the dory-boat book 1978

8/12/2019 The Dory-Boat Book 1978

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MICROFICHEREFERENCELIBRARY

A project of Volunteers in AsiaThe Dory Bookby John GardnerPub1 shed by:

International Marine Publishing Company21 Elm StreetCamden, Maine 04843USA

Ava ?ble fromsame as above

Reproduced by permission.Reproduction of this microfiche document in anyform is subject ix the same restrictions as thoseof the original document.


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y JOHNGARDNERIllustrations by Samuel F. Manning

*International Marine Pub1ishin.g Company


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Copyright 0 1978by International Marine Publishing CompanyLibrary of Congress Catalog Card Number 77-85409International Standard Book Number O-87742-090-4Fourth printing, 1982All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced or uti-lized in any form or by any means, dectronic or mechanical, including photocopying, rrsord-ing, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from thepublisher.Published by International Marine Publishing Company21 Elm Street, Camden, Maine 04843


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Preface

PART ONE HISTORY OF THE DORYChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3

A SEARCH FOR BEGINNINGS 3THE BATTEAU ANCESTOR 18THE BANK DORY EMERGES 25

PART TW0 HOW TO BU1J.D A DORYChapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6

DORY LAYDOWN 42DORY CONSTRUCTION 54NEW MATERIALS 125

CONTENTS

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1

41

PART THREE DORY PLANS 133Chapter 7

Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13

THE 32-FOOT MAINERIVER-DRIVING BATTEAUTHE 18-FOOT LIGHT BATTEAUTHE 19FOOT HEAVY BATTEAUTHE BANK DORIESTHE ST. PIERRE WORKING DORYTHE HAMMOND 16-FOOT SWAMPSCOTTDORYFRED DIONS SWAMPSCOTT DORY

135137140142148174177


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Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29

THE 17FOOT NAHANT DORYTHE 18FOOT ONE-DESIGNSWAMPSCOTT SAILING DORYTHE CHAMBERLAIN GUNNING DORYTHE 19FOOT SURF DORYTHE BEACHCOMBER-ALPHAA 12FOOT SEMI-DORYA 14FOOT SEMI-DORYA 16FOOT SEMI-DORYA 19-FOOT,. 8dNCH SEMI-DORYTHE CHAISSON lo-FOOT DORY TENDERA 12-FOOT, 6-INCH SWAMPSCOTTDORY TENDERThe 13FOOT CHAMBERLAIN DORY SKIFFTHE 13FOOT LAWTON DORY SKIFFA 14FOOT DORY SKIFFA 14FOOT, 4%INCH OUTBOARDFLATIRONTHE 14FOOT, g-INCH LOWELLDORY SKIFFINDEX

184189192204209225231239248250254257260263266270273


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PREFACE

The Maine Coast Fi sherman s affair with thedory started back in June, 1951, when itprinted a modest little article I had writtenabout the Hammond dory. The piece wasshort, a beginners effort, but it did providesome useful building information including aset of lines carefully drawn to scale. This wasthe first time, I believe, that lines for a small,round-sided, pulling dory of the Swampscotttype had appeared in print. Perhaps it wasthese lines, freely offered, or the builders ap-proach to the subject that appealed to thereaders. In any case, this maiden effort strucka spark of interest. Readers wrote in, and theyhave been writing ever since. Not just aboutthat first Hammond dory, of course, but aboutall the dories since. During the last twenty-fiveyears, a long line of my articles on how tobuild dories of various sorts and sizes haspassed across the pages of the Fisherman (nowknown as the National F isherman).It is nice to get letters. We love to hear fromour readers at home and abroad, to share intheir enthusiasms, and to assist them in theirboatbuilding efforts, if possible. We like tohelp. Yet questions from prospective builders,especially from the inexperienced, are notal-ways easy to deal with. Lengthy answers areoften required. Sometimes such inquiries canbe handled by reference back to FSwmanarticles, but many of these are now difficult toobtain. Photostats are not the answer, particu-

larly when cross references to a number ofdifferent articles are involved.The fact is that a book is needed, a bookthat amplifies and gathers together in onepackage the scattered material on dories th.athas appeared in the Fisherman. It is desirablethat the construction data and related informa-tion be systematically arranged, expanded inplaces, brought up to date, and illustrated forbetter comprehension.There must be something about the dorythat intrigues people. How else explain the per-sistent vigor of the type and its continuingpopularity? There is no easy means forknowing just how many dories have been builtfrom Fisherman plans and details. I believe anestimate of several hundred could be formedfrom the number of letters from dory en-thusiasts, builders, or prospective builders thathave accumulated in my files. Often those whodisplay the greatest enthusiasm never get to thebuilding stage for one reason or another. Andsome who do build never write, so that whenone learns of their accomplishment, if at all, itis by accident.The two boats which have proved mostpopular are the 27foot St. Pierre fishermansdory, and the 19foot Marblehead gunningdory. In the wake of plans published for theSt. Pierre dory more than ten years ago, scoresof these big dories were completed, mostly aspowerboats, but a few rigged for sail.

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The Dory BookThe big St. ?ierre has ranged widely: fromthe Caribbean to the Gulf of Maine, and in thePacific, from British Columbia to Okinawa andNew Zealand. The gunning dory has coveredalmost as much territory. Over 160 sets ofbuilding plans and directions for the gunningdory have gone out to amateur builders in all

parts of North America, with several toEurope. Dories from our published plans havebeen built in Australia. Two of our double-ended surf dories have given outstanding per-formance in the Pacific surf on the west coastof Nicaragua. One of our 19-foot outboardsemi-dories, built in the Canadian northwest,was an enlarged version of our 16-foot model,drawn up for an engineer in Venezuela whowanted it for off-shore fishing. Dory plans andbuilding instructions have been sent upon re-quest to Spain and to Sweden, to Ireland andto Germany. Dories -taken from the pages ofthe Fisherman now cleave the waves of theseven seas.

My own affair with dories dates from thelate Thirties, when I came to Essex County,Massachusetts, to work as a boatbuilder. Hail-ing from Down East-as far east as it is possi-ble to go in coastal Maine-I had known agood many dories. Among these was a smallBank dory that I had built for my own use, asa boy, on the St. Croix River.But the dories I had rowed md sailed on theupper reaches of Maines Passamaquoddy Bay

were not the dories I found on the Lynn andSwampscott beaches, along the shores ofMarblehead, Salem, and Beverly, and at theCape Ann towns of Gloucester and Rockport.These round-sided dories, the double-enders inparticular, were a choicer breed than thestraight-sided Bank dories used by fishermenelsewhere on the New England coast. Thesweet lines of some of them all but took mybreath when I saw them for the first time, outof the water in all their naked elegance. I re-velled in their good looks and desired them asmuch for their beauty as for their use.

Next best to possessing a boat is to possessher lines, carefully laid out on paper, neatlyand painstakingly faired. There is recurrentsatisfaction in thinking that one mightsomeday build the boat, having drafted herlines in preparation for the event. Readers whotell me that they clip drawings of hull linesvii2

mind carefully save them in folders apparentlydo so from this sort of motivation. The linesserve as surrogate for the boat.Thus my recording of dories began as an in-tensely personal experience in which theaesthetic element bulked large. Far from in-tending to publish the data resulting from my

first measuring of dories and recording thelines and the details of representative speci-mens, I wanted those shapely, svelte, round-sided boats far myself.An early object of my attentions was thelovely 19-foot double-ender I noticed one daydrawn up on the beach at Bamegat* in a covefrequented by Marblehead lobstermen. I wastold that this was Will Chamberlains personalgunning dory that had lain for a number ofyears drying out under a veranda after Willseyesight had grown too dim to see beyond thegunsights. Following his death, the dory hadlain there until his widow was finally per-suaded to sell her to a part-time lobstermanwho now II& her to tend his strings of pots.In spite psi her long retirement the boat hadtightened up again after some swelling, and al-though she was a lightweight craft, built forduck hunting on the islands of the outerharbor, she proved strong enough to carryheavy loads of lobster pots with only one lightbrace affixed across the gunwales amidships tokeep the sides from working.I looked up the owner. He readily grantedme permission to take off the lines. The nextpleasant Saturday morning found me on thebeach bright and early with notebook, tape,rule, chalk line, thin pine template stock, andall the other tools and equipment I could thinkof as possibly needed for the job.I had built boats and passed for a boat-builder at the time, y;et never before had Iessayed to take off a set of lines from a com-pleted hull. But as an avid reader of the manysuperb historical articles on representativeAmerican small craft written by H. I. Chapellein Yachting during the Thirties, I had a prettygood idea of how it was done. I had alsopracticed redrawing the hull lines that ac-companied Chapelles articles.That practice stood me in good stead. Of

*Local name for a section of Marblehead in thevicinity of Beacon Street.


