J.O. Brown & Sons boat yard: On North Haven this phrase is as deeply ingrained in the daily vocabulary as are the worn paths of foot traffic across the 150-year-old building’s floorboards. More often than not, the phrase is shortened: “headin’ down to Brown’s,” someone might say, and there is no question what the terse reference signifies. It’s not easy to find a point of comparison on the mainland. There are so many roads, haunts and businesses to choose from “over there” that the populace seems to flow in all directions. On North Haven, a significant portion of the island’s population will flow through Brown’s at least once on any given day.
J.O. Brown & Sons started in a small boat shed in 1888. The current building was occupied in 1900 when James Osman Brown converted a small lobster and clam cannery into a shop. Situated right on the Fox Islands Thorofare, it’s prime working waterfront. J.O. had worked as a shipwright in Camden before realizing his opportunity here on island. Collaborating with summer rusticator Dr. William Weld, J.O. began work on the North Haven Dinghy fleet that still peppers Penobscot Bay with gaff rigs all summer.
The yard produced workboats as well, and after 118 years, the family boat building tradition continues. Two summers ago, North Haven seasonal resident David Webb took a shine to Brown’s launch, the Kim-Lin. After some inquiry, Webb discovered that the vessel was built at Brown’s back in 1959. The wooden launch design was much the same as the “market boats” belonging to the houses of Vinalhaven’s north shore. “Families used to come over to go to the market in them before the roads were improved,” said Jim Brown, the yard’s patriarch. When Webb inquired as to whether or not Brown’s would be able to build another, the yard was more than happy to oblige. Thus, this spring, there will be another wooden boat launched into the Thorofare.
Walking through the shop where his grandfather and father built boats, Jim can now watch his son and grandsons (not to mention a few employees) work on a boat in much the same fashion as 100 years ago. In fact, the band saw is the same one that Jim’s grandfather installed in 1900. “I had to change the machines and drives after the war,” Jim comments. The originals were steam-driven. Regardless, when Foy (Jim’s son) steps over to trim a small piece of oak, he’s cutting on a band saw installed in the family business before the Ford Motor Company was incorporated.
Jim, who turns 90 this January, may have seen the world change dramatically, but he’s also had more consistency than most Americans. According to the U.S. Census, Americans make roughly 12 moves in a lifetime. Though Jim served in the Navy during World War II, steaming through the Pacific aboard the light cruiser USS Duluth, he returned to the family business. “It was raining something awful the night they issued me my discharge,” he said recently. “But as soon as I held that paper, I was right out into it on my way back to the island.”
Jim’s Navy experience in repair and maintenance served him well on North Haven. Much of Brown’s business requires putting in, maintaining, hauling out and winterizing boats. They also tend the Thorofare moorings, run a small hardware store, and pump the only gas and heating oil on-island. At the shop’s peak, though, before Jim’s time, Brown’s employed 23 men in boatbuilding alone. Aside from the North Haven Dinghies, they built a variety of workboats. Even so, the boatbuilding end was always rather seasonal. “We’d just do it in the winter,” Jim said. “It just gets too busy come spring.”
By the looks of it, Brown’s is always busy. It’s one of North Haven’s primary hubs, and it’s a wonder that Jim’s son and grandson (both named Foy) have any time to actually build a boat. “Well, I just work on her one hour at a time,” the older Foy says of the current project. Still, it’s coming together bit by bit. The smooth white oak hull bears the delicate the curves of what is perhaps Maine’s finest art. And if a couple of weeks pass without having set foot inside the shop, the leaps in progress seem fantastic. Now, a newly minted Yanmar engine sits exposed on the finely sanded deck, waiting for its housing. The stick steering and throttle will soon appear.
The wooden boat building business isn’t what it used to be, though. Jim recalls one winter in the 1960s when the yard built two 38-foot workboats. More recently, the Birarelli family of Beverly, Massachusetts, commissioned three wooden lobster boats. In addition, there was a 42-foot fiberglass WesMac. Brown’s was delivered a bare hull and completed all the finish work, from cutting out windows to the deck lights. But since glass has supplanted wood, business has slowed.
Wooden boats are not called for nearly as much now. Aside from the fact that fiberglass is cheaper, Foy notes that folks these days are just in too much of a hurry to wait for a wooden boat to be built. Still, there’s some call for it, and it excites the interest of some younger folks living on island. After a few years working at Brown’s, Foster Bartovics was going to attend the Landing School before he heard of the Webbs’ boat. “I could work here, learn the skills more quickly and get paid,” he said. “Besides, there are two of us learning and three really good teachers here.”
Bartovics is also learning how to repack seams on Herreshoffs and other wooden boats. Later this winter, he’ll work with the Brown’s crew on finishing off a 32-foot Jonesport hull. All the skills acquired can be applied to maintaining the Thorofare fleet, not to mention future construction projects. While the chances of this seem to diminish, one never knows what future trends and tastes will bring.
Standing by the wood stove, surveying the piles of wood shavings and the assembled tools, Jim Brown notes that while wooden boatbuilding may not be what it once was, “the hardest work to do sometimes is to work alongside your relatives for some time.”
If the first 118 years are any measure, though, this business has a chance of continuing well into the new century. In fact, aside from the couple of J.O.s already living on island, Sandra Crabtree and Elisha Brown (one of Jim’s grandsons) just celebrated the birth of a new J.O. — Jack Osman Brown — on Nov 7. If we’re patient enough, we might just see the yard under the purview of yet another J.O. for years to come.