Dory Boat

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The Dory Boat was designed to be a sturdy, seaworthy, yet lightweight boat, capable of being easily handled by one rower. The Dory Boat form has been around for a very long time. Fishing boats often launched through the surf in Arabian Gulf countries follow the form and predate the American versions by many centuries.

The American Dory Boat was probably derived from the French “Bateau”, which was a flat bottomed, double ended boat of shallow draft. Made from wide timber boards, these were easily constructed and were used extensively on the North American inland waters by Fur traders.

During the colonial wars of the late 17^th century; boat builders and shipwrights were brought inland from the thriving fishing villages of coastal Massachusetts and New Hampshire, to build thousands of these cargo-carrying river craft. When they returned to their home ports after the war, they brought back new designs and boat building techniques. Until this time boat builders along the coast had used traditional techniques and designs imported from their native Great Briton, however the demand for dried cod fish to feed the slave working on sugar plantations in the West Indies, was so great that Boat Builders adapted the bateau’s simpler, quicker to build design, to suit the coastal fishing conditions.

Simon Lowell is credited for designing and producing a craft now known as the Lowell Surf Dory. This had high sides, a rocker “or curved” keel line, with a cut off stern and a v shaped outwardly sloping transom; and it was built of wide boards utilizing the techniques used for building the “bateau”. The Lowell Boat Shop, which still exists today, is also credited with the design of the famous “Banks Dory” which became the principle fishing dingy of the Grand Banks fishing fleet. Hiram Lowell; the founders grandson, simplified the original design and organized a form of production line which saw the Boat Shop building over 1500 of these dories a year. It is said that “A Lowell’s dory to a fisherman was like a hammer to a carpenter”

The design of the Banks Dory boat was a result of fishermen working the “Grand Banks” off Nova Scotia, discovering that the age old method of many men hand lining from the rails of a drifting schooner; was nowhere near as productive, as each schooner setting out a fleet of dories; each with an individual fisherman or perhaps two, covering vastly more territory. The original Lowell design was altered; one alteration was the innovation of the thwart, in the form of the seat, being made removable, thus allowing the Dory Boats to be “stacked” on the decks of the small fishing schooners.

The design became the classic it is today, with the Banks Dory being a highly seaworthy, stable boat capable of carrying large loads and yet being easily handled by one rower.

The Banks Dory is an easy to build and easy to care for rugged boat with plans readily available. It is an ideal project for anyone interests in Wooden Boat Building.

Look Here for easy to follow plans and how to build video.

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