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Prefacecourse my boatbuilding experience also helped.I must admit that I approached my task withsome trepidation, but once I had made theplunge, the water was fine. The day flew by. Iam not sure I even stopped to eat. There wasso much to get on paper, so much not to beoverlooked, so many measurements to bechecked and doublechecked against error, al-ways lurking close at hand. But at the end ofthe day, pretty well worn out by the excite-ment and the unaccustomed concentration, Ihad a notebook full of sketches and figuresand an armful of pine templates.The boat, that is to say, the boats essentialshape, was mine. And it is now yours or any-ones, whoever might want to build her, studyher, or merely contemplate her beauty.The lines were taken off none too soon. Thehandsome gunning dory, too lightly built for arough workboat, and old to begin with, wasoverloaded and abused, and soon started goingto pieces. She did not last long thereafter.Broken up and destroyed, she has been de-parted for a good many years.While so far no exact reproduction of this19-foot Chamberlain gunning dory has beenbuilt, her lines, with slight changes, are thoseupon which James S. Rockefellers 1%footgunning dory are molded, and a derivativeboat, but somewhat huskier, is the Texaco surfdory built for use as a workboat on the westcoast of Nicaragua.Not long after recording the lines and details

of the Chamberlain double-ender, I became in-volved with another similar dory, the lastdecrepit survivor of a number of surf doriesacquired by the Metropolitan District Com-mission early in this century for use as life-saving craft on the public beaches of GreaterBoston. One of these still used to lie in readi-ness during the summer season on a highwagon in a turn-out just off the sidewalk atthe entrance to Kings Beach in Lynn, not farfrom the Swampscott line. Every time I passedby I would stop to admire this boat. She musthave been in service for a long time, for whenI first saw her, she was an old boat, weak inher fastenings, rent in her garboard planks, andheavily encrusted inside and out with layers ofwhite paint, an additional coat of which sheapparently had received at the beginning ofeach beach season for many, many years.After some letter writing back and forth, I

secured pelmission from the MDC to measurethe boat ant1 lost no time in taking off herlines. During this operation, in attempting toset an awl CA which to hook a chalk line, Idiscovered c small brass builders name plateburied undf:r thick paint. The plate proved theboat to have been built by Will Chamberlain,although at first I had surmised she might havebeen an early George chaisson boat, because ofthe location of her berth close to the Swamp-Scott line. Most of the dories at nearby Fisher-mans Beach in Swampscott were of Chaissonbuild.As in the case of the gunning dory, I tookoff the lines none too soon. The next seasonthe boat was retired. I made inquiries as to herwhereabouts some time after, but by then noone had heard of the boat and she could notbe located. Fortunately, before this surf boatwas removed, I got Colonel Smith* of thePeabody Museum of Salem to photograph herfor the record. Some years atci in Yachting(March, 1954) I showed for purposes ofcomparison a series of lines of representativedory types drawn to the same scale. TheChamberlain surf dory was included in thisseries.The newer boats procured by the BostonMDC to replace the old Chamberlain dories arepathetically inferior both in design and abilityto the old boats, although I suppose they areadequate for what they have to do. Surf doriesof the original Chamberlain model would, I ex-pect, be prohibitively expensive today, if,indeed, any boatshop could be found thatwould undertake to build them.The building of dories and other lapstraketypes, in Essex County as nearly everywhereelse in this country, is a forgotten trade. Theold-time Essex County do:y builders are anextinct species. In barely fifty years the socialand economic conditions that molded andnourished them are gone beyond recall, and tosome extent, beyond recollection. The boatsthey built with such care and pride, the round-sided Swampscott dories that reached theirapogee during the onset of the present century,have nearly slipped into oblivion.

*Cal. Smith, now passed on, was an honorary curatorof, I believe, ethnology at the Peabody Museum inSalem.

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The Dory BookThe dory of the turn of the century inMarblehead and Swampscott must be con-sidered in the context of the culture that thenexisted, It was a simpler time. People workedlonger hours for less wages, but probably hadmore of the essentials. Fishermen rowed their

dories to their fish traps and lobster pots. Theyoung village bloods who raced in Beach-combers and X-dories on Sunday mornings, onthe Fourth of July, and on Labor Day hadlittle means of escaping workaday routine andneighborhood surveillance except in theirdories. There were the trolley cars and varioushorse-drawn vehicles, it is true, but they didnot offer much real freedom. The spatial liber-ation brought about by the auto, and by themotorboat to a lesser degree, was yet to comefor those with moderate incomes. Around1910, the waters of northern MassachusettsBay were white with dory sails. By 1930, mostof them were gone. The change came with thegasoline engine.The gas engine in the automobile on land,and to a lesser extent in the motorboat on thewater, opened up a dimension of mobility tothe American people that exploded the con-fines of the village. The population took tocars and powerboats in a big way, and over-night the quality of American life was altered.Small craft of the older types, including dorieson saltwater and canoes on lakes and streams,slipped into decline.

Now the tide has turned. Seeking respitefrom gas fumes, the mechanized madness ofdeadly superhighways, and the confinement ofcrowds, increasing numbers of people in theirleisure hours are turning back to the smallcraft of an earlier day, back to sail and oar.The dory rcviv al is part of this larger gent&revival ot small craft. The increase in canoes isspectacular, even to the return of canoe liveriesas profitable enterprises after a lapse of morethan a quarter of a century. Of course thereare lots of outboards, and more to come,which is another reason for the increase indories. Some of the modified dorv types, suit-ably fitted out, make the best of outboardboats.This expanding small-craft revival is to alarge extent an amateur undertaking. Amateurboatbuilding is certainly nothing new in thiscountry, but the backyard builder, to adoptthe late Sam Rabls phrase, is on the increase.

Many more people with a. great deal moreleisure are turning to handwork. Not sincepioneer times have there been so many busyhome workshops. For those who love the out-of-doors, and the sea, and desire a real chal-lenge of skill, what better project than buildinga boat?Dories as a type possess several character-istics that make them especially suitable foramateur construction and commend them towide general acceptance. To begin with, doriesare fine sea boats, especially the perfected,round-sided models developed along EssexCountys North Shore. Second, they are low-cost boats, economical to build and to main-tain. Finally, they are easy to construct, andadaptable to the use of easily obtainablemodem materials without alteration in basicdesign.

Dory building costs are relatively low be-cause expensive materials are not required, andbecause the simplified construction of dory-type boats makes the costs of labor lower thanfor most other small craft. Of course thissaving in labor is not too much of a considera-tion to the recreational builder, whose ownlabor costs him nothing more than his sparetime. In the matter of maintenance, dories areinexpensive because of their rugged construc-tion, which will take abuse that would wreckmore fragile boats.The relative simplicity of dory constructionmakes the type particularly attractive to thefirst-time builder. Furthcimore, the ordinarilymore difficult round-sided dories become mucheasier to build when traditional construction ismodified in order to utilize modem, easilyobtainable materials, in particular plywood,elastic sealants, synthetic reinforcements, andthermoplastic adhesives.It has been established to my satisfactionthat almost anyone ran put together a passabledory if he has normal facaulties, a few handtools, a comer to work in, and a fair amountof patience and drive. It is also necessary, inthe case of a tenderfoot builder, to have reli-able construction plans and comprehensibledirections. The directions should be laid out ina series of progressive steps or stages. If a boat-building project is to turn out correctly, it isnecessary to do the right thing, in the rightsequence.The dory-building directions in the chapters


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PrefacerefaceNational Fisherman in 1964 and has recentlyational Fisherman in 1964 and has recentlybeen revised to include additional facts whicheen revised to include additional facts whichhave since come to light.ave since come to light.

John GardnerMystic, Connecticut

that follow have been thoroughly tested andhat follow have been thoroughly tested andproven. The plans are for boats that have beenroven. The plans are for boats that have beensuccessfully built and used, either by myself oruccessfully built and used, either by myself orothers.thers. As for the historical chapters, thiss for the historical chapters, thismaterial was originally published in theaterial was originally published in the

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N EWFOUNDLAN


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PART QNEF THE DORY


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.

Dory nomenclature.1. False stem 11. Frame2. Stem 12. Frame plateusset3. Br east book 13. Bottom plank4. Side cleat 14. Stern knee5. Frame bead ir on 15. Garboard plank6. Gunwale log 16. Broad plank7. Cap rail 17. Sheer plank8. Riser 18. Stern cleat9. Bottom cleat 19. Transom or tombstone10. Thwart


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1 A SEARCH FOR BEGINNINGS

In August, 1719, Captain Nathaniel Uring, inan English vessel bounA from Madeira to Ja-maica, was cast away on F reef. The captainnoted in his report to the owners that his crewgot ashore in the longboat, and with their dorythey were able to pass back and forth over thereef, when the seas abated, to take off part ofthe cargo. This dory appears to have beensmaller than the longboat and of less draft.Whether they waited for the seas to calm be-cause of the dorys characteristics is not clear.This is the earliest reference to a dory so farfound. Because of the familiar, matter-of-factway in which Captain Uring tells about thedory and .its use, it may be assumed thatneither the name nor the type were new at thetime.E.P. Morris notes the mention of a doreein the Boston Gazette in 1726, and it seemsthat this doree was large enough to carryfive men. Apparently the boat was in use atthe Isles of Shoals.Toward the end of the century, reference tothe dory becomes more common. Starting in1789, dories are frequently mentioned in theaccount books of James Topham, Marbleheadboatbuilder. William Bentley, Salem diarist,records a dory in local waters in 1795.4A report in 1819 relates that Marbleheadfishing vessels, or jiggers, had recentlyadopted the practice of taking out several

dories to fish from instead of fishing from thevessels themselves. Apparently in Swampscott,prior to the arrival in 1795 of the Dove, Swamp-Scotts first fishing schooner, all fishing wasdone in dories off the beach.In no instance to date has any detaileddescription of eighteenth century dories beenfound.In 1790, Topham at Marblehead sold twonew dories for three pounds each, while a13 -foot boat, presumably round-bottomed,went for nine pounds, indicating an easier andcheaper construction for the dories of thatday, just as the Bank dory a century later costless thvl other fishing types.With boatbuilders wages at approximatelyfive shillings per day, according to Tophamsaccounts, and making allowance for the cost ofmaterials, an estimate of one weeks buildingtime for a dory that cost three pounds seemsnot too far from the mark. A week to build atory would have been about right 100 yearslater, when we know what a dory was.

