Stories about Maine Lakes and Rivers

Boothbay Region
Boatbuilding Mecca
Birchbark Canoe
Heritage Revealed
Two Artists
Inspired by Maine
MAINE
BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS
+
10
Stories about Maine
Lakes and Rivers
Boatbuilding
Boothbay boatbuilder David Stimson holds a model of his steel-backboned wooden schooner. The actual boat is shown under construction behind him.
O
N RIVER ROAD in Boothbay,
David Stimson and his sons,
Abraham and Nathaniel, are
building a 43-foot-long shallow-draft
centerboard wooden schooner fitted
with a steel backbone.
“Excuse the mess,” Stimson said as I
entered his barn-like shop. The cavernous building looks industrious rather
than messy—the dirt floor covered with
sawdust and stacks of live-edge oak and
white pine in back.
For 40 years, Stimson has specialized
in the restoration and repair of classic
boats, as well as the design and construction of small wooden craft—skiffs,
rowing boats, catboats, a war canoe, a
26
motorized dory, schooners, and some
nifty, lug-rigged 15-foot daysailers that
he built for Pine Island Camp and calls
Bezumarangs, inspired by Bezuma, one
of the summer camp’s “sacred animals.”
He also builds and repairs violins.
“You’d be surprised how many boatbuilders get into violin-making, especially as they get older, when planks are
not as light as they used to be,” said
Stimson, who keeps warm in a wool
earflap hat and paint-splashed vest, and
has a nice smile and quiet demeanor.
Tools collected over many years
include a set of planes based on a century-old design. Strings of tobacco hang to
dry from the rafters—Stimson grows his
own for pipe-smoking. The feel of this
shop is semi-traditionalist; not exactly
back-to-the-land, but tucked into the
woods where, harking back to days of
yore, Stimson harvests and mills his own
lumber and builds along classic lines.
It seems fitting to find this quiet
business off a rural peninsula road that
eventually winds its way to the ocean.
Stimson’s operation evokes traditions
rooted in the past, while also looking
toward the future. The same can be said
of other boatbuilders in the Boothbay
region, where the variety and concentration of activity is astonishing for
such a small, fairly remote collection of
villages.
MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS | May / June 2016 | Issue 140
Mecca
On this peninsula, flanked by the
Damariscotta and Sheepscot rivers, boatbuilding’s roots go back to a time of large
fishing fleets and busy coastal trade.
Today, the industry has expanded to
include construction of pleasure boats.
In all, the many boatbuilding operations
in the region, both large and small, combine to employ scores of people, and
attract a clientele that ranges from local
to global.
Builders run the gamut from one- or
two-person shops such as Matt Sledge’s
Samoset Boat Works and Stimson’s shop,
to semi-industrial plants such as those
encountered closer to the water below a
narrow network of lanes in East Boothbay. There, Hodgdon Yachts goes back
200 years—the sixth generation of the
Hodgdon family now works at the yard.
On the day I visited last winter, specialists in carbon fiber, Kevlar, and Nomex
honeycomb core were testing, fairing,
and fitting various elements for an
advanced-composite yacht under construction.
Next door at Washburn & Doughty,
the buzz of TIG torches and plasma cutters reverberates through a 43,000square-foot factory, and sparks fly as
welders on scissor-lifts join together
huge plates of steel in the making of
hundred-foot tugboats.
A farther jaunt down a steep driveway that ends in the appropriately
named Lukes Gulch leads to Paul E.
Luke, Inc., a third-generation company.
Here, in a jumble of buildings that hints
at nearly 80 years of history, a vintage
Hinckley 49 sailboat is in for layout and
systems updates, while a roster of other
boats waits its turn for routine winter
maintenance.
Return to the west and find the
Boothbay Harbor Shipyard, home for
the next three years of the ErnestinaMorrissey, a 156-foot-long fishing
The Boothbay region hums
with maritime activity
STORY & PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAURIE SCHREIBER
At Washburn & Doughty in East Boothbay,
sparks fly as a welder joins together steel
plates in the making of a 100-foot tugboat.
