From his home at the head of Somes Sound, E. Farnham Butler can see his life’s work, the Mount Desert Yacht Yard, and out to the sea that still calls to him.
At 96, he is still sharp and willing to discuss the boatbuilding that
sustained him for a lifetime. From his living room he can see his reverse-sheer Controversy, a 36-foot prototype of a line of sailboats he produced in the 1950s and `60s before he turned the yard over to son John.
He still sails CONSTELLATION when he can find a few sailors to haul on lines. Over tea and cookies served by his wife, Gladys, he told how he went out for an afternoon of sailing once and came home eight days later. When friends threw a party for his birthday, he missed it because he was
off sailing.
You can brag about sailing, but cruising can humble you, too. Once, heading out of Pulpit Harbor for Stonington in thick fog, he ran ashore on an island he didn’t recognize in the fog. He sent Gladys to talk to some people off on the beach. When she came back she told him, “They don’t know where they are, either.”
Butler dropped out of Harvard in 1930 to pursue building boats in Maine, and when his prep school headmaster father heard this, he said, “Talk to my friend Charlie.” That turned out to be Navy Secretary Charles Francis Adams, who advised young Butler he needed an independent income to be a boatbuilder. Adams sent him to MIT yacht designer George Owen, who urged him to get a job at Fore River Shipyards in Quincy, Massachusetts, part of Bethlehem Steel. He worked there two years, then returned to Harvard to earn a degree in economics.
His ties to Maine go back to boyhood, and summers in Southwest Harbor. He remembers being around one winter, walking across the frozen harbor to a three-masted schooner and climbing to the masthead.
The Butler name — he lives in Butler Road — is a household word around the yacht yards of Mount Desert Island. Farmhand Butler was a maverick; he decided a reverse sheer would create a stable, roomy and sea-kindly boat. “That concept revolutionized yacht design in that it got people away from thinking of them as a fishboat. Everyone knew what sheer was, it was so you could haul a lobster trap aboard.”
Butler’s career spanned several decades and many sailboats, starting with traditional designs and shifting to the controversial reverse sheer — hence the name “Controversy.”
Butler first met Gladys when she was looking for a small sailboat and she told him she had $100 to spend. He was skeptical that anything afloat would be that cheap, but he found a 19-foot Alden “O” boat on the Cranberry Isles, and picked it up for less than $100. Of course, the sailing lessons were free. They’ve been married 67 years, and Butler said “she was a big help in the business.”
At his age, Butler has seen a lot of change. He said it cost him $9,000 to build his waterfront house back in the 1940s. Then it cost him $9,000 to build a wing on the house in the 1960s. Finally, it cost him $9,000 just to add a bathroom in the 1990s.
His collaborator on the reverse sheer concept, yacht designer Cyrus Hamlin of Scarborough, said Butler was very forthright in his views. “But the customers, they always brought theirboats back.”
Hamlin and Butler both recalled Yachting magazine editor Bill Robinson, who at first scoffed at their unusual designs. But then he tried sailing one — his picture appeared in Yachting at the helm — he loved the boat, bought it and sailed it all over the Caribbean.
The Mount Desert Yacht Yard is best known for building Amphibicons.These glued-strip wooden sloops, 25 feet from stem to stern, were a revolutionary idea. They lacked the classic sheer of sail yachts, and that took some getting used to, and earned the Amphibicon a sort of outsider reputation. But these light-displacement boats sailed very handily, staying dry in rough seas and responding well in light winds.
(I grew up on one. In 1955 my parents bought an Amphibicon kit, which meant they had to finish the cabin and some other details. It was Amphibicon Number 23, and it did turn heads when we sailed among conventional yachts. My family trailered our boat from South Norwalk, Connecticut to Tenants Harbor, Maine. We lived on board, turning our Amphibicon into an RV, which led to a cute photo in the Boston Globe.)
Hamlin, over 80 and still sailing, said he and Butler were impressed with British reverse sheer designs that gave sailboats remarkable stability and a spacious cabin. In fact, the decks were high enough to situnder, and created full headroom below the raised cabin roof. All this in a shallow-draft, centerboard boat that could easily be trailered behind the family station wagon.
Butler said he considered the design “an amphibious controversy.” “These boats used plywood bulkheads and cedar strips bonded with waterproof glue developed by the U.S. Navy. Without that glue, the Amphibicon and the Controversy would never have been built.” Eventually, dozens more Amphibicons were built of fiberglass by other boatyards.
Butler and Hamlin didn’t always hit it off, and they parted company after six years. “I owe a great deal to Cy,” Butler said. “One thing I’ve learned is that nobody but nobody does it all.” Amphibicons were produced from 1954 onwards, for a total of more than 125 sloops in all.
As fiberglass took over the market, the demand for wooden sailboats sank. Butler, never very fond of fiberglass boats, said “that’s what killed the individual boatbuilder. Fiberglass came along and killed wooden boats.”
Storage and repair became the bread-and-butter of Mount Desert Yacht Yard. Among those storing their boats was Admiral Richard Byrd, the explorer. This year, Morris Yachts of Bass Harbor leased Butler’s yacht facilities in Northeast Harbor, and son John Butler has consolidated his business at Somes Sound.
Farnham Butler no longer builds boats. He began his career with a 10-foot rowboat, and ended it building another peapod. Somehow, despite running a busy boat yard, he and Gladys managed to sail some 25,000 miles,mostly in the Gulf of Maine but also Florida and the Bahamas. As a young man he raced his father’s schooner, MALABAR III, to Bermuda. All those miles are documented in Butler’s logbooks. Besides son John, Farnham and Gladys have a son Ned, two daughters, Betsy and Lydia; nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren.