photos circa 1970     photos in 2002    

SOME OF THE OTHER BOATS BUILT FROM THIS MODEL:

William Frost built Merganser around 1947 or 48. He had retired in 1946, already over age 70, but he just couldn't stay away from the boats, they say. The story of Merganser goes this way:

Lyman "Gus" Alley was a longtime friend of Will Frost - in fact, Frost had lived with the Alley family when he first came to Maine from Nova Scotia. Well, in the late 1940s, Gus Alley stopped in for a visit when he heard about Frost's retirement, and he asked Frost to build him just one more boat before totally packing up shop. But Frost declined, even when Gus offered him $500 more than the cost of the boat (the cost of a boat being about $3,000 at the time). As time went by, other people came along wanting Frost boats, too, including Henry and Bob Dyer of Chebeague Island, ME.

So before long, itching got to scratching, and Will Frost whittled himself a new model, which would be called Merganser.

At the time Frost was building Merganser for the Dyers, he called up Alley and told him, "I've got the creme-de-la-creme of all my boats here - you'd better come take a look at it." (Meanwhile, at the same time Frost was telling the Dyers that the boat would be the ruin of him, because it was such a tub, wider than anything he'd built before, and no one would want to buy boats from him again.)

Alley came for a look and ordered one - the boat which would become his famed Leonard W. Other boat lovers and connisseurs did the same - and Frost's first retirement was over. (He ended up building close to 100 more boats before his actual retirement.)

To say the least, Frost's Merganser model boats were probably the sweetest, most graceful lobster-style boats to sail the waters of Maine. As writer Paul Lazarus stated in a 1989 article for National Fisherman,

"Frost's Merganser model is thought by many who have seen her to be one of the finest power boat hulls ever conceived."

Merganser worked for many years as a masterful fishing boat off Jeffries Ledge. In 1969, Carroll Lowell bought and rebuilt her, outfitting her as a pleasure craft. He also took her lines, referencing Merganser's fine proportions for the design of his Osprey model (detailed above). The Merganser and Osprey models have been highly popular over the years, and we continue to build these boats for discerning owners who want to share in a beautiful piece of Maine's nautical history.

See Merganser's new cabin!

OTHER PHOTOS OF MERGANSER & REPLICA BOATS: