Dories, dories, dories. Perched above the mighty Merrimack River on Main Street in Amesbury, Massachusetts, Lowell’s Boat Shop is a boatshop built by dories, many thousands of dories over a great many decades. The building one sees today is old in a general sense but, dating to around 1860, it wasn’t erected until about 67 years after Simeon Lowell started building boats on the site in 1793. By the time Simeon’s progeny had more or less perfected dory mass-production methods in the mid- to late-1800s, the shop’s capacity was staggering. Figures burned into a wooden beam indicate that in 1911, 2,029 boats were built, probably a record.The Lowell model under discussion here might be thought of as the answer to this question: What do you get when you cross a Lowell dory with an outboard motor? Answer: a Lowell Amesbury Skiff.“Our design,” said the shop’s lead builder, Graham McKay, “is essentially a Lowell Surf Dory from the middle part of the boat forward.” The Surf Dory (see Small Boats 2011) is “round-sided” by comparison to Banks fishing dories. (“Knuckle-sided” is considered a more descriptive term as the frames are not curved but have variously angled flat sections where planks attach.) But what about the Amesbury’s hull shape from amidships to transom? That’s where the skiff part comes in. While the Lowell Surf Dory’s hull narrows to a traditional tombstone transom at the stern, the Amesbury Skiff remains beamy from midsection to stern, and the flat bottom ends at a broad transom. The result is an outboard hull that will plane. It’s a boat type known generically as a “dory skiff” or “semi-dory,” though not all such boats are as decidedly outboard-oriented as this one.
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1955, my dad bought me a 12′ dory with a quarterdeck on the bow. I has a 1955 Johnson outboard 5-1/2 horsepower motor. Almost lost her in the Hurricane of 58. Sank at the mooring safe and sound, just needed seats and floor boards gone. Easy fix, I wish I had it today.
I later worked for Pursuit Boats as a salesman on the road. The beginning of my career in the boat business. What a start!