Compare this with the weeks labor it costtwo amateurs in 1839, the brothers Thoreau,to build the craft for their famous boating tripon the Concord and Merrimac rivers. HenryDavid Thoreau describes their boat as being inform like a fishermans dory, fifteen feet longby three and a half in breadth at the widestpart. This does not tell us much, considering3


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,y>, ,A /, I

* I

The Dory Bookthat we have no description of what a fisher-mans dory of that time, or before, was like.The length is normal for a small dory but thebeam is scant. Even on quiet inland waters, adory this narrow must have been tender.6Until about 1870, there are to be found norecorded dory lines, details, nor any list ofparticulars that would enable us to say withcertainty what the earlier dories were reallylike. It is reasonable to assume, however, thatthe type has not changed too radically over theyears. There must have been evolution to someextent, but with continuity of inheritancealso.It appears that the classic Bank dory shape,which is the image that generally first comes tomind when the word dory is mentioned, wasestablished before 1870. In 1880, the U.S.National Museum issued a bulletin containingrather complete specifications for a number ofstandard sizes of Bank dories as employed atthat time in the various American fisheries.The old practice was to measure dories onthe bottom, and included were dories withbottom lengths of 13, 14, 141/2, 15, and 15%feet. The 15?&footer, of extra width and depthlike the winter haddock dory, measured 19feet 8 inches on top with a beam of 5 feet 5inches and a bottom width of 2 feet 11 inches.The depth amidships was 1 foot 10 inches, andthe depth at the ends, 2 feet 7 inches. Builtextra strong, with six and sometimes seven

pairs of frames, and with a wide band on topoutside to bind and protect the sheer, such bigdories were little used by American fishermen,but were shipped in large numbers each year tothe French at St. Pierre and Miquelon Islandsoff Newfoundland. In addition to these Bankmodels, the National Museum bulletin notedthe occurrence of other less common kinds ofdories, including round-bilged Cape Ann sailingdories and a Nantucket dory.Four years after this catalog was issued bythe U.S. National Museum, Henry Halls TenthCensus Report On The Ship-Bui lding I ndustryof the United States was published. Here, forthe first time, appeared a printed representa-tion of the general lines of the Bank dory, butwithout a dimensioned layout. According toHall, building these dories for Bank fishingschooners, which seldom set sail withoutbuying from one to five or six new dories, wasa brisk business centered at Salisbury, Massa-chusetts. Seven shops, each producing from200 to 650 Bank dories annually, operated onpiece-work production. In addition, Hall re-ported, dories in lesser quantity were built allalong the coast from Maine to New York. Hefound five principal sizes in use with bottomlengths ranging from 12 to 16 feet, the largestbeing for the halibut fishery.

Dories, according to Hall (and he meansthe Bank dory), are swift, easily handled,capacious and safe, and, if properly handled,

What is a dory? A dory is a lat-bottomed boat, with sides and bottom planked lengthwise and with no keel structureother han the bottom planki ng.4


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,@f I III

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History of the Dwy

A cross-planked, fl at-bottomed boat is not a dory. Cr oss plank ing is a more recent innovation in l at-bottomed craf t. I trequir es an abundance of nails or other plank f astenings not readily available to the classic bui lders of dories.

A vee-bottom, or deadri se hull . Al though planked l engthwise with wide lumber, th is type i s buil t on a keel. This s a boxreproduction of a round-bottomed bull . Not a dory.

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The Dory Bookhard to capsize. He also noted their compara-tively light weight. The dory, says Hall, is aYankee invention that came into widespreaduse in the fisheries since the changeover in fish-ing, which he explains had formerly been donewith handlines over the sides of the vessels, butin late years was being carried on from smallboats, that is to say dories, sent out from themother ship. Hall is referring to the advent oftrawl fishing, which appears to have been firstintroduced in the Grand Banks cod fishery inabout 1832 by fishermen from Dieppe, France.Precisely what kind of small craft were usedoriginally by the French fishermen who devisedthe trawl is not known, although it is possiblethat they were of the dory type in spite ofHalls patriotic claim for the Yankees. Al-though it is true that before the trawl was in-troduced, cod fishing on the Grand Banks hadbeen done over the side of the vessel withoutintervention of small boats, it is not to beunderstood from this that small boats had not

seen large-scale use in the north Atlantic fish-eries prior to the trawl.

The extensive shore fisheries at Newfound-land and along the Gulf of St. Lawrence inearly times employed small boats manned bytwo to four men. Putting out from the coasteach morning, these boats returned at nightwith their catch of cod. It appears that theFrench may have started using small craft inthe Newfoundland fishery some 300 yearsbefore their compatriots from Dieppe devisedthe trawl.Certain it is that both the English and theFrench made extensive use of small craft atNewfoundland in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. In large part they used round-bottom shallops or, in French, chaloupes. Butquite definitely some were flat-bottomed row-boats of the dory type.

A pictorial representation of the Newfound-land shore fishery, drawn about 1700 byHerman Moll, a Dutch cartographer then resid-

Unl oading fish fr om a dory flat alongside a w ba$ Dory fl ats were intr oduced to Nor th Ameri ca by transient fi shermenworking the cod grounds of Newfoundland. Thi s ill umination, fr om Herman Mall s map, c. 1710, is he earl iest knownrepresentation of a dory flat in North America.6


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History of the Dory

Enlargement of a dory fl at in Mall s illumination, as redrawn li ne by lin e ti-..& magnifi cation. The map was prin tedfr om a wood engraving.

ing in London, shows a boat about 16 or 18feet long, laden with codfish and lying along-side a wharf. Two men are unloading it withpitchforks. The boat has a broad, moderatelyraking transom, a pointed, well-sheered bow,and from the way its straight, slightly flaring,clinker sides rise from the water, it has to beflat-bottomed. This is a deep, capacious row-boat, for all the world like a large, heavilybuilt dory skiff of the first decades of thiscentury, and in fact not dissimilar to a modernsemi-dory for outboard power.gIt might be objected that Herman Moll nevervisited Newfoundland. Be that as it may, it iscertain he didnt invent the craft that he drew

in all its accurate and authentic detail. If Mollhad not observed such a dory type in use inNewfoundland, it is more than likely that hehad seen such boats in his youth in Holland.By 1792, or forty years before the trawl issaid to have come into use, the French werealready employing great numbers of two-manflats in Newfoundland. At St. Pierre andMiquelon alone, some 600 to 700 of these flatrowboats were in use.l*In localities where the French based shore-fishing operations in the summertime but werenot permitted to remain over the winter, theybrought out a fresh stock of small fishing boatseach spring in a knocked-down condition in

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Handlin ing for cod prior to the expansion of the ishery by use of dories. Enl arged detail from M all s ll uminati on.

the holds of their vessels, along with theseasons supp y of salt. These cheap, ex-pendable rowboats, which were easily andquickly assembled on the beach prior to thestart of fishing operations, seem to have beendory-type flats. The flat bottoms, completelyconstructed ahead of time, could be easily andcompactly stored, and frames and plankingcould be cut to shape and beveled ahead of

time, ready to be nailed together. This couldnot have been done, or at least not so easily,for round-bilged boats. IThere seems to be no doubt that both theEnglish and the French made use of small, flatrowboats of the dory type in the North Ameri-can fisheries during the eighteenth century. Wedo know precisely what the fishermen calledsuch boats. In New England waters at this time

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History of the Dory

Szxteenth- centur y French fi shermen assembling knocked-down dory fl ats on the beach i n Newfoundland. The drawing ispure conjecture, but the boat and detail s are derived f rom Moll i map illumin ation.

such craft seem sometimes to have been calledwherries, sometimes dories, and then some-times skiffs. At Halibut Point on Cape Ann,William Bentley in 1799 observed numeroussmall flat-bottom row boats called wher-ries by him, which in good weather maketwo fares a day & sometimes take as many asfive hundred Cod & Haddock. They are rowedcross-handed by one man & even by boys of10 & 12 years.On the Merrimack at this time, at SalisburyPoint, later to become Amesbury and towardthe end of the nineteenth century the manu-facturing center for the Bank dory, SimeonLowell wasuilding an improved flat-bottomed

rowboat, which he called a wherry. Some ofthese were hauled by oxcart to Swampscott,then a part of Lynn, where the fishermen hadnot yet taken to building their own boats. 2The Swampscott fishermen called these Salis-bury Point wherries dories. Incidentally,Simeon Lowell is reputed by local tradition tohave invented the Bank dory.Earlier than this, that is during the Frenchand Indian War at the mid-point of theeighteenth century, a citizen of Albany, NewYork, and an officer in a Provincial companystationed at Lake George, wrote in a letter toEngland: Our Battoes are small kind ofwherries . . .I 3 The nineteenth-century

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The Dory Booklumbermans batteau, a direct descendant ofthe colonial battoe, markedly resembled theBank dory.*

The nineteenth century river-driving batteau,as perfected for the rapids of the West Branchof the Penobscot River in Maine, might well becalled the dory of the inland waterways, if itspredecessor, the double-ended cargo boat ofthe St. Lawrence fur trade, did not have priorclaim. The Colonial battoe may well be thedirect ancestor of the Bank dory, as we shallsee.At St. Pierre and Miquelon, almost to thisday, one kind of wide, dory-type boat was tobe found called le way. This apparently is acorruption of the English wherry. A Diction-naire de Marine, published in France in 1846,states that at the time some 200 or 300 wayswere employed in cod fishing in Newfoundlandwaters, especially around St. Pierre andMiquelon. Such warys could have been thevery boats used by fishermen out of Dieppefor tending the first trawls before cheaper NewEngland dories arrived on the scene.Wherry may be translated in French asbachot or petit bat, signifying a small ferry.But, derived from the Latin, baccarium, a vase,is the name of a very ancient and widely dis-tributed European type, a wide, flat boat forcrossing rivers and narrow straits and for con-structing pontoon bridges in military opera-tions since Roman times.On the strength of this it appears that weshould view with skepticism Henry Halls claimfor Yankee invention. Our search for begin-

*Bateou (plural, batenux) is French for any smallboat.Bntteuu (plural, butteuux) seems generally to havebeen adopted in English as the name of one particularboat, or rather class of boats, the double-ended riverboats whose origin in America I have attempted tosketch here. This is the form I will use in a generaldiscussion of the type.Butteuu (plural, butteuus) is the proper spelling forthe American river-driving and lumbermans boat,according to Fannie Hardy Eckstrom (The PenobscotMen), an authority whose dictums deserve respect.

Butoe (plural, butoes) is the spelling generally em-ployed in the British colonies during the French andIndian Wars.

nings leads farther back to an Old Worldorigin.Until a few years ago it was not generallyknown that several examples of small flat-bottom, dory-like boats were native to theBritish Isles, and that they could have existed

relatively unchanged for centuries in isolatedfishing communities in the west of Englandadjacent to Bristol. One of these is the Bridg-water flatner, native to the River Par-ret, whichdischarges into the Severn estuary. The likenessof this flatner to the Bank dory is striking,and, in fact, according to Allan Shaw, thisflatner is called a dory on its nativebeaches. 4Another of these North Somerset flatnerstakes its name from Weston-Super-Mare Bay,which opens into the Bristol Channel. TheWeston-Super-Mare-flatner 5 with its knuckled,

or rounded, clinker sides closely resemblessome of the old New England wherries as wellas Staten Island skiffs and Saint John Riversalmon boats. These flatners are also like thecots formerly employed by County Wexfordherring fishermen, and described by DixonKemp. 6 The occurrence of similar flat-bottomfishing craft on both sides of St. GeorgesChannel is no strange coincidence, as Somersetfishermen are known to have been working theIrish Coast as early as 1427, and even before.By this time, had other North Somerset fisher-men in Bristol vessels reached as far west asNewfoundland? Some evidence has recentlycome to light that they had, and that theywere bringing back dried cod (stockfish) beforethe voyages of John Cabot. If this is whathappened, it could be that West Countryfishermen took their flatners with them to fishoff the Newfoundland beaches. Conceivably,these boats could have been the first Europeandories in the Western World, but it is not likelywe shall ever know for sure.Turning to the continent of Europe and tothe shores of the Mediterranean, in particularto Italy and Spain, and around and up toPortugal, we find to this day numbers of flat-bottomed craft still in use resembling in formor in construction the three closely relatedAmerican flats-the dory, the wherry, and theriver batteau.It is not generally known that the Venetiangondola has a flat bottom, and, out of thewater it might pass for a type of batteau. The

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double-ended betes of Provence have flatbottoms, raking batteau ends, and Bank dorysides. These fishing boats, with their lateensails, like that of the 19-foot Gloucester doryNautilus in which the Andrews brothers ofBeverly, Massachusetts, sailed to England andFrance in 1878, are widely known fromVincent Van Goghs painting of boats on thebeach at Les Saintes-Maries de la Mer.In Portugal, a large high-sided, double-endedflat with towering stem and enormous sheer isprobably a survival from very ancient times,going back to the Egyptians and beyond towide, flat dugouts of Neolithic build, such asthose still to be found in the Lake Chad area ofAfrica. Some authorities think that double-ended, flat-bottom boats at one time had a rangefrom Egypt to Denmark. The fact is that theflat-bottom is indigenous throughout Asia, and,indeed, seems to be worldwide in occurrence.Alan Villiers, who favors a Portuguese origin forthe Bank dory, suggests that judging from their ap-pearance, the ancestry of these dories might goback to the sewn surf-boats of southern Arabia,and to craft still used by Arab fishermen. Look-ing still farther to the East, we find such flat-bottom types as the patalias of the Upper Gangesand the Chittagong sampans of south-easternPakistan. A numerous assortment of Chineseriverboats of the Yangtze and the Yellow Riversare built with flat bottoms, as well as Japanesesampans and yamato boats. In no instance has theorigin of any of these been traced back to theirprimal beginnings, although some authoritiesbelieve that the Chinese flats are more likely tohave been derived from rafts than from dug-outss2 Whatever its derivation, flat-bottomconstruction unquestionably is extremelyancient as well as widespread.Stone Age man seems early to have beccmea proficient boatbuilder experimenting withcraft of many sorts-rafts, dugouts, and bark-and skin-covered craft, the latter supportedinternally with basketwork of other arrange-ments of wooden strips of small saplings,similar to the Welch curragh or the Eskimoumiak.As time passed, the Stone Age artisanlearned to split logs lengthwise, and to dressthe radial sections to proper thickness andshape with a flint adz in order to form thestrakes for a planked hull. Stone saws, whileworkable for some things, are not suitable for

History of the Dorysplitting logs lengthwise into planks andboards, and even the first clumsy, thick,bronze saws of Egypt and Crete, lacking down-raked teeth and files to sharpen them,* wouldhave taken an eternity to go through a long logfrom end to end.

Centuries later, by Roman times, a fairlyefficient two-man frame saw for splittingtimber had come into use, with a narrower,thinner blade of iron, and with uniform, file-sharpened teeth. But even with such improve-ments, it is doubtful that two sawyers couldkeep up with a single boatbuilder riving outboat strakes in the old manner with axe andwedges, and dressing them to thickness andshape with iron cutting tools, including theadz, drawknife, and plane, all of which theRomans had.2 In either case, plank so produced either byriving or by manual sawing would tend to beof comparatively narrow width for reasons ofeconomy of labor. Narrow planks saw mucheasier and faster than wide ones when sawn byhand. And because narrow strakes bend andtwist easier than wide ones, they are betteradapted for planking the round-bilged, full-bowed craft that made an early appearance insouthern Europe. Probably the first round-bilged hulls took the shape they did to a largeextent because of the narrow planking at firstmost easily and economically available.It seems to follow that the development ofwide-board types like the dory would tend tobe delayed until wide boards became plentifuland relatively cheap. This did not occur untilafter the introduction of the power sawmilltoward the end of the medieval period. Ac-cording to Professor Beckman, sawmills werefirst introduced in Germany. One is known tohave been set up at Augsburg in 1322.24 Thisgreat technological advance quickly spreadthroughout Europe. Soon water-powered gang-saws were producing cheaper lumber inquantity throughout the continent. In NorthAmerica, a power sawmill was in operation onthe Piscataqua River before 1635. In England,however, due in part to the opposition of riot-ing pit-sawyers, and in part to local lumberingpractices, the changeover to power sawmillslagged until late in the nineteenth century.This could well have had some bearing on thefact that wide-board, flat-bottom types werenever widely distributed in the British Isles.

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When do dory-type boats enter h istory? Not, apparently, dur ing the centu ri es when boat plank was spli t or riven romlogs or the lack of better tools. Split radially from the log as shown, r iven plank is tough and lexibl e due to its clear,straight, unbroken grain. Long lengths of plank may be obtained this way, but the width is necessari ly nar row. Rivenplank having unbroken grain is highly contortable.Below: Riven lumber in ts best applicati on produces a canoe-li ke boat-long, rather than wide, withsharply rounded bilgesections and upswept complex plan ki ng cu rves at the ends. The use of ri ven plank may have dictated the design ofMediterranean craft starting i n Neolith ic times and the bull orms identifi ed with the V iki ngs n Scandinavia. The practiceof riving, or splitti ng, plank f rom logs s said to have lour ished in Norway un til the middle of the sixteenth centu ry.


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Practical ripping of boards fr om logs waited unt il I ron Age technol ogy bad developed long, thi n saw blades, raked teeth,and il es for sharpening. Pit sawing of plank is done t0da.v in remote par ts o f he worl d. I n the upper left of the drawingis a classic rame saw in use; n he lower ri ght i s a modern pit saw.

Handsawn plank , gained by monotonous exerti orz of buma;lmuscle, tends to be as thick and as nar row as circum-stances will permit. Boats and vessels that evolved fr om thelj se of bandsawn plank tended to be heavily constructed,


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The Dory Book

11i/jI/II

iIi/

An up-and-down sawmil l, water powered, operati ng a gang of four blades in reciprocating motion. Such a machineproduced volume amounts of wide, thin l umber.

