No-Name - Lobster Boat - Built for Harvard Riley Beal

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No-Name - Lobster Boat - Built for Harvard Riley Beal

Chester Eben Clement (1881-1937) designed and built the vessel from a half-model for Harvard Riley Beal in 1931. He built the boat in 21 days. It was fished by Harvard Riley Beal and then by Chester Warren Stanley. It never had a name.

"Chester [Clement] did build fishing boats, too, including a thirty-four-footer for Harvard Beal in 1931, one that my father owned later. Around that time, Harvard had an older boat that was leaking quite badly. He was fishing off Mount Desert Rock and he decided he needed something newer, so he came in and ordered one. Twenty-one days later, he was back off the Rock in his new boat, fishing. She had a Van Blerk in her. That was a" popular marine engine at the time, quite big and powerful. She'd go good with it. Harvard had her until 1935 or '36, when my father bought her.

They had built her quick and had nailed the planks in the hull right to the floor timbers. Coming in from Mount Desert Rock one time, Harvard gave her a pounding and pulled a nail right through one of the planks. My father had that hole plugged when he owned the boat, but every once in a while she'd work and the nail head would push the plug out and she'd start leaking again. Finally, he had to nail a lath over that plug to hold it in. It was still there when he sold her.

My father owned that thirty-four-footer for thirty-five years or more. He'd had new floor timbers put in her because he was going haking in her and needed the platform solid to hold the weight of the catch. That's what probably saved her." - “Ralph Stanley : Tales of a Maine Boatbuilder” by Craig S. Milner and Ralph W. Stanley, published by Down East Books, Camden, Maine 2004, p. 41-42.

Chester Warren Stanley owned the boat and fished from it from 1935 to 1961.