Banks Dory - Production

Production

The Banks dory type is very simple and efficient to produce making them well suited to mass production. By 1880, Bank dories were being built in large numbers in the Massachusetts towns of Gloucester, Beverly, Essex, Newburyport, and Salisbury (Amesbury). Other major areas of production included Seabrook, New Hampshire; Lunenburg, Nova Scotia; Shelburne, Nova Scotia and both Portland and Bremen, Maine. Salisbury alone had 7 shops producing between 200 and 650 boats a year. The firm of Higgins and Giford of Gloucester advertised in 1886 that it had built over 3,000 dories in the preceding 13 years. Founded in 1793, Lowell's Boat Shop of Amesbury Massachusetts is the oldest continuously operating boat shop in United States. It the first to build these boats in large numbers and excelled at their mass production. In the year 1911 Lowell's Boat Shop produced 2029 dories, averaging 7 dories a working day. A National Landmark and working museum, Lowell's Boat Shop continues to build its dories and skiffs in the Lowell tradition to this day.

In Nova Scotia, the towns of Lunenburg and Shelburne maintained a rivalry in mass production of dories. A distinction emerged in 1887 with the use in Shelburne of "dory clips", metal braces used to join frames, versus the more expensive but stronger natural wood frames used in Lunenburg dories. The John Williams Dory Shop in Shelburne was one of several Shelburne factories mass producing dories. It is now the Dory Shop Museum, operated by the Nova Scotia Museum and continues to produce banks dories for local and visiting customers.