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The dory, it should be emphasized, is awide-board type. And if it is *not the onlywide-board type, it is among the foremost, fordory construction is one of the easiest,quickest, and cheapest methods yet devised forutilizing wide-board lumber in building boatsfor a wide variety of uses. It should be wellunderstood. that it is the dorys special modeof construction, not hull shape, that sets it andits related sub-types apart from other boats.It is true that considerable variations in hullshape can be achieved by dory construction. Itis also true that certain hard-bilged round typeswith flat floors, so called, have broadbottoms that for all useful purposes may beconsidered flat, and in effect make them flatteron the bottom than some slack-bilged Swamp-Scott dories.The advent of the dory type, or, moreproperly, of dory construction, did not bringany radically new and different hull shapes.What happened was an adaptation to newmaterials of old and tested shapes and pro-portions that had been passed down throughan immemorial evolution of use. The oldshapes remained basically and hydrodynami-cally the same, although their fabrication fromwide boards gave a new look.Dory construction starts with a flat bottomof wide boards cleated together and cut toshape on the outside edges. The shape of thebottom determines to a considerable extent theshape of the finished hull. Bend and fasten

History of the Do ywide-board sides around the bottom, and theBank dory is essentially built.Such simplicity makes for an inexpensiveboat, which is one reason why the Bank doryhad no rivals. Such simplicity also makes itpossible for dory types to be put togetherquickly and easily under adverse building con-ditins, as were the thousands of militarybatteaux constructed in backwoods outpostsduring the French and Indian Wars. And it isbecause of this simplicity that dory construc-tion remains, as always, a favorite of theamateur builder.As suggested, we might expect to discoverdory construction making an appearanceshortly after the new power sawmills hadbegun to produce abundant supplies of wideboards-and so we do.At that early time workers in the manualtrades were illiterate, and trade matters, such assmall-craft design and construction, were not sub-jects of literate consideration and written record.Also, the boats of that remote day have longsince utterly disappeared. We might never knowwhat small craft of the late Middle Ages andearly Renaissance were like except that a fewcf them found their way into the pictures ofthe great realistic artists of that time.Sometime between 1495 and 1497 theGerman painter and engraver Albrecht Durerdid a charming chromatic idyll in watercolor ofa rustic cottage on an island in a fish pondnear Numberg. 5 Drawn up on the beach in

Wide umber, sawn by machines, may be what produced dory-type boats in Renaissance Eu rope as well as in mari timeNor th Ameri ca. Apparentl y cheap, quick ly bui lt, these were the plywood skiff s of yesteryear.

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The earliest known representation of a dory f latEurope. Thi s is an enlarged detail f rom Al brec:Durers watercolor Little House on a Fish Pond,149 7-8.

Dur er s dory flat straightened up by mechanicperspective. If thi s is the boat viewed by tbepaintrand i f this reconstruction is plausible, then it in,cates a dramatic change n he science of boatbuildiaff orded by the new, wide boards.


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the foreground and exhibited in full detail is asmall double-ended boat, not unlike a lumber-mans batteau in miniature, or a small Bankdory, notwithstanding that it antedates suchcraft by nearly 400 years. Its long raking endsare obviously contrived to slide up on the highbanks so passengers may step ashore withoutwetting their feet.Durers boat has a flat bottom, boardedlengthwise, and flaring dory sides apparentlymade from a single wide board each. Naturalcrook frames are indicated. It is a wide-boardboat of the dory type, in all particulars pre-cisely like what we might build today for asimilar purpose. Besides, this little double-enderdoes not bear the slightest constructionalresemblance to older, round-bilged typesplanked continuously from keel to sheer withnumerous narrow, sprung and twisted strakes.Peter Breughel (the Elder), sixteenth centuryFlemish artist and a master of realistic detail,noticed the common, lowly things and drewthem with honesty and precision. He some-times put boats into his pictures, both roundand dory types in the same scene, and thispractice permits illuminating comparison.In one of his whimsical fantasies done in1556 called Big Fish Eat Little Ones,Breughel shows us a dory skiff which looksmuch like one of our Amesbury rowing skiffsof a few years back, that is except for a morepointed, peaked-out bow section. But this bow,which looks slightly odd to American eyes, isnearly identical with the bow of a small con-temporary French skiff featured on the coverof the October 1963 issue of Toute la Peche.It would seem that some small European doryskiffs have not changed much in the last 300years.This skiff of Breughels would be about 12or 13 feet long, judging from the size and posi-tion of its two occupants. The bottom cannotbe seen, but definitely it must be flat. The twowide boards to a side on natural crook framestypify dory construction. The sheer is ratherflat aft, not unlike a modem semi-dory, andthe transom, set at about a normal rake, isample to support an outboard motor.All in all, this Flemish skiff is substantially asmaller version of the heavy working skiff, al-ready mentioned, that Herman MOB showed inuse in the Newfoundland fishery some 150years later. While it has not yet been estab-lished for a certainty, it is most likely thatwide-board boats of the dory type were em-ployed in the Newfoundland cod fishery fromits inception at the beginning of the sixteenth

History of the Dorycentury, and thus were in use in the NewWorld over a century before the Pilgrimslanded at Plymouth.NOTES1. Uring, Capt. Nathaniel, A History Of The VoyagesAnd TraveZs,London, 1726.

2. Morris, E.P., The For e-and-Af t Rig I n America,New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927.3. Topham, James, Marblehead, Day book, Jany,1784. Collection, Essex Institute, Salem Massa-chusetts.4. Bentley, WiIIiam, D.D., Piary, Essex Institute,Salem, Mass. 1907.5. Albree, John, The Swampscott Beaches, Register.Lynn Historical Society, Lynn, Mass., 1905.6. Thoreau, Henry David, A Week on the Concordand Merri mack Rivers.7. Goode, G. Brown, Bulletin 21, U.S. NationalMuseum. No. 18, The Exhibit of the Fisheri es andFish Culture of the United States of America,Berlin, 1880. Washington, D.C., U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office.8. Innis, Harold A., The Codfisheries-The H istory ofan International Economy. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1940.Lounsbury, R.G., The Briti sh Fi shery at Newfound-land, 1634-1763, New Haven, 1934.Judah, C.B., The North American Fisheries andBr itish Policy td 1713. Urbana, 1933.9. Prowse, D.W., A History of Newfoundland,London, 1896.10. Ligasse, Ferdinand L., Evolution Economique desli es Saint-Pi erre et Mi quelon, Paris, 1935Il. Innis, op. cit. page 216-Note 7.12. AIbree, op. cit.13. PargeIlis, Stanley, Mi litary Af fairs in North Ameri:

=a, 1748-l 765. New York, American HistoryAssociation, 1936 (Peter WraxaB to Henry Fox, p.142).14. Shaw, Alan, The Bridgwater Flatner, MarinersMirror, Vol. 55, pp. 411-416.15. McKee, Eric, The Weston-Super-Mare Flatner,Mariners Mir ror, Vol. 57, pp. 25-39.16. Kemp, Dixon, Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailingand Yacht Architecture, London, 1913.17. Sauer, Carl 0. Northern M ists, University of CaIi-fornia Press, 196818. Lethhridge, T.C., Boats and Boatmen, Thames andHudson, London: New York, 195219. VilIiers, AI an, Mariners Mi rror, Vol. 37, p. 185.20. GreenbiB, Basil, Boats and Boatmen of Pakistan,David 8c Charles, Newton Abbot, England, 1971.21. Worcester, G.R.G., The ]unks & Sampans of theYangtze, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Mary-land, 1971.22. Jones, P. dA., and Simons, E.N., Story of the Saw,Newman Ntame for Spear & Jackson, Ltd., Shef-field, EngIand, 1961.23. Mercer, Henry C., Ancient Carpenters Tools, TheBucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, Pa.,1929.24. Beckman, Concise Histoy of Ancient Institutions,I nventions, and Discoveri es I n Science And TheMechanic Ar ts, London, 1823.25. Waetzoldt, WiIhebn, Diirer And His Times, PhaedonPublishers, Oxford, 1950.

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2 THE BATTEAU ANCESTOR

The first flat-bottomed boat, or flat, built inthe New World of which positive record has sofar been found was a flat batteau outfittedat Montreal in the spring of 1671 at the orderof M. de Courcelles, Governor of New France,who had conceived the idea of taking a flatbatteau up the St. Lawrence River through therapids to Lake Ontario.The Governor had two object in view. Heforesaw the possibility of future trouble withthe Iroquois, and he wished to demonstrate tothe Five Nations that he could move effective-ly against them in a fleet of substantialplanked boats if necessary. But more than that,it was becoming urgent to open up the interiorwilderness to a volume of commerce not possi-ble to be transported in bark canoes alone.Neither the French nor the friendly Algon-quins believed a planked boat could be takenup through the rapids. Undeterred, the Gover-nor had one readied and provisioned andplaced in charge of a sergeant with a crew ofeight soldiers. On June 3, the batteau leftMontreal in company with thirteen bark canoescarrying fifty-six persons. On June 12, thecanoes and the batteau, after much travail inthe rapids, reached Lake Ontario. The littlefleet started back the same day.The return downstream was made without

mishap, taking only five days to retrace the175 miles to Montreal, half the time requiredfor the trip going out. The promenade hadbeen a success, the Governor had proved hispoint, a great natural barrier to westwardpenetration of the continent had been over-come, and a new era in trade and warfare wasinitiated.M. de Courcelles was failing in health; soonhe returned to France, and a new RoyalGovernor, the able and illustrious Frontenac,took his place. One of Frontenacs first andmost important measures was to erect a forton Lake Ontario near the outlet of the St.Lawrence. To accomplish this purpose, he leftMontreal on June 28, 1673, with 400 men,120 canoes, and two flat batteaux. The bat-teaux were brightly painted and carried sixsmall cast-iron cannon that he had found inthe fort at Quebec. The Indians on the upperriver weie astonished at the size of thisflotilla-and impressed, no doubt, by thecannon in the two batteaux.2

Frontenac and his task force arrived at theirdestination on July 12 in good order. A suit-able site was selected and fortification im-mediately started. Here, shortly, rose the fortthat later bore Frontenacs name. Fort Fronte-nac remained in French hands until it finally18


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Hi story of the Dory

A Ri ver dory, or batteuu, as developed by the French for conquest and commerce on the St. Lawrence River and itstri butari es. Batteaux were the white man s canoe on the river systems of New England and Fr ench Canada hr oughoutthe colonial days. Experience wi t h th is type of boat in the Indian wars may bave prompted New Engl and ishermen todevelop a cheaply produced seagoing dory for the off sbore cod fi shery. The ult imate American development of thebatteau design was to be found in the log-driving batteaux of nineteenth-centur y Maine and in the Adirondackguideboats of the late nineteenth and earl y twentieth centu ri es.

