April 2011 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 5. "Seventies" Memories (Part1) By Lee S. Wilbur
“If God had intended boats to be built in fiberglass He’d have made fiberglass trees”, Raymond Bunker. Circa early “70s”.
An era was fast coming to an end. Not sure how many of us living on Mt Desert Island really understood how soon it would happen as the 70’s decade began to unfold. At the close of the 60’s, there were still wood boat shops in most Maine coastal towns. And, if there were no organized shops, there were often “winter builders” who’d do a boat in the winter off season either for themselves or for another fisherman. On MDI, Bunker and Ellis, Rich’s Boatyard, Ronald Rich, Ralph Stanley’s Boatyard, Gene Wall’s shop, John Corcoran’s Bar Harbor Boatyard, Southwest Boat Corp., HR Hinckley , Sim Davis in Bass Harbor, and Farnham Butler with his “Controversy” reverse sheer sailboats were all busy. There were plenty of lobster boats, and fish boats, and boats for the summer folk to be built of wood from trees. However, there was a new medium afloat. One discovered during “The War”. Boats could be constructed of something other than wood from trees and it was called “Fiberglas”. Slow in taking hold, it would soon revolutionize an industry.
In Southwest Harbor on MDI, Henry Hinckley, owner of Henry R. Hinckley Co. had started to build sail boats from this new fiberglass. At first laughed at as many new advancements often are: the “smell”, the dust from grinding “the goddamned stuff”, “sticky crap” that would ruin your work clothes. The enjoyment of working with wood was disappearing. The story of Henry sitting in some fiberglass drippings and getting stuck soon made its way around town. Fiberglas, for all it’s manual unpleasantries, however, was here to stay. Even the wood guys began to fiberglass their trunk cabins and shelter tops. On occasion, the washrails would get “some glass”. Then a few lobster fishermen would roll out a few layers of glass on the hauling side for protection where traps would gouge the wooden hull.
New and younger guys were being hired at Hinckley’s to work in the fiberglass department where the hulls, and soon to follow superstructures were moulded. Jarvis Newman and John “Jock” Williams were among them. Jarvis tells a story of the glass department in those early days. “There were no special resin company trucks at that time. It was shipped on whatever freight truck was coming this way. Had to be offloaded in Bangor and picked up by a local freight
company. Usually Tommy Newman. We had a truck coming in to the yard with a load of resin and in unloading, one of the barrels split. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but the freight truck had been hauling blueberries from Downeast at the time and the spilled berries got mixed in with the resin. Didn’t want to waste the resin, so we squegeed the resin, blueberries and all into buckets and used it in the next hull.” Wasn’t long before both Jarvis and Jock were separately building rowing skiffs in fiberglass on their own at night after work. Both had taken locally built wooden skiffs and from these had laid up moulds. Soon the skiffs were replaced by real boats. Jarvis and his wife Susan had purchased a Laundromat in town and at the property in back, Jarvis had built a two car garage and found an owner of a Friendship sloop who would let him take a mould from the hull and deck. In short order, Jock rented a boathouse in Dick and Nancy Bulger’s back dooryard, found a willing owner of one of Lyford Stanley’s 36' lobster boats. Surviving a fire and loss of this mould, Jock bought a Quarry and Buildings in Hall Quarry and the “Stanley 36” was soon under production. Tom Morris had moved to Southwest and along with Al Michaud and Bill Garver, ex-Hinckley employees soon went to work for Jarvis “finishing off” His Friendship sloops. HR Hinckley was now totally fiberglass.
Fiberglass opened new opportunities, especially in the area of work and pleasure power boats here in Maine. Hulls could be built in as little as two weeks. Often, the building was no more than the size of a large two car garage. Plus, there was profit to be made in selling bare hulls, or hulls with engines installed. Overnight, a need arose for companies to take the hulls and build the components, the floors, cabins, install the tankage, hook up the engines, and perform all the myriad tasks which go into completion. In other words, “finishing off”. A thought which made the rounds at that time was why were we not continuing to build the hulls from wood which actually enjoy a long life and have a much better feel in the water. Instead, we should build fiberglass superstructures. It was the wooden superstructures which rotted out. Not the hulls.
By the mid-seventies, several Hull builders (some finishing as well) were building power boats in production. Young Brothers in Corea, Jarvis Newman Inc. in Manset, John Williams Co. in Halls Quarry, Webber’s cove in Blue Hill, Richard Duffy (Duffy & Duffy) in Brooklin, to name a few. A real powerhouse was Bruno & Stillman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire who were not only building the fiberglass components,
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The lobster boat SEASWALLOW of Boothbay Harbor is a Newman 36, whose hull was moulded from a Bunker & Ellis 36.
but finishing their boats as well and selling them as a completed package. They were tough competition for many years with prices that were hard to compete with. Most of the hulls in the “70s” were being taken from existing wood boat models. Virtues of each were a hotly debated item amongst the fisherman. Heretofore, a generally accepted model such as a “Jonesport” or a “Built Down” would be popular in a given area. Now these finished hulls could easily be put on a flat-bed trailer and transported anywhere in the country. They could go to someone’s back yard for home finishing or to a finishing shop. The New England Lobster Boat hull form was beginning to realize new horizons.
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