SHARPIE

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

A NEW PROJECT! this class will be headed by Roger

As everyone must know by now, Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of of the Declaration of Independence this July 4th. So why not celebrate by building a model of the All American Boat. No, I’m not talking about an aluminum Lund fishing boat with its outboard motor or, Ugh, a pontoon boat. According to the late Dean of American Maritime Historians, Howard I. Chapelle it’s the SHARPIE.

In a Smithsonian Institution paper (The Migrations of an American Boat Type) he writes:
“For a commercial boat to gain wide popularity and use, it must be suited to a variety of weather and water conditions and must have some very marked economic advantages over any other boats that might be used in the same occupation.”

He then goes on to explain “that of the 200 boat types employed in American fisheries during the last 60 years of the Nineteenth Century,” the Sharpie was unique in that its use spread down the East Coast to Florida, to the Midwest along the South Shore of Lake Erie, and to areas of the West Coast. Today Sharpies are built and sailed by home builders. They are truly All American boats.

One, would, therefore, think that someone would offer a kit that captures the graceful lines of this remarkable craft. A drawing of a New Haven Sharpie is included below. Such is not the case. There is a Midwest kit of a Sharpie schooner, and the Nautical Research Guild offers plans and instructions for a Generic East Coast Sharpie on their website. Sharpie schooners are not nearly as attractive as the original New Haven built craft and the nicest thing that I can say about the NRG’s craft is that “they certainly succeeded in making it generic!”

Instead, we’ll build this one from scratch. We’ll begin with offsets of an actual boat measured in the late 1920’s by Howard Chapelle, prepare a lines drawing, make molds from the lines drawing and use the molds to build one of three models
1. A beginner version.
2. A more advanced version
3. A lean mean racing machine (about more later)
All three are built to the same set of lines. Differences are in the details. I’m building choice #3 but as we move along I’ll include shortcuts for building#1. #2 lacks the yacht like finish of #3.

Acknowledgments to:
Dave Stevens for establishing the School
Greg Davis for his Gold Metal Gundalow model that reminded me of the possibilities for building models of these Nineteenth American working craft.

My intention is to move at a pace that will allow me to post weekly. Stay Tuned.

Roger

 

[JacquesCousteau]

Looks like a very worthwhile subject! I'm interested in seeing the differences between versions.

 

[Roger Pellett]

The History of the Sharpie

Scholars of maritime history love to trace the genealogy of different types of watercraft, Sharpies included. I won’t bore every one with the various theories. The short answer is that nobody really knows how and if the sharpie evolved from any other boat type.

One theory: oysters were originally harvested by tonging. Tongs that looked like a pair of garden rakes with long handles were used to pull up oysters from the bottom of shallow waters. The men doing the tonging used canoes carved from large white pine logs. The canoes had flat bottoms. Towards the middle of the Nineteenth Century the large white pines suitable for building these canoes and growing near the shore were gone so the oyster men began looking for a cheap boat that could be sailed yet could carry a heavy load. The sharpie was the result.


The sides of a sharpie are what is known as a developable surface. The entire side lies in a single plane. The sides were put together and bent about a single mold erected midships. The bottom was cross planked and the stem did not require a rabbit.

The leg of mutton rig with a sprit was found to be very powerful, and could be easily adjusted to flatten the sail as required while requiring little rigging. The resulting boats were very fast

Unfortunately, as the City of New Haven grew, so did pollution of nearby waters, killing the oysters so oyster harvesting moved into offshore. Oysters were then harvested by dredging requiring a larger, more powerful boat. So, during the early Twentieth century use of the sharpie in waters near New Haven declined. Howard Chapelle visited the area in the late 1920’s to measure some boats and was able to do so but the sharpie boat type was no longer active.

Meanwhile, sharpies were being used for fisheries in the North Carolina sounds and for the pound net fisheries on Lake Erie as well as on Chesapeake Bay.

Roger