(no subject)

Mr. Ken Harris,

I talked to John Booris again this morning who reminded me to write you some remembrances of my Grandfather's boatyard in Winthrop MA, "W. J. Reid & Sons" or "Reid's Boatyard".

  I am the youngest (of three) sons of James Reid and grew up in the 32 Woodside Park house, belonging to my parents. I was born in 1952 and lived there until moving here to Wilmington, NC in late 1975. Of course the boatyard was long since sold during my lifetime but I was very aware of the family history and the operations of that remaining facility with Walter Baker and one or more still functioning railways. Enhancing the impressionable mystique of the property, as I became increasingly interested in wooden boatbuilding between ages 15 and 20, my dad and I often visited Walter Baker, or borrowed big tools from him. I was very impressed with the man, strong, with big hands and, as I recall, continuously hauling boats every winter, for storage on the property. Each boat had it's own custom fitted wooden cradle to support it, which would be sunk as the railway lowered into the water, and then the boat and cradle would be dragged across the yard property to it's winter storage location. There were big winches for the railway, with 3/4" D steel cables, which he would pull out to various snatch block locations for this dragging. This is very dangerous work, as I now know very well and was first exposed to during my two years on tugs and dredges with Perini Construction in Boston Harbor. But he did it flawlessly for years, alone as far as I knew.

Another story about Walter Baker was for my 16^th birthday. I had spent a few months jacking up and patching below the waterline of an abandoned 40 ft lobster boat I was salvaging off the hide tide mark from a rocky East Boston beach, just over the bridge, across from the old boatyard property. I had found an old cradle for it on Snake Island which I had towed home and weighted down on the beach in front of my folks house. Then, timing it for the highest tide of the month, at midnight on the night of my 16^th birthday, my father got Walter Baker to help tow it off and home for me with his 40 ft workboat.

Within the WJ Reid boatyard business, my father James was the youngest of three sons and consequently had much less experience building boats because he went toWW ll at an early age. I seem to remember the family story of his being only 17 when he enlisted but that doesn't work out with his being born in 1920. I also know he graduated from WHS and then went to some prep school for a time (was it Andover?). When he came back from the war the yard had been sold. The other brothers stayed working at the boat yard throughout the war. In addition to some acquaintance from WHS he also got to know my mother well while she worked at the WJR boatyard. My mother worked there as a draftsman assistant (drafting), although she had been a botany major at Wellesly. I don't know if she ever helped with lofting (which is drafting the lines of the vessel to be built full size) but the yard had a huge well lit lofting floor upstairs where men drew every vessel, for taking off the patterns.

Bob the oldest son got some money from the sale of the yard and bought a property in Kennebunkport, where he built some boats and had a small marina.

My other Uncle Willis, who had been the general manager of the WJR yard, also bought property after the sale, a small boat repair business in Meridith, NH. My grandparents retired from Willis Ave to Meredith, NH and consequently we saw much more of my Uncle Willis and his family. Willis Jr lived with us in Winthrop for a couple of years, when I was about 20-22 yrs old. I was very serious by then about learning to build a real boat, and had underway a 12 ft Spurling rowing tender upstairs in a big room overlooking Boston Harbor when he came to live with us. I learned a lot from him. He was much more knowledgeable about boatbuilding than my father, and he and I palled around a lot, doing many trips together to buy boat parts, or lumber or just to go to Marblehead to walk boatyards and talking about the aspects of design of the boats we looked at. My uncle Willis was much more instructive about boats and boatbuilding than anyone else in my life at that time. I knew well that he had been the manager of the big yard and had personally gone to DC many times to negotiate contracts to build military vessels during the war. I talked to him a lot about getting a "place" to do boat work together but we never could. And he moved back to NH before I moved to NC.

I have a photo dated 1937 of a big wooden sailing vessel under construction, from above as they are building the deck framing. There in the photo is the very large 1/2" Stanley drill that I was given by my father. I have several meaningful tools like that from both my father and my Uncle Willis.

This is a first attempt at putting down my memories of the yard but feel free to write or ask additional questions if you wish.

Richard Reid

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Richard Reid www.reidboat.com