Float On

NESTLED ALONGSIDE THE NORTH BANK OF THE MERRIMACK RIVER in Amesbury, Massachusetts, Lowell’s Boat Shop has been quietly creating hand-made wooden boats for the last 224 years.

Founded by Simeon Lowell in 1793, the boat shop was established during a boom in the New England fishing industry, and gained prominence thanks to Lowell’s creation of the surf dory. The innovative boat required less wood and featured a flat bottom, eliminating the need for a cumbersome keel and making it an economical yet seaworthy vessel.

Simeon’s grandson, Hiram Lowell, further improved upon the family’s business with streamlined manufacturing methods and the introduction of the banks dory, a boat with straight, high sides that allowed multiples to be stacked. It became popular with fishermen who were able to take extra dories on their schooners to help bring in bigger catches. The boat was so successful that Lowell’s produced hundreds a year, reaching a peak in 1911 with over 2,000 boats sold, all hand-made.

Throughout the twentieth century the shop expanded their line of boats for recreational uses, and by the 1980s, they had started hosting boat restoration and building classes. It was then that current master builder Graham McKay found his calling: “In high school I received a scholarship for a boatbuilding class, and I skipped basketball practice several nights in order to go.” He ended up returning years later as a builder, where he has worked for the last decade.

Today, Lowell’s is a National Historic Landmark, and more of a working museum than a shop, though they do make and sell roughly seven boats a year, all on commission. Because the boats are made on-site, McKay explains, it’s usually a mess, but that’s part of what he believes makes the museum “real.” It’s not hermetically sealed, as he says, where nothing can be touched, but is essentially a living historical experience. “It’s one thing,” McKay notes, “to talk about how it was, and it’s another to see how it was done a hundred and fifty years ago.”

While Lowell’s will continue to build boats to preserve the craft, the shop has steadily been focusing more on education: “It’s important to give as many students as possible the opportunity to build a boat, because you never know when you’ll pull the future head boat-builder out of a crowd of seventh graders.”

lowellsboatshop.com.