The Lobster Boat

A conversation with Erik Ronnberg

Maritime Curator, Cape Ann Museum

Lobstering sloop boat, 1880s ¹

Lobstering dory in the Ipswich Bay with riding sail ²

Engine-powered lobstering boats first appeared around Cape Ann in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Prior to that, the fishing was under oars. They rowed standing up, pushing the oars on a forward stroke, looking for rocks as well as buoys. They had to be able to get in close around the rocks when lobsters came in.

Lobstering dory, Cape Ann Museum
Eleven foot bottom length, fourteen feet overall

Inshore lobstering dories were tiny compared to those used in the schooner fleet. They had to be able to step ashore to recover their warp and buoys after heavy weather.

Sandy Bay Harbor, 1970s ³

Clare Waddell was one of several brothers who were local boat builders. His father David had operated a shipyard since the 1890s on Bradley Wharf in Rockport, next to Motif No.1. He even launched schooners there. About 1950 Clare moved the business up to his house on Cove Hill, where the Sally Webster House is now. The boats he was building by then were smaller and could go out of the shop on a trailer. When my father made a model of a lobster boat during the 1950s he may have visited Clare to get dimensions and look through the pile of construction molds that were lying around in the back yard. As kids Johnny Buckholzer and I used to play around in those things.

Lobstering boat interior ³

During the 1960s my father had the Rockport Marine Center on Tuna Wharf. He sold gas to the lobstermen. They were always in the shop, talking about this and that. I had some good close-up looks at those boats.

Erik Ronnberg working on a model of a lobstering boat
Cape Ann Museum, July 2017

Here at the Cape Ann Museum we wanted to have a finished model of a lobstering boat on display. Since 1980 we'd been storing one started by Herbert H. Court, which came to us from the  defunct Gloucester Fishermen’s Museum collection. As I worked on completing it, it and I were “on exhibit” in the Maritime Gallery.

 
At this point the companionway into the fo'c'sle needed to be changed. It has to be on the opposite side from the hauling winch and the steering wheel, which should be developing to the starboard. That's because when you're going to pick up a trap, one man has to be able to do the whole job of steering the boat up to the buoy, catching it with the boat hook, running it through the snatch block, and taking it around the winch head. It's all got to be right there at hand.

 
It doesn't yet have a prop guard, but it will. It's a ring that will enclose the propeller to prevent any pot warps from fouling the propeller. With all this turbulence, if there's any slack in the line, propeller suction will draw the line to it. I don't know what's worse--cutting the pot warp and losing 50 pots, or getting tangled up and not being able to get loose from the whole thing. Then he better call the Coast Guard.

He'd had a little cross bit here, but in all my photographs there's nothing back here, not even a stern chock. Of course there has to be a ring bolt for the aft mooring line. The important thing is that it be low profile, so that when you pile traps back here, it's not in the way when you give them a shove over the stern into the drink.

I decided on fitting her with the automobile-type steering wheel that became popular later in the period. Also the deeply-grooved winch that came to replace the long slender ones, where you had to take several turns around the winch head.

I wanted to give her a riding sail. They're not so common now, It was usually mounted off-center, just inside the coming. The interesting thing is that the sheet block for that was on the transom. Again, nothing on the deck. Then the sheet came through, probably to a cleat right on the mast. Very simple.

With a riding sail, you can come up to windward to pick up the buoy. It's a steadying device to keep the vessel from slopping around, strictly for controlling motion, pushing the stern off as you approach the buoy. It wouldn't have much effect on propulsion.

Of course the bottom is coated with standard red copper anti-fouling paint. The other colors are personal choices. It's important to stay away from model colors "out of the bottle." They're too bright, too pure, too clean. They don't take into account the fact that distance, and the intervening atmosphere, mute color perception. Additionally there are weathering effects, wear and tear, and metal corrosion to consider. Painting a model is a subtle business. Otherwise it looks like a toy boat.

Sources

1. Engraving 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.
2. Martha Harvey photograph, courtesy of the Annisquam Historical Society.
3. Erik Ronnberg photographs