In Praise of Lobster Boats

Think of them as the church steeples of the ocean, iconic New England shapes floating white and graceful in the early morning mist of our harbors and inlets.  The lobster boat is a waterborne symbol of what it means to be from Maine, or certain parts of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and even Connecticut:  independent, hardworking, connected to the sea, and with a certain no-nonsense stylishness that comes from practicality.  Lobstermen (and women) can invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into their boats and gear, so the next time you admire one, thank the owner for providing one of the enduring sights of our coastline.

By contrast, early colonists in New England didn’t have to spend much on equipment to put a nice lobster on the table.  In the 17th and 18th centuries, the crustaceans were thick upon the ground, albeit under shallow water—the only tools needed were bare hands or, for the really big ones (some were reported to be five feet long), a gaff or a spear.  Down on Cape Cod, Miles Standish reported that after a good storm, lobsters would be piled a foot and a half deep along the water’s edge.

Of course, all good things get eaten, and it wasn’t too long until the days of easy pickings drew to a close.  In 1812, Provincetown became the first town to restrict—to residents of the Commonwealth only--the taking of lobsters without a permit.  By the middle of the 19th century, men had to take to the sea to trap their quarry, and the first “lobster boats” were simply fishing vessels—rowing dories and sailboats such as sloops and ketches—that happened to haul lobsters.  Since lobsters must be delivered to the shore alive (they spoil far faster than fish), the 1820s saw the introduction of the ingenious well smack—a sailing vessel with a large tank built directly into the hull.  The walls of the tank were about five inches thick, with a central divider to cut down on sloshing and hundreds of holes cut in the hull to allow fresh water to circulate.  Fishing themselves or collecting the catch of others, these smacks delivered lobsters to urban markets up and down the New England coast until the 1890s, when speedier steamships took their place.  One of their biggest customers were lobster-canning plants, and one of the biggest plants was that of Maine’s Burnham & Morrill, which went on to fame as a maker of baked beans.

Engines made their first appearance in the early part of the twentieth century—one-cylinder “make-and-break” engines like the one that old Bert Dow had in the children’s story by Robert McCloskey.  Dropped into dories and sailboats, these heavy, low-horsepower “one-lungers” didn’t yield enough advantages to win over most tradition-bound lobstermen. It was quite a different story after World War I, when four-cycle, high-powered automotive engines became available.  With ten times the horsepower-to-weight ratio of the old make-and-breaks, and the ability to be throttled and reversed, they proved too tempting to ignore.  For lobstermen, speed meant more pots could be tended and more fishing grounds could be reached.

But their power and weight made the new engines a poor match to the old “full displacement” boats the lobstermen were using.  As Peter Kass, the only fulltime wooden lobster boat builder in Maine, explains, “Full displacement means that the vessel cannot lift up out of the water—it just plows along,” fighting the engine all the way.  What was needed was a new design, and boat builders from New England and Nova Scotia experimented until the handsome shape we all know became standard.  It’s a hybrid, with a V-shaped hull at the bow that flattens out as it makes its way to the stern.  “A pure deep-V boat takes a whole lot of power to get up and plane,” Kass says, “and it wallows at low speeds.  A pure planing hull rises out of the water quickly, but big waves make it slam and crash. Lobster boats are ‘semi-displacement’—they creep along fine when you’re pulling pots, then plane when you hit the gas.”  A high bow fights off the rough seas, while low sides allow for easy trap hauling—connecting the two is the graceful sweep of the gunwale.

Kass, whose John’s Bay Boat Company is in South Bristol, focuses lower, on the sheer.  He calls this fore-to-aft line of the deck, seen from the side, “the most important line of a boat.”  He’s prejudiced, but he prefers the sheer of a traditional Maine vessel, especially that of a so-called Jonesport or Beals Island boat, named after the way-Down East towns where the design originated.  Like most Maine-style boats, these have a low, continuous sheer, their deck curving without break from bow to stern.  Nova Scotia-style boats, by contrast, have their wheelhouses pushed farther forward, with a bigger, flatter work deck aft, a step up to a raised foredeck, and a resulting stagger in the sheer line.

These basic types haven’t changed much over the years, though fiberglass has almost completely replaced wood (Kass builds two boats a year) and boat size has tended to increase as engines have become more powerful.  With legend placing its roots in Prohibition rum running, lobster boat racing is big Down East.  This summer there are 11 races. And last July, Jeremy Beal's Maria's Nightmare II, with a 1,000-hp engine, set a diesel speed record of 68.3 mph up at Moosabec Reach.

As for colors, white is traditional, with a red bottom, and no ‘boot top’ or stripe at the water line. “No good Yankee would waste time painting that,” says Kass.  Decks are a pinkish-orange “buff,” light gray, or “Newport green,” like the bottom of a swimming pool—not too reflective and not too absorptive of the sun’s rays.  And boaters take note:  blue is bad luck.  “I’m not particularly superstitious,” says Kass, “but we built a blue boat a while ago and that thing has broken loose from its mooring twice.”