Below are some samples from the Gill McFinn Collection. The collection is currently housed in a warehouse in an undisclosed location, a national treasure kept safely tucked away to await its day in the sun. We here at Gill McFinn's are looking for an appropriate location for the museum at this point. This is a difficult process, and we ask that you please exercise patience while we find just the right spot. In the meantime, we will occasionally update this portion of the blog with more artifacts from the collection.
No matter where in the world Gill ended up, he was always ready to stop for a quick smoke and to drop in a line. Pictured here with Gill is the famous Gigi, Gill's dog. Legend has it that Gigi would spot a fish two fathoms down, dive into the water, and catch the fish in her powerful jaws. She could also hold her breath for a full five minutes and never pooped on the ship. Not even once.
One of Gill's original field sketches from a particularly wet trip to New Guinea in 1924. The Goblin Pig is now extinct, all of them having been killed off - not for food or sport, but because they "needed killing," according to the New Guinea tribesmen.
This rusted hull is believed to be the last remains of the original Frankie Anne, the tramp steamer that took young Gill far from Hell's Kitchen into the great frying pan of the South Seas. It lay off the coast of Sandakan in the Sulu Sea until we recovered it 3 years ago. It now sits in storage, awaiting a hallowed spot in the future Gill McFinn Museum of Adventure.
This pier on the coast of Baguio was home port to the Frankie Anne II while Gill made forays to the depths of the Santiago Hole in his bathyscaphe, The Deep Sixer. It was on one of these dives that the infamous and mysterious Pickle-Tongued Fathom Lurker struck the undersea craft and left a clear impression of its ugly hide. Interestingly enough, there has never been an actual Fathom Lurker caught to this day.
In addition to his passion for exploration and adventure, Gill McFinn was an avid inventor. Pictured here is his famous fishing pole, "The Mystic Avenger". Many a fish met its demise at the end of this pole. It is said that Gill could spot a Speckled Slinkfish at 10 fathoms using the occu-scope mounted on the handle. This has often been disputed, as the Slinkfish is practically invisible to the naked eye, but there are many witnesses alive today who remember dining on Slinkfish many times, cooked to perfection by McFinn himself in the ship's mess.
Not much is known of the night the Frankie Anne II went down. Those that were on board don't speak of it, but instead look down at their clam chowder and shiver. Gill loved that ship, and her loss was greater than a blow to the kidneys by a Samoan dock hand. The sight of the wreck is still a closely guarded secret. This scrap of her hull is kept aboard the Frankie Anne III in a vault located deep below deck. A holy relic.
For a brief period in the early years of Gill's career, he tried his hand at franchising his name to a boat-building enterprise. Unfortunately, as he was out in the wild for most of the year, he found himself unable to oversee operations. The businesses were soon run into the ground by the scurvy dogs that couldn't meet the McFinn standards, a "bunch of drunken old salts who wouldn't know a keel from their own keester," Gill was said to say.
