Pocomoke Shipbuilding • Vane Brothers - Chesapeake Bay ...

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“From cranes and front-end loaders
to delicate carving knives, we used
everything we needed to use.”
Photo by Bill Thompson
A crane lowers the Katherine M. Edwards into the water as celebrants
watch from Dickson’s dock during her christening May 27.
early 1970s to build the Spirit of Wye Town, a log canoe they
campaigned on the race circuit for several years. They started
Katherine in 1980 gathering logs from around Talbot County,
“but then we took a 17-year hiatus,” he says.
Hawkinson, a retired gynecologist, says the Katherine,
a sweet-looking vessel with mahogany topsides and patent
stern, took so long to build “because we were occupationally
handicapped. We had jobs.”
Neither man has engineering training, but both have an eye
for detail. Dickson says he used “computer assisted design”
to build both boats, “with the computer being the brain.”
Back in the woods on his 37-acre property is Dickson’s
“workshop,” the barn-sized building where
Katherine spent her formative years. It is almost
as much a museum as it is a very large
workspace. The walls are covered with artifacts
of the boat-building trade. Axe heads,
some dating back more than 400 years, are
tacked up in a random display. Ships’ tackle
and fittings hang from the rafters.
Dickson opens some of the tool chests
used regularly in the building of the bugeye
to show the intricate workmanship of the boxes
within boxes. A library of rare and arcane
books on Chesapeake boatbuilding is tucked
in a sawdust-covered corner.
The wooden half-models that he made to
build the Katherine shine with an oft-handled
glow. The models are better than drawn plans,
he says.
“You can hold them and turn them in your
hands and visualize what you are making.”
Taking measurements from the model,
carved on a three-quarter-inch to one-foot
scale, gave Dickson and Hawkinson the dimensions
they needed to cut the wood to build
the boat.
Another friend and craftsman, Ellicot “Mac”
MacConnell, is building the yawl boat for the
Katherine out of an old wooden sailing pram
and a 60-horse Yamaha outboard. He and Dickson
joke as he shapes the decking for the small
boat that will push the engineless bugeye.
The building of the Katherine has been a
community effort, Dickson says, with volunteers
donating time and material for her construction. The 50foot
foremast and 55-foot main were shaped by volunteers
from the Alexandria Seaport. Old and new tools were loaned
and donated.
“We used only the tools that worked,” Dickson says.
“From cranes and front-end loaders to delicate carving
knives, we used everything we needed to use.”
He says that the simple beauty of the vessel has attracted
people to help build her.
“These boats were built as work platforms,” he says. “But
yachtsmen recognized them as being good-looking boats. I
just had an urge to bring it back.”