Six Generations of Boatbuilding

Maine is blessed with a pantheon of top-notch builders of working boats, but few have the legacy of the Lowell family, which extends beyond commercial fishing boats to yachts and government vessels. They are the descendants of William (Will) Frost, widely regarded as the inventor of the iconic Maine lobsterboat, and his grandsons also became noted boatbuilders and designers. They, and most of the region’s powerboat builders, have been influenced in some way by Frost’s signature semi-displacement, semi-planing hull.

Jamie Lowell, one of Frost’s great-grandsons, has become something of a curator of his family’s 400-year boatbuilding legacy, along with his wife, Ruth, and other family members. Their legacy, which continues to this day, has stretched from Nova Scotia to southern New England—but it is centered in Maine. They sat down with me on a bleak winter day early this year in the library of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, to discuss the Lowell dynasty.

The Godfather

Originally from Maine, the Frost branch of the family moved to Nova Scotia as Loyalists after the American Revolutionary War, but shipbuilding was always part of their heritage. The modern era begins with Will Frost, who was born in 1874 on Digby Neck, Nova Scotia; his grandfathers on both sides had been shipwrights.

Jamie says Frost learned boatbuilding from his grandfather and father, and his first boat was a 26' sloop called IMITATOR, but the prospects of engine power quickly captured his attention. “When he was 18, he visited his sister in Boston, and while there he first saw the early make-and-break engines and their marine use,” he says.

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