Maryland
When I did some research awhile back about the use of loblolly pine in Chesapeake sailing workboats, I looked again through Paula Johnson’s The Workboats of Smith Island [1] and found the photo above and her interviews with Haynie Marshall of Tylerton, one of the three communities of Smith Island, Maryland .
Recently I found this photo in the Edward Thieler Collection at the archives of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM) in St. Michaels, Maryland, in a folder labeled “Haynie Marshall’s Plans”.
Smith Island resident, Haynie Marshall, was born April 20, 1928. He drew this plan for John Rodenhausen, in 2000, at age 76. John launched his skiff in 2001. Marshall died September 4, 2014, age 86.
[Large format photo is here.]
I asked Ed Thieler about it. Was this really drawn by Haynie Marshall?
Ed related that Marshall drew this plan and wrote these instructions on the back of a US Postal Service flat rate envelope, then gave the plan to John Rodenhausen, a close friend of Ed’s, working for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. John used the plan to build his own skiff – Kathy Lynn - the one shown below.
When John learned in 2017 that Ed was working on a model of a Smith Island outboard skiff, he loaned this plan to Ed. Ed used this, and plans by another Smith Island native, Mike Harrison, to produce his model. Ed had scanned a copy of the plan for his records, and that's how I found it in the CBMM archives.
This photo of John Rodenhausen in his skiff Kathy Lynn was taken in 2002 by Karl Willey near the mouth of the Choptank River.
About this photo, John Rodenhausen wrote:
I suggested [to a few friends] that we should gather a few boats and bring Kathy Lynn back to her roots. We gathered at Thomas Point Lighthouse [near Annapolis, Maryland] early on a Saturday morning and ran 3 or 4 skiffs down to Tangier Sound, and Smith Island] . [A distance of about 70 miles, each way !!]
I went to Tylerton and knocked on Haynie’s door. When he answered the door, he had been watching TV in his long pants and suspenders without a shirt. I thanked him for sending me the drawing and told him I had something to show him down at the dock.
After 14 months of construction this was the second most anticipated moment of the project. (The first was how/if the boat would float!).
He walked down the pier, took one look at my boat and said, "Well, that oughta last you a while". Then he turned down toward his house, and I suspect he went back to watching TV. All good and it was good that Kathy Lynn got to see where her roots were from.
References
[1] Johnson, Paula J. The Workboats of Smith Island. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1997.