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The Dory Bookfell in 1758 to Colonel John Bradstreetsbatteau-borne troops and the men of Brad-streets special Battoe Service.But the eventual eviction of the French fromthis spot, in which batteaux were destined totake a principal part, was still far in the future.In the meantime, an interim of eighty-fiveyears, the French prospered on the upperreaches of the St. Lawrence and penetrated farinto the interior by natural waterwavs. The furtrade flourished, and it was a trade basedprimarily upon batteau transportation.Perhaps more than any other single factor, itwas the batteau that not only built the powerand wealth of New France, but also con-tributed to her downfall at the end. For whenNew France finally became too powerful andtoo close an economic threat for the Britishcolonists to tolerate, they moved against her inbatoes. The logistics that defeated theFrench was a logistics based upon batteaux.Was M. de Courcelless first flat batteauborrowed from the Newfoundland cod fishery,or was it derived by some other route from anOld World small craft heritage? It would benaive to suppose that M. de Courcelless flatbatteau was invented on the spot. We are toldit was a craft of from two to three tons, whichmay be assumed to be its total loaded displace-ment. Otherwise it could never have beenportaged around rapids by nine men-or twicethat number. Probably this first batteau didnot differ too greatly from the batteaux lateremployed on the St. Lawrence, for its success-ful passage up the river and back throughshoals and rapids, and the good time made,indicate the same special characteristics laterfamiliar in the classic river batteau.But perhaps Courcelless batteau was not thefirst one on the river. Perhaps there was a priorlocal model. In the eariy spring of 1658, fiftyrefugees from the Jesuit mission at Onondaga,jin what is now upstate New York, fleeing fromIroquois treachery, had come down the St.Lawrence to Montreal in eight canoes and twoboats. In two weeks, the little party of es-capees had come down the Oswego River,crossed the eastern end of Lake Ontario, attimes chopping their way through ice, andthence descended the St. Lawrence. In theGreat Sauh, one of their CdnOeS capsized,drowning three men, but the two boats camethrough safely.

These two boats, each capable of carryingfourteen or fifteen men and some 1,600pounds of additional weight, seem to havebeen flat. Built in secret and in haste-for theIndians delayed the massacre of the Frenchgarrison only because they believed the latterdid not have the means for escape-these boatsmust have been crude in construction, but theycould not have been too heavy to have beenportaged around the falls on the Oswego.From an account of one who was there, welearn that these boats were contrived* fromdeale boards and had large bottoms.4Father Simon le Moyne, also present, mentionsthat the two batteaux d:.c+v but little wateryet carried much freight and were of a noveland excellent shape to pass through therapids. For this they would have requiredhigh ends, especially if the freeboard amidshipswas only half a foot, as the account states.Given some prior knowledge of flat craftsuch as might be remembered from France,perhaps; some pine (deale) boards and littleelse; being under desperate need to producewithout delay a craft at once burdensome yetlight, and of minimum draft; and workingunder the eyes of watchful but unsophisticatedsavages who believed the Black Robes weremaking additions to the interior of theirhouse-taking all this into consideration-itmight have been just possible that they couldhave improvised a batteau. What would havemade it possible, in the final analysis, is thenatural, inherent inclination of wide boards topeak up at the ends when bent as flaring sidesaround a pointed, flat bottom.It is quite possible that the American riverbatteau dates from the Onondaga escape. Thearrival of these boats at Montreal, then a smallbackwoods outpost, could not have passedunnoticed. Boats that had previously comesafely through the perilous rapids of the upperSt. Lawrence under such adverse circumstancesmight well have been remembered and offeredas models to Courcelles thirteen years later.In any case, after the middle of the seven-teenth century and for more than 100 yearssubsequently, the batteau dominated trans-portation in that important r+:tion extendingup the valley of the St. Lawrence to the GreatLakes, southward to the New York lakes, theupper Hudson, the Mohawk, and westward tothe Allegheny. It was in this theater that the

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History of the Doryuse, but not as well suited for violent rapids asthe French model.General Jeffrey Amherst, proceeding downthe St. Lawrence in September, 1760, with10,000 men in 800 batteaux and whaleboats,lost in the Cedars Rapids 84 batteaux and up-wards of 300 men by French estimate, butonly 66 batteaux and 84 men, according to theBritish. Whether these accidents were due tounfamiliarity with the river or to a model ofboat unsuited to violent rapids is still an openquestion.6The final struggle of Britain and France forNorth America, joined at the mid-point of thecentury, developed slowly, and at first theBritish had the worst of it. The year 1755 hasbeen called a year of disaster for the British.Braddocks rout at Fort Duquesne, Johnsonsfailure at Crown Point, and Shirleys and Pep-perills equally abortive attempt against FortNiagara sum it up for the interior.

contest for the continent between Britain andFrance mainly took place, coming to a c imaxin the middle years of the eighteenth century.It was to a considerable extent a contest wagedwith, and in, batteaux. Each 2de employedmany thousat-ds of the flat-bottomed craft.Whether the English originally derived theirbatoes from the French is unclear. Indica-tions are that they did. But they might haveobtained their model from the New YorkDutch, who certainly would have been longfamiliar with flat craft, in use for centuries onthe rivers of Germany and the Low countries.In any case, the English were using batteaux inmilitary operations on the New York lakes andrivers as early as Queen Annes War at thebeginning of the eighteenth century.Batteaux were built in many different sizesand with considerable minor variation. Itappears that the model generally favored bythe English colonials was appropriate for lake

An ancient batteau bottom rai sed fr om Lake George in 1960. The boat s overal l length was possibly 36 feet. Thereconstruction (dotted lines) is based on the draft of the 1776 coloni al batteau shown in Howard I. Cbapell es AmericanSmall Sailing Craft.

A nin eteenth-century Maine log-driving batteau.

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The Dory BookWilliam Shirley, Esq., Governor of Massa-chusetts, was at this juncture the commandinggeneral of the British forces in North America.His expedition against Niagara had proceededin batteaux up the Mohawk from the greatbatteau depot at Schenectady to the Oneidacarrying place, and then down the Oswego toLake Ontario, over the regular batteau route.Having learned first-hand of batteau trans-portation and its military urgency, GeneralShirley lost little time in proclaiming, inJanuary, 1756, the formation of a BattoeService for recruiting 2,000 experienced menalong the coast as battoemen to report atAlbany no later than March.7 The new servicewas placed under the command of LieutenantColonel John Bradstreet, already in charge ofbuilding and repairing batteaux and whale-boats. Special inducements were offered for en-listment.Items in the newspapers in the spring of1756 frequently mention the Battoe Service.For example, when sixteen whaleboats fromCape Cod, with six men in each, arrived inNew York City on the way to Albany to jointhe Battoe Service, one of the whaleboatsrowed a race against a New York pettiauger forthe then substantial wager of twenty dollars,and it won with greatest ease.*

There seem never to have been enough boat-builders and carpenters. In 1755, Bradstreetwrote to General Shirley of his need forcarpenters. In 1758, he wrote General JamesAbercrombie that carpenters sent from NewEngland included many boys, that he wouldlike 200 more carpenters from New Jersey andPennsylvania, and that he would not have1,200 boats ready by May 15. In March of1760 Bradstreet wrote to Joshua Loring thathe required fifty good ship carpenters over andabove the fifty already promised, to buildbatteaux at Albany.A turning point for British fortunes was thecapture and razing of the French Royal FortFrontenac on Lake Ontario in the summer of1758 by a daring foray of a force of 2,737men in batteaux led by Colonel Bradstreet overthe Mohawk route from Schenectady andbackegThe great batteau factories were at Schenect-ady. For the thousands of batteaux that wentup the Mohawk, as many more thousands wentup the Hudson to Lake George, includingthousands more carried across to Lake Cham-plain. The total of all these batteaux has neverbeen reckoned, but it would be a staggeringfigure. OColonel John Bradstreets Battoe Service and

A nineteenth-century Maine og-dri ving batteau.


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History of the Dory

A Maine log-driving batteau at work.

the attached corps of carpenters and boat-builders, aside from their specific militaryfunction, served as a practical school in smallcraft design and construction for a generationof American boatbuilders at a time whenwatercraft were still the chief means of trans-portation. In recruiting and gathering artisansand watermen from Maine to the Chesapeake,the Battoe Service became a melting pot ofboatbuilding know-how and experience, as wellas experimentation. While the batteau, whale-boat, and scow, in that order, were the princi-pal types, many other kinds of small craft weretried and used to a minor extent. Besides, allkinds of larger vessels saw service on the lakes.Military necessity as well as the hard condi-

tions of the backwoods frontier forced allmanner of expedients.With the successful conclusion of the Frenchand Indian Wars, there began for the colonies aperiod of rapid economic growth and territorialexpansion. Without railroads, and lacking any-thing like an adequate system of wagon andcoach roads, especially in the interior behindthe fast-advancing frontier, the colonials de-pended on waterborne transportation, with itsrequirements for all manner of small andmedium craft as well as for larger vessels, to anextent that cannot be overestimated.Veterans of the Battoe Service took homeexperience and knowledge they never wouldhave acquired in the local boatshop. Above all,

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The Dory Bookthey took back familiarity with dory construc-tion acquired in building, repairing, and oper-ating batteaux.Some of the grandsons and great grandsonsof the veterans of the Battoe Service built theMassachusetts Bank dories that went to New-foundland and were carried back to Europe byfishermen from Brittany and Portugal.So, in the course of several centuries, thedory had traveled in a great spiral, as it were,from the Old World west to Newfoundland, upthe St. Lawrence and across to the New Yorklakes, eastward to New England, and north andeastward still, until finally arriving back at itsEuropean site of origin. A minor eddy in theevolution of dory types turned the river-drivingbatteaux of the Penobscot lumbermen west-ward again, as lumbering moved west in thenineteenth century, first to the Adirondacks,then to Michigan, to Wisconsin, and to Oregon.

