Last month we reported on the amazing progress being made with the restoration of the S.S. President Coolidge whistle in Luganville. We are delighted to report that we’ve reached another milestone. The whistle has been polished, reassembled and is now complete.
It’s been quite a journey for the almost 100 year old brass whistle that sailed the world for over 10 years, was drafted into the war, sunk, recovered 30 years later, before spending 40 years under Allan Power’s veranda, in Luganville.
The plan from here is to mount the whistle on a sturdy base and devise a way of connecting a large air hose to it. From there, testing and adjustments will take place over the next couple of weeks to ‘tune’ the whistle to get the best possible sound from it.
The Museum would like to thank Yves Lau for donating his time to the restoration and the turning of the replacement main shaft and the beautiful brass nut on top. We would also very much like to thank Yves parents, Mr and Mrs Lau for their generosity in providing the workshop space at LCY Garage, where Yves worked on the replacement parts.
We also want to recognise Rommel Tugalon from Santo Hardware for the
amazing job he did stripping down the whistle into its component parts andmore importantly, rebuilding it again. It was a huge job, thank you.
