Rhode Island Boat Builders Project

The Rhode Island Boat Builders Project will bring to light the stories of boat builders across the state, from the eighteenth century until now. New research on different builders will be posted to this blog approximately every month, and we welcome additional information or insights. 
Francis Frost, IYRS Maritime Library

Frederic S. Nock                                                                             EAST GREENWICH

The motor launch bumped dully against the dock pilings and the small crew, barely visible in the dim light from the shrouded lanterns, leaned over the sides, straining as they passed the heavy boxes to the men on the dock. On this night, 21 December 1923, the weather was warmer than it had been for months and sweat ran down their faces as they moved the boxes along the dock to the waiting truck.

150 of these boxes - cases of liquor picked up from a ship just beyond the three-mile limit - had been unloaded from the motorboat onto this East Greenwich dock, and many of them had been packed onto the truck, when suddenly car headlights were seen and shouts heard. The crew of the motorboat threw off the lines and the boat pulled sharply away into the darkness of Greenwich Bay, while the truck, only partly full, sped away from the water - and the Federal prohibition agents running down the dock. Six other men arriving on the scene in cars and a truck a few minutes later were less lucky and were all arrested and the liquor on the dock seized.

Scenes like this were common along the quiet coves and docks of Narragansett Bay during the early years of prohibition - although the majority of liquor smuggling attempts at this time were successful - but the irony of this particular one was that it occurred at the shipyard of Frederic S. Nock. In business at this location in East Greenwich since 1902, Nock specialized in power boats and cruisers, and less than two years after this night’s events would be busy building five 36’ picket boats for the Coast Guard, part of the government’s efforts to try and stem the coastal “rum running” trade.

Of course, there would have been a certain number of men interested in seeing exactly what type of boat was being built for the government, powered by exactly what type of engine, thinking no doubt how they might commission one, just a little faster, for themselves. And Nock, like most other boat builders at this time, would have been happy for the business, and pleased to have another client for a large, fast boat - whatever they might decide to use it for.

Born in Birmingham, England, in 1871, the son of a skilled metal worker, Frederic Nock and his family emigrated to the United States in the mid-1880s, settling in Providence where Nock, his two brothers and father, all worked at the Gorham silver factory. His family remained in this field (one brother, Leo, becoming a successful sculptor) however Frederic was drawn to the water. He studied naval architecture in the mid-1890s, was a member of the Rhode Island Yacht Club by 1898, worked as a yacht broker, and by 1901 had designed a one-design class that was being built by the Holmes Shipbuilding Company in Mystic, Connecticut. He must have been successful in these endeavors, for in 1902 he purchased the yard formerly owned by the John Saunders Marine Railway Company in East Greenwich; just under 3 acres at the foot of Division Street, with over 800 feet of frontage on Greenwich Bay.

Even at this early stage in his career Nock was drawn to power boats, and he was additionally sure of his knowledge and a good self-promoter. In 1903, Rudder magazine published his article “Power from a Designer’s Standpoint”, in which he goes into detail about the importance of engine weight, propeller shape, and hull design when designing a “faster launch”. He would continue providing articles and, more frequently, boat designs to the principal motorboat and yachting magazines throughout his career.

A 1907 advertisement gives a good sense of the range of boats he was designing and building; “Speed and Cruising Power Boats, Built under Guaranteed Speed, Designer and Builder of all Types of Sail and Power Yachts, Hunting Cabin Cruising Launches for Offshore Work a Speciality, Quotations made for Hull, or with Engine and Full Equipment, Ready for Cruising.” In 1908 he built the 57’ power cruise Annaweta, which was featured on the cover of Motor Boating magazine in October and described in detail over numerous pages.

Larger vessels appear to have been an increasing part of his operation; 60’ power cruiser Madegare II followed in 1910, 75’ Archelus in 1911, and 60’ cruiser Artmar in 1912.

However, Nock was still building a wide variety of smaller boats during this period, such as the tender shown in the following plan (one from a group of 21 in the IYRS Maritime Library collection), and even as late as 1923 he built at least six Star Class yachts for local Narragansett Bay clubs.