Reprinted with permission of MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS • DIGITAL edition @ www.maineboats.com
27
From left, Frank and Nora Luke, second-generation owners of the Paul E. Luke shop in East Boothbay,
and their son, Andrew, who is taking the yard into the future with help from Cosmo, the boatyard dog.
schooner built in 1894 in Essex, Massachusetts. Later employed as an Arctic
expedition boat and then as a Cape
Verde packet, the Ernestina, which is one
of the nation’s most historically significant ships, is undergoing a $6 million,
28
multi-year restoration.
From traditional to modern, these
new builds and restorations are just a
few of the boatbuilding projects in the
Boothbay region.
By the waterfront, Boothbay Harbor
is a popular tourist destination. A
spaghetti-network of lanes and vintage
homes speaks of history, while the
downtown is lined with trendy restaurants and shops. Southport sits on the
west side of the harbor. To the east and
separated by a promontory are Linekin
Bay and the town of East Boothbay.
These small towns have a quieter, residential feel. North of Boothbay Harbor
is the separate municipality of Boothbay.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, fishing and shipbuilding were two of the
area’s lead industries, eventually joined
by tourism and industrial enterprises
such as seafood canning, according to
Barbara Rumsey, a local historian with
the Boothbay Region Historical Society.
Boatbuilders came and went. At the
heart of the Boothbay Harbor shoreline,
mid-19th-century Townsend Marine
Railway became the Atlantic Coast
Company, then Sample’s Shipyard.
Today it is the Boothbay Harbor Shipyard. In East Boothbay, Adams Shipyard
became Goudy & Stevens, then Hodgdon Yachts. Washburn & Doughty,
which specializes in building tugboats,
is at a site formerly occupied, at differ-
MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS | May / June 2016 | Issue 140
ent times, by the Rice Brothers and
Edward Gamage. Two other Gamages
started an eponymous boatyard that’s
still thriving across the river from East
Boothbay in South Bristol.
Jimmy Jones knows about changes.
His grandfather started a shop in East
Boothbay. His father and uncle took
over, followed by Jones, who closed
down and went to work at Sample’s. Not
long ago, Mike Mayne, owner at the time
of Edgecomb Boat Works, a restoration
shop a few miles inland, bought the
Jones property. He now operates under
the name Little Island Boat Yard LLC,
resurrecting the yard to continue its
legacy in wooden boat work and service work for local lobstermen.
Jones himself now works at Hodgdon; when I visited he was chiseling a
rabbet in the forward section of a 1955
Abeking & Rasmussen in for a major
refit. I met him while touring the company with fifth- and sixth-generation
owners Tim Hodgdon and his daughter,
Audrey.
“I was tired of running a business,”
Jones said of his decision to sell. “I was
able to walk away, so I did.”
While Jones worked on a traditional plank-on-frame restoration, others at
Hodgdon were working with the latest
composite materials. The yard produces
superyachts, from a 124-foot sloop
equipped with a custom pipe organ and
functioning fireplace to the sleek hundred-foot super-maxi Comanche, built
from carbon fiber pre-impregnated with
resin, then “baked” in the biggest marine
oven in the United States. The Hodgdon
crew built the “oven” inside a huge shed
onsite. Tim Hodgdon introduced me to
composite technician Sarah Boston, who
tapped with a bulbed rod on a carbon
fiber part, listening for bonding imperfections. Elsewhere, Chip Haggett, a joiner who “grew up in the shavings,” was
inspecting a teak tabletop he crafted for
a 65-foot modern classic under construction at the shipyard.
“These people are highly skilled,”
said Tim Hodgdon, beaming. “We have
the traditional skill sets—joinery and
wooden boatbuilding—that translate
really well into sophisticated advanced
composite construction.”
Next door, Washburn & Doughty has
a whole different scene going on. Matt
Maddox, vice president of finance and
son-in-law of co-founder Bruce
Doughty, equipped both of us with hardhats and took me onto the floor. A nearly hundred-foot tug, to be outfitted with
two 3,000-horsepower engines, loomed
overhead. A big plate of steel was being
cut on a computer-controlled plasma
burn table; tractors and come-alongs
hauled the plates into place. The incessant noise of heavy machinery forced us
to shout to be heard. Maddox noted that
the company works hard to provide
steady work throughout the year, avoiding the boom-and-bust cycle that plagues
other sectors of the industry.