The wide diffusion of the batteau-buildingexperience acquired by the veterans of Col.John Bradstreets Battoe Service unquestion-ably influenced the future course of boat-building along our North Atlantic Coast, but toprecisely what extent can only be guessed. Thisis because so little that is definite is knownabout the design and construction of smallcraft other than the batteau in ColonialAmerica. For all we definitely know, therecould have been several different flat-bottomcontemporaries or precursors of the eighteenth-century military batteaux in use in variouslocalities along the coast. But lacking suchdefinite knowledge or any reliable indication of

24

the existence of such craft, it is tempting toassume that a number of distinctive flat-bottom working small craft that came intoview in the nineteenth century, were, in fact,directly derived from the earlier militarybatteaux. These are the Saint John Riversalmon boat, various New England wherries,including the Maine salmon wherries and thePiscataqua River wherry, Bank and Swampscottdories, the Staten Island skiff, known in theChesapeake as the Yankee skiff, and the Jerseysea skiff, originally called a dory.NOTES

1. Preston and Lamontagne, Royal Fort Frontenac,Champlain Society. Toronto, 1958.2. Ibid.3. Thwaits, Ruben Gold, Ed., Jesuit Relations. Vol.44, p. 175.4. Voyages of Peter Radisson: Experience Among theNorth American I ndians, 1652 to 1684. Intro-duction, Gidion D. Scull, Prince Society, Boston,1885.5. Documentary H istory of New York, Vol. 1, pp.52-54.6. Knox, Capt. John, An Historical Journai of theCampaigns in North America for the Years 1757,1758, 1759, and 1760. The Champlaign Society,Toronto, 1914.

7. Boston Weekly News Letter. Feb. 5, 1756.8. Ibid. May 6, 1756.9. An I mpartial Account of Li e& . Col. Br adstreet sExpedition to Fort F rontenac, London, 1759. Re-printed, Rous & Mann, Ltd., Toronto, 1940.

10. J.W. Bradstreet to His Ex. Gen. Amherst, Albany,Dec. 31, 1756. Amherst Papers, Library of Con-gress and Amherst College, WO34/57, folio 16.


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After a century and a half of colonial prepara-tion, the American Revolution opened thegateway to an era of material expansion andprogress that accelerated unchecked until WorldWar I. During that fabulous period of eco-nomic growth, American small craft shared inthe general prosperity, multiplied in number,proliferated in design, and, at the onset,participated directly in the mainstream ofeconomic activity as essential transportation.As time passed, and the standard of living rosefor increasing segments of the population,bringing cultural change, small craft wereturned increasingly to employment for sportand pleasure. By the end of the 1800s theiroriginal function had, to a considerable extent,been superseded. The workboat had become apleasure boat. This, in briefest outline, re-counts the final evolution of New Englanddories.It is easy to see how a reporter for the U.S.Tenth Census picked up the notion that thedory was a Yankee Invention. The Americanfishing industry, then a prime contributor tothe national wealth, was dominated by NewEngland, and the bulk of its fishing was donefrom New England dories. It was only natural toaccept the claim of lo& patriots that the doryhad been originally devised in Massachusetts.Gloucester, then the largest fishing port inthe world, is situated in Massachusettss Essex

County, which at that time was also the centerof dory building, both for local use and forexport. Salisbury Point, north of *Gloucester onthe Merrimack River, had seven dory shops inthe 1870s that utilized piece-work methods toassemble annually from pre-cut parts manythousands of Bank dories, nearly all of whichwere built in five standard sizes. Not sinceColonel John Bradstreets great batteau factoryat Schenectady more than a century beforehad boats of standardized model been mass-produced in such quantity.The place where the dory was supposed tohave been born was the boatshop at SalisburyPoint (now Amesbury) founded in 1793 bySimeon Lowell and operated until a few yearsago by his direct descendants. The lines of oldSimeons boat, which, strangely enough, he ap-parently called a wherry, are lost. Howmuch or how closely these lines resembled theclassic form of the Bank dory is a matter ofsurmise. Certainly Simeon did not get up hiswherry with the needs of the Bank fisheryin view, because trawl fishing, which broughtthe Bank dory to the fore, was not introducedon the Newfoundland Banks until after 1830,the date of Simeons death at the age ofeighty-five.That Simeons wherry was called a doryby the Swampscott shore fishermen, who im-ported these boats from Salisbury Point, sug-

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The Dory Book

The Bank dory, pr obably developed from the colonial batteau. I t appeared in the New England ishery in themid-1830s, wben trawl ishing was in troduced on the off shore banks.

A two-man, or double, Bank dory.


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How to Buil d a Dory

The lared, straight sides of the Bank dory permi t these boats to be stacked one inside another. Thi s schooner carr ied 16dories i n two stacks, or banks, port and starboar d. Sometimes the dories were stacked upside down.

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gests that in late colonial times both namesmight have been applied in and around thewaters of Massachusetts Bay to the samegeneral type of small, flat, rowing workboat.According to lines shown bv Chapman in hisArchitectura Navalis Mercatori a, the Englishwherry of the eighteenth century was a round-bottomed boat with a keel instead of a flatbottom craft with a moderately slack bilge.But there is evidence that the Americanwherry of the same period did have a flat bot-tom. The Reverend William Bentley, volumi-nous Salem diarist of the post-Revolutionaryperiod who frequently recorded his observa-tions of Essex County small craft, definitelydescribed one;man rowing wherries used inthe Cape Ann shore fishery as being flat.r3There also were wherries on the Merrimackat this early date. The account book ofRichard Hackett, a Salisbury oar maker whoexported large numbers of whaleboat oars toNantucket, shows an entry dated 1753 for oarsfor a Lwhary.4 Some of Hacketts fellowtownsmen, including an older brother ofSimeon Lowell and several of Simeons cousins,served on the New York lakes during theFrench and Indian War, repairing whaleboatsand building batteaux as well as a sloop.Newburyport, a few miles below SalisburyPoint at the mouth of the Merrimack, was aprincipal center of colonial shipbuilding, andthe neighborhood suppiied many artisans forthe campaign against the French.

Boatbuilders and shipwrights by the scores,if not the hundreds, were recruited from theshore towns of Massachusetts and New Hamp-shire for Bradstreets Battoe Service and theymingled with carpenters from New York, NewJersey, Pennsylvania, and even as far south asthe Chesapeake, in the greatest boatbuildingoperation America had then seen. When thesemechanics returned to the Merrimack tide-water, they must have brought back new ideasif not new models. Thus Ben Glaiser, youngboatbuilder from nearby Ipswich, who tells inhis war diary of Building Botems forBatoes, may well have picked up notions ofmass production such as later materialized inthe Salisbury Point dory factories. Undoubted-ly the youthful Simeon Lowell must haveheard his relatives and other local veteransrecount on numerous occasions their war ex-periences of building batteaux and whaleboats.

History of the DoryTradition usually is not completely wrong.The likely kernel of truth in this instance isthat some modifications in the form and con-struction of flat-bottomed colonial wherriesprobably did take place at the mouth of theMerrimack at the onset of the nineteenthcentury. And it is wholly natural that Simeon

Lowell, a.s proprietor of the leading boatshopand a successful businessman, should have beenaccorded the credit by local annalists.It is probable that the knuckles were takenout of the sides of the flat-bottomed but semi-roundsided wherry to produce a straight, uni-form side flare running back to the stern. Toreplace the wherrys smallish, high-tucked tran-som of wineglass curve, a narrow, straight-sided, V-shaped plank was substituted, whichwhen raked steeply aft on the approximateprofile angle of the stem, produced in effect adouble-ended boat.Such a boat would not have rowed orhandled quite as easily as the wherry, and un-less it were loaded and expertly managed, itwould have proved somewhat cranky in roughwater. Yet, such a boat would have been mucheasier and cheaper to build than the round-sided wherry; in addition it would be ad-mirably suited to mass production out of thenative white pine and oak lumber thenabundant in the Merrimack valley.Until more precise information is uncovered,we may assume that this, in substance, was thebreakthrough that yielded the Bank dory,

making due allowance for some minor changesand improvements before the classic mold ofthe type was set some time about midway inthe nineteenth century.At the Peabody Museum in Salem there is amodel originally from the old Boston Museumthat purports to represent a dory of 1830. Thisflat-bottomed rowboat has straight, flaringsides like a Bank dory. But its transom iswider, like the familiar dory skiff of which somany variations were once popular as rowboatsalong the New England shore before the out-board motor. One of the best of these, andperhaps the best known, was the Amesburyskiff, once widely used in childrens summercamps requiring a safe, easy-rowing boat. Ittook its name, obviously, from the dory-building town of Amesbury.It may be that the Bank dory owes as muchto the skiff as it does to the wherry. Today

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.\\,-

Dorymen tending trawl on the Grand Banks.


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History of the Dory

A jumbo-size modern power dory seen today i n the French fi shery at St. Pierre et M iquelon . Tbi s is probably theul timate development oj th Bank -fi shing dory.

the name skiff means in general a light row-boat, but not a flat-bottomed boat exclusively,Just what colonial skiffs were like we do notknow, nor how precisely the name was thenapplied-whether to a single type or to several.But it is clear thai small, flat rowboats, un-commonly like the nineteenth century doryskiffs of Massachusettss Essex County, were inuse in Europe from 200 to 300 years earlier,witness the pictures by Breughel and HermanMall referred to earlier.

