Museum Logbook Series #2

Exploring Our Past: A Look Back at the Museum’s Early Years

As we continue to celebrate and preserve Cayman’s heritage, we’re diving into our archives to revisit the early history of the Museum. Through a special blog series, we’ll be sharing articles from The Logbook, the Museum’s newsletter from the 1990s. These pieces offer a glimpse into past exhibitions, cultural programs, and community events that helped shape the Museum into what it is today.

Join us as we reflect on these stories, learn from our past, and celebrate the efforts that have kept our history alive. Journey with us through the pages of The Logbook!

A Shipbuilder's Donation

The Logbook (Museum Newsletter) Vol. 3., No. 4 July/August 1999

As a very young man growing up on Cayman Brac, Albert Ernest Walton worked in the Kirkconnell shipyard, ripping timbers after school. Today, his shipbuilding is limited to model ships, and the National Museum is the proud recipient of one of his finely crafted models.

Kirk B schooner model by Albert Walton

Albert Walton was born in Spot Bay, April 21, 1923, to parents who raised nine children, five boys and four girls. His father Albert and grandfather Edwin were well-respected shipbuilders on the Brac. As a youngster, Ernest would play marbles or perhaps cricket, using a ball carved from wood collected in the bush.

He also recalls playing softball with a cloth ball knitted by the girls, spinning gigs, handmade from cherry wood and playing the game, "prisoner's bound." Weather permitting, he would go fishing every morning before school and would carry his catch to his mother Celeste, to prepare for the family's meal.

Young Ernest attended Spot Bay School, which only offered the primary grades. One day, after lunch, Ernest and some of his pals skipped school and headed to Stake Bay to witness the launching of the Kirk B (which stands for Kirkconnell Brothers). Returning home, he was punished by this father. "I can still feel the weals today," Ernest says; his father was not angry that he had gone to see the launching, but that he had done so without permission.

Mr. Walton also recalls weekend turtling trips to Cuba, near the Isle of Pines. He would leave the Brac on Friday, set the nets on Saturday and return on Sunday with the catch of green sea turtles. Remembered too are the voyages to the southern banks, off Columbia, for loggerhead and hawksbill turtles; their valuable shells were sold in Jamaica.

In search of work, Mr. Walton left Cayman in 1941 for Panama where he was employed in the US Navy yard. He joined the Merchant Marines, carrying ammunition across the Atlantic during World War II. When it was over, he settled in New York where he worked for the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard on Staten Island. He married and, like his father, he raised nine children before retiring to Florida in 1986.

Museum Curator, William Tennent, noticed examples of Mr. Walton's fine model ships at the Mango Manor Bed & Breakfast, operated by his brother George on Cayman Brac. That led Mr. Tennent to contact Mr. Walton in Florida.

He was delighted and generously offered to build and donate a model to the Cayman Islands National Museum. In early June, the Museum received the exquisite model. The timbers are made of walnut, the planking of Alabama white pine, and the hatches of white oak. The deck works and rigging are authentic miniatures, and the masts rise to a height of 47 inches. Mr. Walton's choice of ship — the Kirk B of course!

While the museum regrets that Mr. Walton was punished for failing to get permission to skip school for that launching so many years ago, we are certainly grateful that his memories of the event enabled him to create this beautiful and skillfully crafted model.