In the 1970s Steve White left his studies at Cornell University and made his way to Aspen, Colorado, where he was offered a position as a ski instructor. After writing home to tell of his intent to take the new-found position, White received some words of advice from his grandfather, renowned author and essayist E.B. White.
“My grandfather wrote me a fairly stern letter saying that that was not the right approach to what I should be doing for my life at age 18 or 19,” remembered White. “He said that I really needed to go back and get a college education. And then I could go on to decide whatever I wanted to be.”
And what White ultimately decided to do, after graduating from Colby College in 1977, was to build boats-classic wooden boats, following in the footsteps of Maine’s long heritage of boatbuilders, including his father, Joel White.
Joel White, a naval architect who is considered one of the nation’s foremost designers of wooden boats, had grown up on the water after his parents (his mother was legendary New Yorker fiction editor Katharine White) moved from New York City to North Brooklin, Maine in the mid-1930s.
In 1955, after graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in naval architecture, Joel White went to work at the Brooklin Boat Yard, then owned by famed builder Arno Day. The two worked as partners before White bought him out in 1960. For nearly four decades, White designed and built boats and yachts known for their simplicity of design. Among the boats he constructed was a sailboat for his father. Steve, then a teenager, would occasionally join his famous grandfather, E.B., on sailing outings.
Steve White’s time away from home as a young man put Brooklin and the boat yard in a new perspective. “I realized that there were some very good opportunities for me,” he said recently. “I really actually enjoyed being on boats and around boats all the time.” That fondness has not faded over the ensuing 30-odd years. “I still like to go to work everyday.”
After arriving to work at the yard in 1978, White gradually was given more responsibility while his father devoted more time to design. “I would say probably around the late 80s, early 90s… he was letting me run the boatyard completely.”
And soon, Steve White was earning a name for himself as well.
In an age of fiberglass and plastic, White’s craftsmen continue to dedicate themselves to the construction of wooden yachts, almost all of which are one of a kind, sought-after for their elegant interiors and fine lines.
The Brooklin Boat Yard uses a modern wooden boat-building technique known as “cold-molding” which relies on the superior strength of epoxy glue, and the efficiency of using materials at room temperature, rather than heating glue, as was the practice with earlier “hot-molding” techniques. After laying the epoxy-laden planks and creating an airtight surface, a vacuum bag is used to hold the pieces together while the glue cures.
White says this manner of construction is equivalent in cost to other technologies when building individual custom, or “one-off,” boats, and thus remains “economically a viable choice.”
“One-off” boats require no mold, the creation of which is a major time commitment in the realm of mass-produced boats. “To build a mold for a fiberglass boat usually takes about twice as long as it does to build a hull for that same boat,” said White.
For Maine’s custom and semi-custom boat builders, the past few years have been tough, requiring major sacrifices. White said that he was prepared. “I anticipated that it would be somewhat of a thin winter. We took on two projects this winter at very minimal returns… I really didn’t want to lose any more of my craftsmen and so I took on a lot of work essentially just to keep everybody going.”
Even so, he says, by “February things were pretty quiet here, and we did have to lay off people.” Brooklin Boat Yard had 50 regular employees; now it has 38. Recently, however, White signed a contract to build a 68-foot sloop, which White says will be a great project to keep them going. Brooklin Boat Yard is also currently bidding on repair and new construction work in addition to the sloop.
“Six months ago, the phone wasn’t even ringing. Now people are asking about having new work done,” says White. “I think that if it continues, even just in this vein, it’ll be fine.”
While things seem to be looking up, White is an economic realist. “I don’t expect it to be like it was three years ago, when we could almost literally pick and choose the projects we wanted and we had a two- or three-year backlog.”
Yet he remains optimistic, in part because of his location in Brooklin and in Maine. “The work force is a strong work force. It’s dedicated. They are very good, they have a great work ethic. That’s been a huge plus for us [which] lets us compete in a global market.”
“I think the boat builders and boat companies that have been able to weather this are still the best ones in the state, and I think that boat-building in Maine still remains a very strong economic force in the state, probably more so than some people realize.”
William J. Welte is a resident of Camden and a participant in The Working Waterfront’s student writers program.