The Dory

It's hard for a landlubber to settle on a meaningful image of the dory, with its plain lines and pocket size, removed from contests with the sea where it excels in giving one or two men a fighting chance at their industry.

Fishermen at "the Gutter," Folly Cove, latter nineteenth century.
Site of the shipping pier at the base of the Halibut Point quarries.
Sandy Bay Historical Society, photographer unknown

This photographer has coaxed  gentlemen in Sunday attire to a static and unaffectionate pose with their water craft. We have, in our collective memory, halcyon scenes of dories pulled up on a beach, by Fitz H. Lane. More helpfully we have various moods and dramas from Winslow Homer. But how can we participate in the full life of the dory, except through story?

Gill Netter, Ipswich Bay
Martha Harvey photograph, Cape Ann Museum

Carefully posed artistic renderings please the eye. Weather-beaten surfaces on man and boat point to the deeper story we sense but don't see, of gritty utility and daily occupational challenge. Marvelously, the dory allows the man to stand and lean into his work, scarcely tipping.



A dory with seating for passengers

     

   Most observers would say that the dory is an indigenous New England type, and so it is in a way. But in another sense, a dory is built on a model that is so fundamental and natural that it is hard for any age to claim it.... Its popularity stems from its natural simplicity. The sides of dory-type boats are essentially "developable," that is, they can be sprung to shape from a flat surface. The straight plank bent in an arch and set on an angle can become a dory side. The most common and simple dory can be built with one-piece sides. The bottom is flat with a slight rocker, and the number of frames is minimal, perhaps only four.
   The dory is, to use a New Englander's description, "cranky" when
light, but gains in stability as she is loaded. It established a reputation for seaworthiness as a line-trawling boat for the old Banks schooners of the nineteenth century. ¹

 

"The ship was rolling so much, her four yellow masts swinging like pendulums against the grey, wet sky, that I feared some of the dories must be smashed. These men were experts at getting boats away and a perfect drill had been worked out, probably centuries earlier. The schooner's low sides and low freeboard were a help. The dories were plucked from the nests by overhead hooks which fitted into the protruding grommets spliced into bow and stern. These hooks were manipulated by simple tackles led aloft, with the hauling part by the rail, so that a man or two on each tackle could swing a dory easily from the nest to the rail. Here its doryman hurriedly adjusted its thwarts, saw that the plug was in, climbed the rail and jumped in himself." ²

 

"As the ship rolled towards that side, the tackles were let go at just the right moment and down went the dory with a rush and a thwack upon the sea. Immediately the iron hooks disengaged themselves, alert mariners hauled them back inboard, the doryman shoved off from the side for his life, and dropped astern. Once clear of the ship's side, his little dory seemed smaller than ever, and dancing and leaping in the sea, he rigged his mast and little oiled sail, and away he skimmed towards the horizon." ²

 

Fishermen, Lane's Cove, early twentieth centuryOld Lanesville Photos, vol.1

A good many Cape Ann schooner crews risked the long trips to the North Atlantic. The dories stayed nested on deck until they dispersed with trawl lines on the fishing grounds. The more individualistic, home-tethered dorymen took their chances by rowing out from the shoreline. Harbors and coves gave them relative hospitality.

Comrades, shacks and dories. Lanes Cove fish market at left.
Old Lanesville Photos, vol.1

Dories could be kept on less-sheltered shorelines, such as Folly Cove, with an eye to the weather. Alert fishermen would make a mile-long dash for Lanes Cove in anticipation of a nor'easter. Poor bets on the odds may have given Folly Cove its name.

Dories at the Folly Cove 'beach'
The Clements/Hale Collection, Sandy Bay Historical Society

The design elements, flat bottom, size and rugged construction aimed to make the dory one-man manageable under most conditions. He could unburden it and get it temporarily to berth.

Stowing the dory mast and sail, Folly Cove
Martha Harvey photograph, Cape Ann Museum

Two men could roll and drag the dory to relative safety on the rocky coastline.

Dories at the Folly Cove fishing shacks, 1887 ³

The design of the dory evolved with conditions, the nature of the fishery, and with the daring and determination of the fishermen.

A few years ago many of our dory fishermen went without any sail and depended only on their oars, The few that used sails had them made with about ten yards of cloth or less. The sails were only used when the wind was fair. The dories were much smaller than many now in use, being from 13 to 15 feet in length. At the present time the dories are built from 15 to 20 feet long, with centre boards, and are rigged with jib and mainsail, and some of them spread from twenty to twenty-five yards of cloth. They carry stone ballast and are ready for any wind and show themselves very smart in beating to windward. It is now quite common to hear the owners of these clipper dories discussing the sailing qualities of their respective craft, and when one gets beat he will tell his rival to "wait till I catch you when it blows, and I will show you who has the best sailing dory." It is expected that next season there will be a grand dory regatta in the [Ipswich] Bay. Some of the dories now cost $60, all ready for use; formerly they cost from $12.50 to $15. ⁴ 

A well-crafted boat was worth expense and expenditure. 

Mr. Wm B Parsons, 74, started from Swampscott [for Pigeon Cove] between 11 and 12 o'clock, rowed 25 miles to Rockport arriving 7:30. This morning he is about his work as fresh as ever. The dory a new one built for George W. Tufts by Mr. Ivory Emmons. It is by far the most perfect boat of its kind we have ever seen. ⁵ 

Any work of the hand ideally honed to its purpose is a beautiful thing. The dory has been adapted to many purposes. Where design and craftsmanship have met the purpose, aesthetics have been fulfilled.

      The sweet lines of some of them all but took my breath when I saw them for the first time, out of the water in all their naked elegance.

      Next to possessing a boat is to possess her lines, carefully laid out on paper, neatly and painstakingly faired.

      Thus my recording of dories began as an intensely personal experience in which the aesthetic element bulked large. I wanted those shapely, svelte, round-sided boats for myself. ⁶

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 1. Thomas Gillmer, A History of Working Watercraft of the Western World, 2nd ed., 1994.

2. H. W. Tilman, Mischief in Greenland, 1987.

3. A drawing from "History and Methods of the Fisheries," The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, ed. George Brown Goode of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887.

4. "The Dories of the Past and Present" - Lanesville, Bay View and Annisquam - Cape Ann Advertiser, November 30, 1878.

5. Gloucester Daily Times, September 18, 1894.

6. John Gardner, The Dory Book,  Mystic Seaport Museum, 1987.