CLASSIC BOAT APRIL 2016 67I
f you enjoy classic boats,
lobster, unspoiled coastlines
and relatively sane people
(don’t call them Mainiacs, they’re
Mainers) you should head to Maine, USA.
Miles of forests translate into wooden boats and docks,
clapboard houses and even wooden lobster pots: some
say the lobsters prefer them to the metal sort. You’ll find
islands, lighthouses; pine and granite peninsulas, about
3,500 miles of tidal coastline and a long and proud
seafaring history. It is still referred to as Downeast (not
northeast) as prevailing winds mean Maine was
downwind for the sailing ships. You’ll discover
Penobscot Bay, for many sailors the best cruising
grounds in the world, and a variety of boatbuilders, from
one-man outfits to state-of-the-art factories.
You’ll also find the lobster boat, surely the iconic boat
of Maine, evolving from the dories, the peapods, the
Hamptons, the Friendship sloop – it’s even now the
pick-up truck of the Maine waters, but with a purity of
line and form that comes from slow and careful
evolution. It’s satisfying to see their high, hollow bow
throwing the waves aside as they head out to sea, the
jaunty cabin giving basic shelter, its sheerline swooping
low astern where the lobster pots are hauled over the
side in the long stern cockpit, the tumblehome aft near
the transom. They’ve grown from the earliest engine
propulsion, from car engines being shifted over to the
boat and back again, to diesel engines and even jet
drives. And its ethos has become multipurpose, from
lobstering, fishing and general workboat, to the leisure
lobster yacht, to the current craze of lobster boat racing.
Lobstering is important to Maine. It’s a $450 million
industry – fresh lobsters are rushed to New York City or
air freighted out west. You can even buy a lobster in
Logan Airport, Boston, on the way back to Europe –
when asked, the British Consulate was vague about the
legality of bringing a live lobster into Britain – perhaps
they didn’t want to find out because they all do it.
Lobster is best, heavenly even, steamed in a newly dug
pit near the beach over wood and seaweed with some
sacking on top, accompanied by corn on the cob,
potatoes, and clams.FAMOUS ANCESTORS
The humble dory, first mentioned in the Boston Gazette
in 1726, is a famous ancestor of the present day lobster
boat. The slab-sided dories had removable seats and
could be stacked aboard the Grand Banks schooners,
while the Swampscott dory had a rounded, clinker or
lapstrake hull. The peapod, a common double-ender inthe following century, could work around
the dangerous rock ledges by oar or sail,
and is still a popular family boat. The
Friendship sloop dates to about the middle of the
nineteenth century, named after the lobstering port of
Friendship where sloop boatbuilder Wilbur Morse had
his yard. These were the antecedents of the present-day
lobster boat that we see in Maine harbours, and you
might well still see all of them in July or August when
the summer folk are around.
The big change came with the development of the
internal combustion engine: the company developing the
Knox Marine Engine was started in 1866 and by 1916
could offer engines up to 40 horsepower. One of the first
boats in New England to be converted to engine power
was a sail and oar workboat from Hampton, New
Hampshire: it could be strip-planked and was known for
good seakeeping and a tight turning radius. The Pulsifer
Hampton is still built, its high bow swooping down low
aft where the lobster pots would be hauled in, very much
the evolving shape of the modern lobster boat.LOBSTER BOAT EXPERIMENTS
In 1914, boatbuilder Will Frost arrived on Beals Island,
off Jonesport, way downeast near Machias Island, from
Nova Scotia. There he met the extensive Beal family,
who had been there since 1775. This family learned
much from the innovative Frost and produced dozens of
boatbuilders. Adrian Beal, Willis Beal, Calvin Beal Jr,
Richard Alley, Ernest Libby Jr are part of the web of the
Beal family, some with larger-than-life personalities and
each with generations of skill. The boats they built had
yacht-like overhung sterns to begin with, then
experimented with a ‘torpedo’ stern, stern, similar to the
Thames launch bustle stern and thought to be faster.
The origins of this are contested, possibly an
upside-down schooner-style stern that was found to
work well with an engine, perhaps based on late 19th
century naval torpedo boats, or maybe based on
boatbuilder Will Frost’s Red Wing of 1924. The boats
were lofted out from models, with flat floors and a deep
skeg, the keel almost at right angles to the hull with
little or no deadrise, a narrow beam, and their relatively
simple construction meant that they were light and fast.
The shape was copied by early petrol racing boats.
It’s said that they were so quick that a Prohibition
rum-runner from New York City bought as many as he
could to further his illicit business, finding no other
boat that suited his purpose so well.
After World War I the torpedo stern changed to a
SHUTTERSTOCK transom, but the flat floors and the tumblehome still