centerboard case, and the stone ballast was floored 

 over in the cockpit. 



Scale of model is 1 inch to the foot, producing a boat 

 26 feet at gvniwale, 8 feet beam, mast 25 feet 6 inches 

 above deck, bowsprit 6 feet outside rabbet, main boom 

 25 feet 9 inches, and gafT 15 feet. The model repre- 

 sents a large boat of the type. 



Model by U. S. Fish Commission. Restored by 

 Merritt Edson, 1958. 



MAINE HAMPTON BOAT, 1879 

 Builder's Half-Model, usnm 54484 



This model represents a small, lapstrake, 2-masted 

 centerboard Hampton boat, a type once popular 

 among fishermen on Casco Bay and along the coast 

 to Muscongus Bay. The half-model, one of the 

 earliest of this type that has been found, is of a boat 

 built some time prior to 1879 at Phippsburg, on the 

 lower Kennebec River, and intended for the inshore 

 fisheries at the mouth of that river. These boats had 

 a great reputation, in the period when sail was used 

 in small fishing craft, for being swift, close-winded, and 

 seaworthv. Thev received their name from the old 



double-ended boats of the type originated at Hampton 

 Beach, New Hampshire; they do not, however, re- 

 semble the old double-ender, being an entirely 

 different form of ijoat. As fishing craft they had long 

 wash boards and, except for a very short stern deck, 

 were rarely otherwise decked, but when built for 

 pleasure craft they had an oval cockpit and a long 

 forward deck. The planking was usually lapstrake, 

 but caravel planking was sometimes employed, and 

 by 1890 was replacing clench work. Typically they 

 had two thwarts with the centerboard case between, 

 oval coamings, a platform over stone ballast, standing 

 rooms formed by pen boards, a fish room amidships, 

 and were fitted with oars and locks or tholes. When 

 gasoline motors first came into use, many Hampton 

 boats, because of their peculiar form could readily be 

 converted from sailing craft to launches. They 

 carried two spritsails, the foresail the larger. The 

 foremast was stepped close to the bow and the foresail 

 had no boom, overlapping the mainsail slightly and 

 sometimes with a short club at the clew; the shorter of 

 the two masts, the mainmast, was stepped close abaft 

 the centerboard case; the mainsail had a boom. 



Muscongus B.w Sloop, i88o. A 

 tvpe of centerboard boat used on 

 the Maine coast in the vicinity of 

 Muscongus Bay. It was a fore- 

 runner of the later and better 

 known Friendship sloop. Rigged 

 model USNM 55795. (.Smith- 

 sonian photo 4^606-c.) 



254 



