Page 24. MAINE COASTAL NEWS July 2012 Eddie Drew & The Lowells Continued from Page 23.


Caderio, who started JC Boats to build Royal’s designs in fiberglass.


They built a 32' boat on speculation which was then bought by Tony Trowbridge, a Connecticut photographer. “He had a big photo shop there and he used to do stuff for photographic murals. He’d done work for Standard Oil, the Smithsonian Institute, all kind of big places. He could take and develop negatives, something like 3 feet by 6 feet. You ever seen that scene down to the Smithsonian, it’s got the elephants in it there in the background? Well he did the back- ground... maybe 80 feet by probably 40 feet or something like that high. At least that, cause I think they had a bull elephant and a cow and a calf.”


Tony liked his accessories. “I think he ended up, he had something like seven stoves on there. Not all in use, but he had a galley stove, then he seen, Paul Luke used to make these fireplaces for boats, so he had to have one of those.” One night he stayed in the boat before the fireplace was ready. “He touched it off, it burned a hole down through the countertop, so he had to put a whole new countertop in again. Then he had one of those ones that you put out over the rail, those round ones, and a gas stove with the propane tank attached to it.


“He had something like, I think there was between 28 and 32 lights on the boat. I mean, this is a 30 or 32 foot boat. And all this electrical stuff on there, course I did all the electrical work, and I think there was a couple of hundred feet of battery cable probably. I think I had something like 1500 feet of twin wire stuff for all these lights that he had on there, running all those around.


“Cabin lights... he had these nice cabin lights that you had a 12 volt bulb in there, just like a regular incandescent bulb, I put those up over the bunks with a nice little lampshade over them, for a reading light.” One weekend Tony goes in and looks at the lights and he said, “That won’t do. Somebody put their arm up, they’re liable to break that lightbulb.” Drew said, “Well, how often are you gonna have anybody sleeping up in that upper bunk?”


“Well, probably not that often.” Drew said, “You could always unscrew the bulb if you were afraid that’s gonna happen. I’m think they’d have to fling their arm up over their head to do it.” “I don’t like it,” he said. “You’re gonna have to change that light.”


They went to the catalog and Tony saw another light that he thought might do, so Ed went into Harris Company Monday morning, picked up the light and installed it. Tony said, “No. That won’t do.” So they went back to the book again, and Tony picked something like a dome light in a car that’s got a plastic cover on it. “That one right there.” he said, “No- body will get hurt on that.” Drew told him there was no light switch on it, but Tony said “That’s okay, just put it in.” So Drew did. Tony came up and looks at it, he said, “Well, you can’t shut it off.”


Drew said, “Well, I know you can’t shut it off. I told you that last goddam week when you were up here.” Tony wanted it to have a light switch, so Ed made a switch for it, making up something special with a toggle. The next weekend Tony came in and said, “You know that light...”


Drew said, “I told him, ‘Don’t you even say anything about it. If you say anything about that goddam light,’ I says, ‘I don’t give a shit whether you own this boat or not,’ I says, ‘I’m gonna stretch you right out!’ He says ‘What?’ I says, ‘I’m gonna knock you on your ass, cause I don’t wanna hear any more about that goddam light!’”


Tony went to Carroll and said, “That man of yours threatened me!”


Carroll said, “What’d you say?” Tony said, “Well, I just spoke about that light in the cabin.”


Carroll said, “You didn’t say anything about THAT did ya?”


Tony said, “Why yes, and he got real ugly with me.”


Carroll said, “You’re lucky that he didn’t slam you right there! He’s some excited about that thing. I’m telling you, he told me, he said if that sonofabitch tells me to change that light or move it or anything else, that bastard, I’m gonna knock him right on his ass.” Tony said, “Well, you ought to speak to


him!”


Carroll said, “He told me already, if I say anything to him about that light, he’s gonna take and pack up his tools and he’s gonna go. And he will!”


Another boat that they built was a 36- foot sport fisherman, Gannet III, that Carroll had built for a guy from Long Island, NY. “He was buying it for his kid to take fishing parties out,” said Drew. On launch day, Drew drove the boat up the river to test her out. “Had twin 653 Jimmies in there. So I left here and I come down the river, but I kept her back. She’s coming and the wake is just rolling up.” Royal was yelling to Drew, “Put her up!” But Drew just shrugged at him as if there was nothing he could do.


