Fifty years ago, the Maine Maritime Museum added a 16′ dory to its collection. It apparently had been brought from Massachusetts to Maine by a summer resident of Boothbay who rowed it for many summers. The dory probably had been built around 1900 somewhere on the North Shore of Massachusetts, the center of the state’s dory-building community. That area once provided thousands of slab-sided Banks dories for fishing schooners, and hundreds of “Swampscott” round-sided dories for inshore fishing and recreation. No builders or other documentation came to the museum with the boat, so it was dubbed a North Shore dory. The original 16′ dory from the North Shore of Massachusetts, circa 1900, is now on display at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine.
Ben Fuller
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Thanks Ben! Nice article about these fine boats, and I like your suggestions about moveable ballast. I have a soft spot for dories, and had an Alpha-Beachcomber for 20 years that I sailed, but also rowed a lot (tough on very windy days!). It was built to the plans in John Gardner’s book and was also built as a demonstration in 1980 at the Peabody Museum by Lance Lee. I bought it from the original owner that had all the letters from when it was built. It was a wonderful boat that I sailed on Moosehead Lake and Muscongus Bay. Thanks for your article about dories!
We have the Hammond 16 Swampscott dory from John Gardner’s Dory Book and it’s perfect for picnics in Penobscot bay with our little family. Our two little ones sit side by side in the transom, my wife and I row from the forward and aft rowing stations, and the 50-lb dog (ballast(?)) sits between us. The dog moving about does shift the boat but we’ve never been nervous about the boat’s ability. It really shines in some chop!