In his diary in 1791, Reverend Bentley twicementions skiffs as being in use off Marblehead,once when he and others engaged a Marble-head skiff to take them through the surf for a.landing on the beach. Perchance might Benc-leys Marblehead skiff have been one of thedories listed in the account book of thecontempory Marblehead Poatbuilder JamesTopham?Two years later, Bentley watched fishermenon the Merrimack, above tidewater, seining forsalmon, alewives, pickerel, shad, and suckers.Their method was a flat boat of aboutfourteen feet in length, and three in breadth

with a stern upon which is a table for theseine, which is furnished with scuppers to voidthe water. This flat boat sounds like askiff, although Bentleys estimated beam ofthree feet would seem to have been toonarrow.

Simeon Lowell was not the only EssexCounty Lowell in the boatbuilding business inthe post-Revolutionary War years. The accountbook of his nephew David,6 started in 1781,lists numerous craft constructed: whaleboats, a12 feet Moses boat, wherries, gundelos, aRaftsmans wherry, and a shad boat. TheMoses boat went for 72 shillings, while theshad boat brought exactly half that sum, indi-cating, it would seem, a simpler, lower-costconstruction.

Perhaps the Merrimack shad boat of thatperiod, when the river teemed with the SUC-culent shad, was a flat-bottomed skiff of thesort observed by Bentley. If so, it would beunlike the nineteenth century Hudson Rivershad boat, a more elaborate and expensivecraft closely related to the Whitehall in itsbuild.31


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The Dory Book

The widened St. Pierr e dorm

The round-sided Swampscott dory.32


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History of the Dorying schooners, working for the U.S. Fish Com-mission, started the Watercraft Collection ofthe U.S. National Museum, the early bulletinsof which contain the first complete descrip-tions of dories used in the Bank fisheries.At about this time the Bank dory began toreceive attention from a different quarter. Anew breed of boating amateurs, home builders,and devotees of boats as recreation, emergingin this era of expanding prosperity, turned tothe dory along with other small craft. Thepioneer sporting and amateur boating publica-tion, Forest 6 Stream, in 1887 printed linesand partial details for a 14-foot Bank dory asbuilt by Higgins & Gifford of Gloucester. Andwhat appears to be much the same dory is tobe found in the 1889 edition of W.P. Stephenssfamous amateur manual of Canoe and BoatBuilding, also issued by Forest and StreamPublishing Company. Since then, lines anddetails for Bank dories have appeared over andover again in many diverse publications.The Bank dory, due to its enormous repu-

It has frequently been supposed that theround-sided Swampscott dory, which becameso widely popular toward the end of thecentury for pleasure sailing and power boatingas we shall see, constitutes a refinement of thefishermans straight-sided Bank dory, errone-ously taken to have been the prior and originaldory type. This is definitely not the fact. Theknuckle-sided Swarnpscott dory is too close inresemblance and historical connection to theround-sided colonial wherry, whatever theSwampscott type may have borrowed of therationalized construction of the mass-producedBank fishing dories.As the century progressed, a new spiritburgeoned, and scientific interest turned to theworkaday world of the common man. Theequipment and methods of the fisheries wereintensively examined and cataloged in the1880s in preparing exhibits for the severalinternational fisheries expositions held duringthat decade in Berlin, London, and NewOrleans. A one-time master of Gloucester fish-

-- --

The round-sided Swampscott dory, the shore fi sherman s boat, indivi duall y bu il t and refi ned toward better rowin g andsaili ng qualiti es.

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The Dory Book

A surf dory of the Chamberl ain model.

A l~~htlz, uil t, double-ended gunni ng dory for the sport hun ting of ducks.


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: .-A-_.-

types, were groomed mto racing machines duri ng the opening decades of the twentietb centur y.The Beachcomber dory, an extreme model of the Swampscott type. The Beachcombers, Alphas, and X-dor ies, simil ar

Tbe sail ing Swampscott dory.

H istory o,f the Dory


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tation as a fishing craft, is the best known ofall the dories, yet it is not as well suited to therequirements of recreational boating as theround-sided types. Its single great virtue is easeand simplicity of construction. ,GL.I it is anexcelient sea boat, if properly handled, goeswithout saying. But it does not sail as well as around-sided Swampscott dory. And it does notmake as good a general-purpose rowboat as awell-designed dory skiff. As an economical,low-cost power launch, where high speed is notrequired, a large Bank dory offers distinctiveadvantages when fitted with a properly engi-neered well for an outboard motor. The big St.Pierre dory is in actuality an over-size Bankdory, and in this boat the Bank type attains itspeak potential for adaptation to pleasure use.The modern St. Pierre dory with its highcrescent sheer, its deeply rounded bottomrocker, and its widely flaring sides, closely re-capitulates the basic lines of the original Bankmodel contrived for deep water and the opensea. Dories for the shore fisheries generallycarried less sheer and were made straighter onthe bottom, giving a shallower draft, which en-abled them to ground out higher on the beach.Often the side flare was lessened in these shoredories. The wider bottoms increased initialstability but made a boat less reliable in roughwater.Originally, the different sizes of Bank dorieswere designated according to bottom length,which is sometimes confusing to those notacquainted with this convention. The practiceundoubtedly arose in nineteenth-century doryfactories where all except the very largest andthe very smallest dories were assembled fromidentical, standardized, pre-cut parts, exceptingthe bottoms and planking. In building, thebottom first had to be put together and cut toshape. For each size of dory built, a separatebottom half-pattern of the required length waskept on hand, marked with the location andspacing of the frames for that particular size.At first, dories would probably have beenspecified by mentioning the length of bottom,for instance, a dory with a 14-foot bottom.Later this was naturally shortened to a14-foot dory. In actuality, however, a 14-footdory is several inches over 18 feet in totallength.Bulletin 21 of the U.S. National Museum,published in 1880, describes five sizes of

H istory of the Dorystraight-sided fishing dories, in connection withwhich it states that the size built on the15-foot bottom was most used and was calledthe Bank dory. The smallest in this serieslisted by the Bulletin is a 13-footer, and thelarger bottom lengths run 14, 14%, 15, and15% feet.*

We know, however, that dories both largerand smaller than these sizes were built at thistime for the fisheries. Henry Hall in his Ship-Building Industry Report of 1884 lists bot-toms of 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 feet, the lastand largest being used for halibut.The 1880 Bulletin of the U.S. NationalMuseum, however, states that the 15-footbottom, or the Bankdory was the halibutdory. Its 15%foot dory, which was 19 8 ontop, was described as an out-size model littleused by American fishermen, being exportedmainly to the French fishermen at St. Pierreand Miquelon. It was built extra heavy with sixand sometimes seven pairs of frames, instead ofthe usual four pairs.Almost everyone knows the fishermansdory, that is to say the Bank dory. This dis-tinctive boat-type is easily recognized, with itscrescent sheer, straight, flaring sides, narrowtombstone stern, and comparatively narrow,flat bottom. But few look closely enough atindividual specimens to see in just what dimen-sions and proportions these components areblended. Unless me uses dories, builds them,or has studied them, the considerable variationsamong the numerous examples of this generaltype are not obvious and go unnoticed, how-ever important such differences may be undercertain conditions or for some particularpurpose.Quite often the Bank dory is referred to asthe Gloucester dory. This is because of associa-tion. In the heyday of the Gloucester fisheries,thousands of these dories were standard equip-ment on Gloucester fishing schooners. But thedory did not originate in Gloucester, and thegeneral characteristics of the type seem to havebeen established before Gloucester assumeddominance in the Bank fisheries.The Gloucester boatbuilding firm of Higgins& Gifford, world-famous for its batten-seammackerel seine boats, built fishing dories for aperiod after setting up its boatshop in 1873,but by that time the fishing dory had attainedclassic form. It was a Higgins & Gifford dory

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The Dory Book

\I \ I *I +* i * \$ /

I

1 - \ c\A/ / f - . \\.

An outboard-powered semi-dory.

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History of the Dory

The flat-iron dory skiff.

that Captain Alfred Centennial Johnson in1876 sailed single-handed to England in ninety-six days. The 19-foot dory in which theAndrews brothers of Beverly crossed the At-lantic two years later in only forty-five dayswas also built in Gloucester by Higgins SCGifford. The same firm patented an im-proved- fishing dory construction, employingbatten seams as on their seine boats, and also aspecial gunwale reinforcement, but these im-provements did not catch on. In the 189Os,they gave up building dories, and in their cata-log they referred those interested in dories toHiram Lowell 8c Son of Amesbury.If the classic, straight-sided, fishing dory, orBank dory, first assumed its characteristic formin Essex County, Massachusetts, during thefirst part of the nineteenth century, it mustvery soon have spread widely up and down thecoast. Hall in 1880 reports that these dories

were built from New York to Maine, but withthe principal center at Salisbury. The U.S.National Museum acquired a model of a Nan-tucket dory of this general shape in 1876, sothat it may be assumed that dories of this sortwere known in the area of Cape Cod evenearlier. The fishermans dory is sometimescalled the Cape Cod dory.In considering small craft beginnings in thiscountry, boatbuilding should not be confusedwith shipbuiiding, which became a specializedtrade (or more precisely, complex of trades)earlier and to a more exclusive extent. Boat-building, on the contrary, until well along inthe nineteenth century, remained an oc-casional, part-time occupation diversified withspells of farming, fishing, lumbering, housecarpentry, mason work, and much else.Fishermen often built their own boats, justas they still

the dory-boat book 1978

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