“I could see his face, he and Carroll, both of them there, ‘cause it was Royal’s design, he’s thinking ‘shit!’ I went up the river, I said, ‘I guess I plagued them enough.’ So I made the turn and I threw her in the corner, and we come down by there...” When Drew cruised in to the float Royal cussed him out pretty well. “Christ, I knew she oughta go, but you were going like she was wide open,” Royal exclaimed. “That wake just barely clearing her, I couldn’t believe it! But then when you come back, that was more like it!” Another big project was rebuilding the Merganser. The Dyers had worn her out and she laid by Brewer’s in South Freeport for four or five years. Carroll bought her with the idea of rebuilding her in his spare time. “She had an awful twist in the stern,” Drew said. “We towed her over here in the river. I was surprised, she was tight. But on one side, the bottom of the transom was about 4-6 inches up out of the water!” They weren’t sure what to do about getting out the twist, but Drew suggested they submerge the stern in the salt water of the river using a 30-gallon drum filled with water. They left the boat in the river all summer, and when they pulled her out, every bit of the twist was gone.


“Ed, come look at that stern,” Carroll told him. “She’s just like she was built!” Carroll couldn’t keep away from her, and soon Merganser was in the main bay of the shop. Carroll tried to get Drew to help with it. “No, we gotta keep a payday coming in here!” Drew said. “When he was done with it, the only thing that was original was – well, I guess the keel was still there, but everything else was new stem, new transom, new floor timbers, new frame, new timbers, the whole works, new deck...”


Carroll asked Drew how the spray hood had been, since Drew had seen the boat a lot in his teens around the island. “Everything was all bent,” Drew says. “Bent down this way, and around. All that was for, was just to throw a few life jackets up there or some other stuff you didn’t want to get wet.” Merganser’s rebuild was a great suc- cess, and she remains to this day a beautiful example of Will Frost’s boatbuilding style. “So anyhow, got the thing all done and he sailed her around one summer,” said Drew. “Course she looked good, we put teak decks on her, did a lot of candying up on her. Made


it kind of like it used to be with just the spray hood it, stuff like that.”


The following spring, though, Carroll had to sell Merganser. “Ed,” he said, “How’d you like to buy the Merganser?” “What do you mean?” Drew asked. “Well,” Carroll said, “I gotta have the money, you know. We’re short.” Drew said, “How much you want for it?” “55 hundred dollars.”


“Which was a helluva buy, really,” said Drew. “But, things hadn’t been going that right for me, at that time... I could’ve borrowed money on the house to get it, but I says, ‘Eh’, I said, ‘I’ll get that damn thing and I’ll just be stuck with it.’” So Drew told Carroll no, and about a week and a half later a man on Bustins Island named Bud Nickerson bought her. About two weeks later, a guy from New Hampshire stopped in. Carroll had built the boat for George Spinney in Kittery, so a lot of folks from New Hampshire were always com- ing by. Drew was out in the yard, and the kid came up and said, “I hear the Merganser’s for sale.”


Drew said, “No, it’s been sold.” He said, “Ah shit, I was gonna buy it.” “I said, well, I might as well see how much I’m gonna be pissed off about this,” Drew said. “So I says, ‘How much was you willing to pay for it?’


“The kid says, ‘Well I got 15 thousand dollars here...’ And I thought to myself, ‘Jesus Christ, I could’ve made 10 thousand dollars! I could’ve paid off a good part of my house!” I mean really, I only paid $14,500 for my house at that time.”


Carroll and Drew also did a lot of repair work at Even Keel. “Another queer one,” said Drew, “this guy come down and he had a Dark Harbor sailboat. That was one that people had down around where the money is, North Haven. Bunch of em got together, cause they were racing the things, and they had a bunch of these sloops built up there, what you call a Dark Harbor. Probably 23 or 24 feet long, anyways.