“A lot of our people have been shipbuilding their whole lives, and they take
a lot of pride in putting out a great boat,”
he said. “It’s nice being part of a boatbuilding heritage, especially in a small
community.”
Nearly 80 years of heritage are alive
and well at the Luke family’s shop, which
no longer builds boats but still offers
storage, service, repairs, and refits. On
first glance, it’s hard to tell that this
hodgepodge of buildings is a boatyard,
especially because there’s no sign. Then
Reprinted with permission of MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS • DIGITAL edition @ www.maineboats.com
29
The Washburn & Doughty plant, viewed from Ocean Point Marina, overlooks the Damariscotta River.
I noticed a tubby pooch leashed near a
door that seemed to speak “office.”
Inside, second-generation owners Frank
and Nora Luke, and their son Andrew,
were catching up on paperwork. Frank
recalled the old days.
“They built a lot of boats on a handshake,” he said. “You can’t do that now. The
fellows were just back from World War II,
and there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do
or wouldn’t try, and it was fun.”
Frank father’s Paul worked for the
Rice Brothers, Gamage, and Frank Sam-
30
ple at different times in his career. Paul
and his wife Verna started the Luke yard
in 1939. It was known for wood and aluminum construction, and developed a
well-equipped machine and metal shop,
producing everything from small-boat
cleats to grinders for America’s Cup
boats, plus galley stoves, and automatic
feathering propellers. In the 1980s, the
Lukes fabricated the cherry for Claes
Oldenburg’s oversized sculpture “Spoonbridge and Cherry,” at the Minneapolis
Sculpture Garden.
Oldenburg “knew he wanted to make
this enormous sculpture, and he knew
it would be aluminum,” Andrew said.
“He asked himself, ‘Who knows how to
work aluminum?’ Boatbuilders do.”
Andrew guided me through a warren
of walkways, doors, and ells, past half a
century’s worth of machinery and scrap
materials blanketed with dust.
“My grandfather never threw anything away, because he was of that generation where you save everything,” he said.
Nowadays, the Lukes have upgraded their storage and service yard. Frank
and Nora are stepping back, but they
remain invaluable.
“My mother is good with names, my
father is good with boats. Between the
two of them, it’s perfection,” said
Andrew. He then summoned an observation true of the entire community:
“That sense of history at their fingertips
is profound.”
✮
Laurie Schreiber has written for newspapers
and magazines on the coast of Maine for more
than 20 years. Her new book, Boatbuilding on
Mount Desert Island, was published in April
2016 by Arcadia Publishing.
MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS | May / June 2016 | Issue 140
Happy 200th
The Hodgdon family has been building
boats since 1816 when Caleb Hodgdon
launched a 42-foot pinky schooner in
East Boothbay—making the family the
nation’s oldest in the boat business. Tim
Hodgdon, the company’s fifth-generation owner, and his daughter Audrey are
planning festivities to celebrate the yard’s
bicentennial this summer.
“It’s an important legacy and I’m
proud of it,” said Tim Hodgdon, who
started working at the yard during school
vacations in 1971. He officially joined the
business in 1979, when construction
involved traditional wooden plank-onframe and the workforce was four or five
people. Audrey joined the company last
year. “In this business, you need to
embrace technology. We’ve done that,”
Tim said.
In the early years, the Hodgdons built
fishing boats and schooners, such as the
William Hand Jr.-designed Bowdoin,
(shown here on launching day in 1921).
The business has grown and become
more sophisticated, using the latest
materials and technologies and expanding to serve clients all over the world. A
recent project was the high-tech, highspeed ocean racer Comanche. The company’s divisions include a sales office in
Monaco. —LS
For more information on the birthday
celebrations, contact Audrey at 207-633-4194
or [email protected].
Reprinted with permission of MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS • DIGITAL edition @ www.maineboats.com
31
Historic image courtesy Hodgdon Yachts
The 1921 launch of the
schooner Bowdoin was
cause for a celebration.
Audrey and Tim Hodgdon