In 1912 his article  "The Trend in Motor Boat Design" discusses in some detail “the new boats being turned out by the best known naval architects today”. It is interesting to read the observations on these design points from someone so closely involved in the business, and so is worth quoting at length;

“…starting with the fast runabouts we see the clean-cut hull with plumb stem, rather straight sheer, liberal freeboard, and a transom, either of the V type or slightly rounded. The sections do not differ greatly from those of the past two seasons although there is evidence of an inclination to increase the flare of the forward sections and tumble home to a greater extent the after sections. The rudder is carried outboard and the steering lines where they are accessible. The engines are nearer the center of buoyancy, and the tanks, instead of being carried aft or forward, are set nearer amidship. A hood protects the engine and there is evidence of marked improvement in the layout of the controls, etc., on the bulkhead. Spray and windshields, similar to those used on autos but made to drop into pockets or fold down on deck, are shown on most of these boats.”
(Motor Boating, December 1912)

 

As well as building his own designs, the Nock yard also built for other designers, including William H. Hand, John Alden, and J. Murray Watts. In 1918 the yard is recorded as building a 110' clipper bowed schooner of Alden’s design, in 1921 Hand’s 48’ express cruiser Owaissa, and in 1924 Alden’s 40’ yawl Amrita.

Successes continued; in 1921 Nock built the 93’ twin screw cruiser Roamer and 77’ Topaz, his boats continued to be featured in all the principal boating magazines (50 were featured in Rudder over the years), and the business grew as more middle-class Americans began to buy yachts and motor boats for the first time. However, Nock’s health began to fail in the early 1920s, and in 1923 he brought in Walter McInnis as general manager. McInnis had many years experience with the George Lawley Shipyard in Neponset, Massachusetts, was particularly adept at power boat design, and would have been an ideal fit for Nock’s yard which was well-known for its high-performance and well-made boats.

As mentioned at the start of this blog, Nock, like most  boat builders at the time would have been building boats that were used in smuggling alcohol, however in early 1924, Nock was one of a group of boatbuilders chosen by the US Coast Guard to build 36’ picket boats. Nock built five. Described by the Providence Journal in July 1924 as “the greatest squadron of whiskey boat chasers that thus far has been turned loose by the government”, the newspaper went on to say that “At present the eyes of both the coast guard and of the rum-runners are turned, impatiently and anxiously, according to their sentiments, upon the F.S. Nock boatyard at East Greenwich.”

On 17 May 1925, Frederic Nock died, and on 1 June Walter McInnis resigned, lured back to the Lawley shipyard in the position of general manager. Despite the recent activity at Nock’s, there was insufficient business to keep the yard, with its 75 employees, in operation and in July the following year the entire yard was put up for sale at auction; “…2.86 acres with frontage of 849 on Greenwich Bay…Large construction shed, storage buildings, machine shop, lumber sheds, blacksmith shop, paint shop, watchman’s quarters, wood working shop, well-appointed office and drafting room, etc…” A few days before the auction was to take place, however, a little-known  boat builder from South Boston, Charles Bent, bought the yard.

Bent kept the business going for some years, under the F.S. Nock name, however by 1935 he was advertising a half interest for sale, and in April 1939 the yard was purchased by a group of Providence businessmen and yacht owners, and the name changed to Harris and Parsons, Inc.

As a footnote to this short overview of Frederic Nock’s impressive career, it is interesting to follow the ownership of the yard through the decades since. Harris & Parsons were active boat builders for the Navy during World War II but sold the yard in 1946, and from then until 1957 it was named the Greenwich Bay Shipyard. The property was owned for a few years by H. Bentley Clark, and from 1959 to 1966 it was the American Boatbuilding Corporation, and a very active yard. Frank Norton took the business over in 1966 after closing his yard in Newport, and Norton Marina remained in business until 2016. Prime Marine East Greenwich, and Greenwich Cove Marina, brings the maritime history of this location up to the present day.