“This guy, he was a stock broker, Darsole was his name, and we always won- dered how he got through school with a name like that! Anyway, he come down, seen us first about rebuilding this boat. So he brings it down, this thing had been in a barn for like 30 years or better. I think probably the only thing that was still decent on it was the planking. We took and put a whole new keel in there, and stem, frames... This guy didn’t care. That’s what he wanted. New deck, rud- der, basically might as well say all but for the planking it was a brand new boat. Much the same as Carroll did with Merganser, as far as that goes.”


When they were finished, Carroll called the guy up, but Darsole said, “Well, the market’s really unstable right now, so I can’t leave it there for a little while? Can you cover the boat up and everything like that? Won’t be that long and I’ll be able to get up.” So they covered it up, and owner sent the money to pay for the repairs.


The next spring Carroll tried to call Darsole, but he wasn’t able to get ahold of him. And he never heard from him again. The boat sat there for a few years, looking like brand new, and they kept putting plastic on it. “After awhile Carroll didn’t bother cover- ing it anymore, which I don’t blame him,” Drew said. “I said, ‘That thing’s still here?’ and Carroll says ‘Yuh, I don’t know what the hell happened, Ed. I never heard any more about that guy. I tried to get in touch with him...’


“Course back then, they had the crazy law kind of there, that by the time you could take something and claim it, wooden boat anyways, they were really in hard shape. I think it was seven years or something like


that, before you could put a claim on em, and say ‘abandoned.’ Back then, we had one end of the yard where we had these bunch of old boats that we put down there that some people hadn’t paid on, so we’d shove ‘em the hell down there. You couldn’t get rid of ‘em.” Carroll didn’t get into fiberglass much at Even Keel, but during the seventies Royal designed many boats for fiberglass produc- tion companies. One day Royal ran into a guy down at Bruno Stillman, who wanted to set up a boat shop, and go into big time production. “So Royal come back, all fired up, cause the guy asked him to do a design,” Drew said,. “A 25-footer, just narrow enough so you didn’t have to get a special permit for a trailer. So he had an open boat, and one with a center console, and a cuddy cabin on it, one with a tuna tower on it, too.


“The guy had a bunch of people that were going to go in on it, put up a big steel building, first-class all the way. In fact we got almost down to the factor of building a mold for it. Royal told me to look around, and I found a garage we could use. Royal said, ‘I’ll be the designer, and I told him about you that you’d be a good manager.’”


There was a guy named Rusty MacLeod who used to haul his boat at Even Keel, who was a salesman all over New England. Drew talked to Rusty MacLeod about if he’d con- sider going into sales with them. “So Royal had a top view and a side view of what he was going to do,” Drew said. “I had Royal make a printup, I told Rusty while you’re making your rounds, cause he used to go down to the Cape, I says see if there’s any interest.” Rusty came in the next week after his trip and said “Interest, I guess there’s interest!! I could’ve sold 12 boats! This is just what they’re look- ing for!”


Drew told to the guy the good news, and he also talked to him about the facility. “One thing we have to do though,” Drew told him. “To turn out a good boat, we have to have a stable work force, not the constant turn over of people like they have up at Bruno Stillman.” Drew suggested having lightwieght suits with boots & helmet, and a hose for outside air, for breathing and for cooling the suit. The workers could slip into those to do the layup work on the hull, deck, and cabins, etc. He also suggested that that work all be done in a separate part of the building, along with the heavy grinding, and dust & fume collection with heat recovery on air change.


The man asked how much this would cost and Drew gave him a ballpark figure. The guy thought that was a lot of money, but Drew pointed out, “You’re in business. Could you run your business with people coming and going every week and do a good job?” So the man agreed that Drew’s ideas made sense and was ready to do it. However, Drew said, “What screwed it up was Carter and the high gas prices, which turned a lot of people off from boats for awhile. After Reagan got in, things got better. Thousands of boats of this type were built.” So ended the Lowells’ early efforts to get into fiberglass boat production.


Drew spent many years with the Lowells and was considered a good friend. His stories help us imagine life in the second half of the last century in a boatbuilding family, as en- gines got larger, the world got busier, and fiberglass became the norm.


Watch for more Eddie Drew stories in future issues! More info on the Frosts & Lowells at www.lowellbrothers.com


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