillamook, this is an interesting visit to its original creation-building story.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

1852 - Tillamook Bay. A small group of white settlers (only men), desperate to remain after the loss of their means of trade, decide to build a ship. Their obsession for building is complicated by its impact on the local Tillamook indians whose lives are put in jeopardy. Berry is an excellent writer...this is #3 of a trilogy.

[Steve Kenney · Rating 2 out of 5]

An awful book. It is almost impossible to find a novel where not a single character has any redeeming qualities, but this novel achieves this undesirable quality—in spades. A bunch of amoral guys in unsavory love with building a ship. We don’t give one whit about what happens to these guys, once the novel finally ends. A relatively short novel that seems longer.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trask/ Moontrap/ To Build a ship. For some reason Don Berry just gets me in the gut. These are mythological, visceral incantations of a past that seems to walk right up beside you. He immersed himself in the historical records of Tillamoook county and came out with these three books that should be staged, sung, with a full chorus, puzzled over and pondered over by all of us who live in this landscape today. The contrast between the two societies' economies, technology, judicial philosophy bites all of us these days.
I haven't read Moontrap yet. Next.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a new transplant to Oregon I really enjoyed reading To Build A Ship. A new friend gave me a copy and warned me that it was a good book but not as good as Trask, which others who have reviewed this book have also stated. I think I am glad to have read this book first then, if that's the case. I usually only read non-fiction and lose interest in a fictional story within just a few chapters and was pleasantly surprised to find myself really enjoying this book and finding time everyday to read more of it. I am eager to start Berry's other two books.

[Jerry Sutherland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the others in Don Berry's Oregon trilogy, this book is a sad but poignant treatment of issues in early Oregon history not dealt with by others. Warren Vaughn's own account of the founding of Tillamook and building the "Morningstar," has been published in " Till Broad Daylight." It's hard to find. The Tillamook County Pioneer Museum has it: www.tcpm.org. It's also at some libraries: http://www.worldcat.org/title/till-br.... Nothing on Goodreads yet.

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. A group of Men from the Oregon wilderness are forced to build a ship to get into the outside world from the Tillamook bay. The passion of building the ship consumes them, they eat, breath and dream this ship, treating it like their own child: fighting over washing it, sanding it, painting it.

"And stupid enough not to realize that there is no crature on the face of the earth so dangerous as a man who is searching for perfection."

[Bruth George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the book many years ago (my copy came out in 1963) so it was as good as new. Story of early settlers, mostly bachelors in the Tillamook area who, thanks to the presence of a knowledgeable shipwright in their group, build a ship mostly from scraps of wrecks when their only source of trade ends with the death of Captain Means.

Interesting to me because this is an area I lived with some 30 miles of when a youngster

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book about the history of Tillamook Bay's first settlers, who when learning that their only link to the outside world- a ship captain, had died- decided to take it upon themselves to build a new ship for selling their wares, and restock their settlement. The plot thickens when the shipwright goes crazy and falls in love with an local indian's wife.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good...but not quite as good as Moontrap and Trask. Why is it that men get obsessed with boats!?

[Brian Hansford · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this during our annual summer vacation in Oregon and I enjoyed the historical fiction while imagining the setting on the coast. A good read by one of Oregon's great writers.

[Caleb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not nearly as good as Trask, but still fairly enjoyable.

[martha · Rating 2 out of 5]

good historical perspective, like Trask, but too much hokey dialogue and antics.