Page 6. MAINE COASTAL NEWS January 2012 GIFFY FULL TALKS ABOUT SOME OLD-TIME BOATBUILDERS
BROOKLIN – Documenting maritime his- tory, and especially the boatbuilders, has become almost an obsession. It is relatively easy to document what is taking place in the yards along the Maine Coast, but unfortu- nately there is a problem when you try to go back before the 1950s. So when I get a chance to find out about boatbuilders before that time, out comes the tape deck. So when I had a chance to sit down with Giffy Full this fall we talked about some of the boatbuilders he remembered from growing up in Marblehead and those he dealt with on the coast of Maine. The first yard he mentioned was James E. Graves, Inc. in Marblehead. Giffy said, “It was a big yard, they stored a lot of boats and they had boats constantly under construction. I don’t ever remember a time in my youth that there weren’t boats under construction there. Of course that was right across the street from my parent’s home. Once we all
went over there to a big night launching under floodlights. I remember they built three Walter McInnis designed cruisers. Twin screw boats with Hall-Scott Defender en- gines for power plants. Then they built a whole series of boats designed by Alden, called a Coastwise Cruiser. As I remember they were about 40 foot sloops. They also built launches and various powerboats, even built a lobster boat or two. Then they did a lot of major repair work. After the ‘38 hurricane they took a lot of very badly damaged boats and rebuilt them. I remember one boat after that hurricane they found down on the ledges outside of Marblehead. The boat was split in half lengthwise. They brought that half back, set it up and rebuilt it. You wouldn’t believe it. That was quite a building yard.” What about the men who worked there? Full added, “There was a man I very fondly remember, the boss planker whose nickname was Pot Lead. In the old days there was some
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kind of soft polishing material, called pot lead. When he was young that was the job he got in the yard. He put that stuff on the bottoms of boat and polish them up for racing. He got that nickname Pot Lead and it always stayed with him. He eventually became a joiner and so forth, but he was a terrific planker. His real name was Albert Connors. It was something to see that man line out a boat to be planked and plank it. I mean it was a piece of perfec- tion.”
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“There were some other excellent work- men there,” continued Giffy. “When EAST- ERNER was new, she was down in Newport racing. They hauled her out down there to do something to her bottom and she fell on the railway. She didn’t get badly damaged, but she scarred up two planks. She was bright finish mahogany. When the season was over they brought her back up to Graves’s in Marblehead and there was a Scotchman that did planking work there, his last name was Moltman. And of course being Scotch, his nickname was Scotty. He with a helper took those two damaged planks out and put two new in. When he was through you couldn’t tell where the planks had been replaced. “Another man that retired from the Bos- ton Navy Yard,” added Giffy, “he had been a captain of fairly large sailing yachts and had grown up in sailing vessels. He was a Danish man, Orlif Mork. He was a terrific rigger. Before he came to Graves’ at the Boston Navy Yard, one of his main jobs was taking care of the rigging on the CONSTITUTION. He could make anything, no matter what it was. “They had another man that was a neigh- bor of ours, Charles Lawton, you have prob- ably heard of the Lawton dinghies. Charles Lawton was an old-timer that came from Lawley’s yard, I don’t know what point he came to Marblehead. His specialty was build- ing dinghies and small specialty lapstrake sailboats. Every major boat they built was of course furnished with a brand-new yacht tender. He was another specialty guy. “They just had a terrific bunch of people there,” concluded Giffy.
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Giffy went on saying, “I never expected it to be any different and then the war came along and it all changed. They went right off to building Coast Guard boats. They turned out a boat a week. They went to three shifts, nobody squawked. My parents house was probably 200 yards away and you could hear
those saws and planers screaming all night long. Never heard anybody complain about it. They also built some small Navy tugs there. That was a pretty significant yard in those days and always interesting.”
“One of the most prolific builders was William A. Robinson who had a yard in the marshes in Ipswich,” said Full “Up near the Crane estate. He started off building two or three yachts. He was into doing these replica yachts, Baker designs. He did a boat called the VERA CRUZ and then he built the CLIFF. It was only a small yard at that point. They built the yard, had a big basin dugout, and started off with a workshop and a set of ways. Then the war came along and that place started booming. He was building four or five sub chasers at a time and two or three mine- sweepers at a time. I think they had an 18 or 20 sets of launching ways. They couldn’t finish them there completely and he owned at the time a place in Gloucester. They finished a lot of machinery work and stuff down there. The yard is no longer there. It was obliterated. After the war there was a divorce and his wife was a Crane, and I guess there was a lot of bitterness in the family over it and the family owned that property where they did the yard work and they just had it bulldozed. They removed everything.”
Full added, “Another big yard that handled a lot of big yachts, and had a big railway, was Fred Dion in Salem. That yard is still in existence today and a very busy place. They didn’t do much of any building. He built a couple of boats there now and then, but they were noted for doing major repair work. They were a very good yard. I’m starting to think how much things have changed. You didn’t do repair work in the storage sheds any boat that needed a new keel or a bunch of frames or re-planking was done right out- doors all winter. It didn’t matter whether the wind is blowing 25 and it is 10 above. Fred Dion was pretty smart. After the war he bought a whole bunch of yachts and restored them. He knew which boats were the good boats, and he would go and bid on them. Today it is a pretty sizable boatyard. Fred Dion started it from nothing, from absolutely nothing. It is now run by Freddy Atkins.” Full remembers going through Essex and seeing draggers on the ways at the Story or
Continued on Page 7.
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