IIlustrations
a) Postcard of the Nock yard, c1912
b) 36' Coast Guard Picket Boat, Motor Boating, January 1925
c) Portrait from "The History of the State of Rhode Island", c1920
d) Postcard of the Nock yard, c1906
e) 'Annaweta', Motor Boating, October 1908
f) Frederic S. Nock ad, local directory, 1909
g) "Boat No. 348", ink plan, IYRS Maritime Library
h) Nock at drafting table, Motor Boating, December 1912
i) 'Owaissa", Motor Boating, January 1921
j) Nock Boats ad, Motor Boating, January 1924
k) F. S. Nock, one of the last ads, Motor Boat, September 1926

Luke Bliven                                                                                                                     NEWPORT

On Spring Wharf in Newport in the late nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth, opposite the bottom of Pope Street and where Casey’s Marina now operates, Luke Bliven was one of the busiest boat builders in the city.

Bliven was born in 1826, and grew up in Providence. He left school at age 10, and spent the next six years working with his father, who had served on whaling ships in his youth and at that time was working as a master of packet boats running between Providence and New York.

At age 16 Bliven was apprenticed to boat builder Thomas Thurston, at Fox Point Wharf in Providence, however a year later he moved to Newport and began working as a carpenter. A few years after this, in about 1846, he
returned to boat building, going to work for the Newport boat builders Silas and Joseph Cottrell, who he remained with for the next ten years or so.

Bliven first begins to appear in the annual Newport city directories on his own account in the 1860s, initially listed as a carpenter, by 1878 as a provider of “pleasure boats”, and from 1884 as a boat builder based on Spring Wharf. He remained in business at this location until his death in 1907, when the operation was taken over by his son Walter who carried it on until 1920.

Reports in the Newport newspapers during the 1880s and 1890s give an interesting picture of the activity of local boat builders, most of them clustered to the north along Long Wharf and in the Point, but a few others further afield, like Bliven who was described in 1891 as a builder “who almost has a monopoly of the boat business in the southern section of the city.”

The variety of boats he built was wide. In 1885 he built a 24’ Lake Como-style boat for T. W. Phinney who planned to sail her on Almy pond a few miles away; “a flower garden, of plants in pots, will occupy the stern-sheets, an awning over the centre of the boat furnishes the accommodation for her owner and friends.” The following year he built at least three cat boats over 20’; in 1891 he built an 18’ catboat for the Rose Island lighthouse keeper, an 18’ yawl for the city engineer’s office, a 15’ double-end lapstrake surf boat for the Point Judith rescue station, as well as two catboats for Block Island customers, “both these boats are able-looking crafts for their size, and are fitted with very heavy shoes, which give their prows a ram-like appearance.” In 1893 he built a 38’ auxiliary sloop and at least two catboats, including the 32’ (13’ beam) Hazel.

Bliven also ran a busy boat storage business, and over the winter of 1885-1886 for example, he had  “no less than eighty boats of all kinds hauled up on the wharf, and in his buildings.” A few years later he had built a new boathouse; “38 by 50 feet on the ground and two and a half stories high, which affords him more room than any other shop in the city. The upper portions used for storing small boats and yacht supplies, of which he has every winter a large number, as his place, Spring wharf, is the popular place for laying up, the entire south side of the dock both land and water being taken up with cats and yachts.”

Over the years he had between three and ten employees at a time working for him, and he appears to have remained busy, and adaptable, even as the boatbuilding trade in Newport was declining. In February 1899 it was reported that he was building “a centreboard half-rater for his own use. This is apparently the only sailboat now under construction in Newport”, and in 1900 he was fitting out a new 37’ foot electric launch, the framework of which had been built in St Louis."

Bliven died in October 1907 at age 82, and the Newport Mercury eulogized that “Probably no person was better known to all yachtsmen and mariners than Captain Bliven. He was one of the best known boatmen in the city and up to within a short time was able to be at his boat shop on Spring wharf, which was a favorite spot for men to congregate and spend heir spare time listening to interesting stories told them by the Captain.”

After his son Walter’s death in 1920 the business closed, and Tallman and Mack Fish and Trap Company began operations on the wharf, with new buildings at the far western end. They remained in business at this location until 1998, and the wharf is now occupied by Casey’s Marina. However, just to the east of IYRS’s Brooks Building at the end of the wharf, there is a short alleyway and a reminder of Luke Bliven’s history at this location.

Illustrations:
Newport City Directory
H. F. Walling Newport County map, 1850
Sanborn Fire Insurance map, 1884
Newport City Directory

Newspaper references:
Newport Mercury
Newport Daily News
© 2024 Francis Frost. All rights reserved.