David Harrison Wright still builds and plays with models.

Though the 65-year-old has long outgrown the ones from the hobby shop, he now creates handmade, detailed wood models of historically significant sailing vessels and steamships, often crafted from the original blueprints.

On any given day, Wright can be found at one of Key West's beaches giving one of his creations a sea trial. He is usually trailed by a flock of youngsters asking to play with the ship.

The models are the first step in the creation of a painting. Wright photographs the ships in the water and uses the image to create lifelike paintings. The sea trials allow Wright to see how the boats glide through the water and how the sails and flags react to the wind.

"The most important aspect is the play of shadows on the sails and the hull," Wright said.

It is that attention to detail, and his vast knowledge of maritime and Florida Keys history, that has made Wright one of the foremost marine artists in the Florida Keys. His work has been on display, and in some cases remains on permanent exhibition, at the Custom House, Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, Key West Yacht Club, Freeman Justice Center's main courtroom, and various galleries in Key West. Wright is also a regular speaker at maritime history functions.

"He does his homework and that's what makes him so special," said Corey Malcom, director of archaeology for the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, which commissioned Wright to construct a model of the Wildfire, a seized slave ship that was brought to Key West in 1860 -- not the well-known one whose victims are buried at Higgs Beach. "He utilizes a lot of historical data when making his models and paintings."

Most of the ships featured in Wright's work either sank, were destroyed in storms and accidents or just eroded away over time.

"David's work reminds us of the central role ships played in our nation's history," said Ed Little, president of the Key West Maritime Historical Society. "Back in the day, everything went by ship. We are losing that history and David's work stands to preserve it. David is keeping the history alive. Being a mariner himself, he knows how the parts work. He's the real deal."

Wright's latest re-creation is that of the Island Home, an Upper Keys-based schooner he referred to as the "horse and buggy" of its day. The 80-foot, double-masted schooner was built with a shallow draft to navigate the backcountry, said Wright, who finished the painting last month after dabbling with the model for several weeks.

The Pinder family built the Island Home in 1885 on Plantation Key and the vessel was used for fishing, turtling, wrecking and transporting the family back and forth throughout the Keys to buy goods and supplies.

"It was sort of like how you would use a big truck today," Wright said. "Its primary use was for long-distance travel in the Keys."

The schooner had its masts removed and ended up as a barge used in the construction of the Overseas Highway in the 1930s, Wright said.

"She really had a long working career," he said. "She had a lot of use and figured prominently in the development of the Keys."

Wright uncovered the vessel's existence through a series of books at the Monroe County Library written in the late 1930s.

The seven books were part of a project by the Works Progress Administration and Smithsonian Institution to document wooden sailing vessels. The library also had photos of the Island Home, which were crucial to Wright re-creating its rigging.

Dreams of sailing

Wright grew up in the small farm town of Rogers, Texas, 60 miles outside Austin. His family owned a small ranch, but did not have much money for toys, so he carved model boats out of old cigar and fruit boxes. He would float the boats and enact small sea battles in the cattle troughs or ponds on his family's property. One of Wright's first jobs was mowing yards, and he saved all of his money for models.

"I have always wanted to be a sailor," Wright said. "Maybe I was a mariner in another life. Maybe I was with one of Adm. Horatio Nelson's fleets or somewhere in the West Indies."

As Wright grew older, he graduated from model ships to real ships. He learned to sail while studying interior design at the University of Texas at Austin. He became more involved in sailing when he moved to Houston after graduation.

He joined a sailing club that allowed him to use various sailing vessels on Galveston Bay. While living in Houston and doing interior design work for Foley's Department Store, Wright purchased his first sailboat, a 23-foot single-masted sloop.

Wright visited Key West several times in the early 1970s and fell in love with the place.

"It was really laid-back," Wright said. "There were a lot of empty storefronts on Duval Street. It was a great time to be here. This was before all the big catamarans were here. The flowers were blooming and there were interesting restaurants and bars. I fit right in. I knew this is where I wanted to be."

Journey to Key West

Wright bought his own large sailboat in 1981 in Fort Lauderdale, and sailed it from there to Texas with little incident. The trip back to Florida, however, turned into an odyssey.

It started in February 1983 as a "blissful adventure" with "some of the most wonderful weather," Wright said.

"There was a quarter-inch of fiberglass between me and the ocean. I could hear the water rushing by the hull."

Twenty miles outside the Dry Tortugas, the tranquil waters lapping the boat turned into raging seas fueled by 60 mph wind gusts. The 15-foot-plus waves knocked off the inflatable life raft. The steering broke and Wright used an emergency tiller to keep the boat heading into the wind and on course, slowly being pushed by the 47-horsepower diesel engine.

"We knew we were close to reefs and wrecks and didn't want to join them," Wright said. "By this time we were so sick that we were throwing up our toenails. We were soaking wet. The motor is still running but it could quit at any time."

Help would come from an unlikely source. A shrimp boat captain came to their aid, towing them for eight hours to safety beyond Loggerhead Key.

Wright and his crew later learned he was a marijuana smuggler.

The smuggler had planned to meet a Panamanian freighter carrying marijuana, but the storm and the Coast Guard chased him off before making the exchange, Wright said. The plan was to offload the pot onto fast boats off Key West, then sink the shrimp boat for insurance money, Wright said.

"It was a classic pirate maneuver," he said.

Wright the artist

Having repaired his boat and sailed to Key West, Wright ran his own charter business for 3½ years and dabbled in art. When the weather was too rough to sail, he went to the library and "spent hours in the Florida history section," he said.

He started doing pen and ink drawings and some paintings. One of his first paintings was of the steamship City of Key West. He framed the painting and took it to the former Perkins & Son Chandlery on Fleming Street, which sold ropes, boating supplies, sailing charts and books and other maritime goods. The store's owners bought the painting immediately for $600.

"It was conclusive proof that I could sell art," Wright said. "I realized at that point it was easier than the charter business. Being an artist was one of the dreams I had when I first visited here."

Wright painted other historically significant ships that were either based or built in the Keys. He expanded his subject matter when he created the art for a Key West guidebook, which led to a lucrative contract with an out-of-state company that produced a series of puzzles of Key West and maritime history.

Through the years, Wright's notoriety grew and he was commissioned for paintings of Key West Yacht Club members and other well-to-do residents. Gallery owners, maritime history buffs and nonprofit art groups have asked Wright to show his work at public and private galleries and give presentations on Keys maritime history. In 2009, the Custom House exhibited a series of ship paintings in a series called "Ships and Their Stories, a Maritime Panorama of Key West."

"David just celebrates the maritime history of the Keys," said Claudia Pennington, museum director of the Custom House. "He is very serious about getting the historical facts right and getting the building plans. He goes to the extremes. He is so into living it. He is having so much fun. ... Ships are his passion. He does exhaustive research."

Wright hopes his next project will bring local maritime history to the schools. He applied to the Florida Keys Council of the Arts for grant funding for the project, which he has dubbed "Seafaring in the Keys." He is creating a Power Point presentation on maritime history dating back to the Calusa Indians, who traversed the Keys and traveled to Cuba and Mexico in small boats, for a series of lectures he wants to give students.

Wright's booming voice and Southern drawl have made him a sought-after lecturer, and arts council Executive Director Liz Young likened him to a true Southern gentleman.

"It was like he was born in a different time and place," Young said. "He is a true character. ... He tells a story with such exuberance that you can't wait to hear his next story. ... I love being around him."

tohara@keysnews.com