Lash Brothers Boats

by Mike Crowe

In memory of Winfield Lash 1918 - 2015

Transom of the 42' Atkins cedar on oak schooner Winfield Lash built in 1982. Impressed with Winfield and the Lash brothers workmanship and generosity, the owner who contracted the project named the boat after Winfield Lash. Fishermen’s Voice photo

This story originally appeared in the June 2000 edition of the Fishermen’s Voice. Winfield’s son Wesley Lash passed away in March 23, 2013. His son Wesley Jr., continues the Lash family boat building tradition at the family boat shop in Friendship, Maine.

Friendship, Maine is known to some for the sloop boat named after it. A design attributed to Wilbur Morse who lived nearby and slid out the first of them at the turn of the last century. Fishermen who trawl or drag are more likely to know Friendship as the home of Lash Brothers Boats where some of the biggest and most rugged wood trawlers and draggers have been built since the end of World War II. From the 110' Jane Ursula, the largest scallop dragger on the east coast to the 70' Walter Alden Leeman Sr., the swordboat on which the now well-known Linda Greenlaw learned so well the longlining of swordfish. Many of the Lash Brothers boats were in the 50' to 70' range.

Today the yard is run by Wesley Lash, who recalled recently that all but two of the boats built in the 22 years he worked there with his father were drawn by his father, Winfield Lash. On a recent visit to Winfield’s office, just days before his 82nd birthday, he was working on drawings for a 290' ship.

The Lash family has been building and sailing boats out of the Friendship area for many generations. Their particular experiences over the years may have had some influence on the type of boat the Lash Brothers built. Winfield’s father sailed a coastwise schooner, the 80' Lillian, carrying cargo, which included regular trips to Brennen and Morrill (B&M Beans) in Portland with molasses, beans and equipment. Winfield’s grandfather was a mate on a deepwater ship. He met his wife in Washington, D.C. She was half Choctaw and had relatives who had signed the Declaration of Independence. Winfield has said his mother’s side of the family were boatbuilders and his father’s side, seamen.

Winfield, after working in his uncle’s boat shop, worked at the Camden Shipyard during World War II, building large ocean-going tugs, the 165' variety, and rescue boats for the government. It was the largest wooden shipyard in the United States at the time. Later during the war he worked at the Waldoboro Shipyard building tugs. After the war in the early 1950s, Winfield worked at Billings in Stonington, building 63' crash boats used to rescue aircraft downed at sea. The Air Force and the Navy were involved in the original order of 60 boats, but wrangling between the two branches of the military led to the order dropping to 48, then to 36. Meanwhile, various contractors had come up with materials and parts for the larger order. There were in the end 27 boats built, but the surplus materials and equipment generated had to be sold for 10 cents on the dollar. That may be why people good at business are called businessmen, and government agents trying to do business are called something else.

The connection to big offshore boats, the Lash family contacts with fishing boats going back to 1754 when they came from Germany, Winfield’s experience building massive hulls for government contracts and his enthusiasm for engineering, may in part explain why he liked building big fishing boats and why he was so good at it.

After the war, Winfield bought his uncle’s shop, W.S. Carter Boats in Friendship and soon Winfield’s brother Doug was a partner. The Carter family had built boats on Bremen Long Island for many years. Other brothers and relatives would work at the shop. Wes recalled seven uncles working there at one time in the late 1950s. They were building larger boats from the beginning, 50' to 70' draggers and trawlers. Over the years they also built about 100 lobster boats, about a dozen sailboats, sport-fishing boats and the Dirigo.

The Friendship sloop Dirigo was built in 1963 for the Sprouls of Searsmont. It won the Governor’s Cup and Governor Reid of Maine arranged to have it sent to the World’s Fair in New York as part of the Maine exhibit.

Winfield is also an expert draftsman and naval architect. He has drawn boats for Harvey Gamage, Newbert Wallace, Billings and others. Wesley said the only two boats Winfield did not draw were a Pete Culler schooner and an Atkins schooner. According to the owner, he trimmed up the Atkins lines a bit, too.

Winfield has drawn (done lines drawings on) many old boats, some were the boats his father sailed. In this way, he’s doing the kind of historic preservation work that Howard Chappelle, who Winfield knew, had done so much of to save the history of boat and shipbuilding in America.

Winfield recorded the building of the last boat he built, the 56' Anna-Lena in 1984, by photographing the process from the sawing of logs to finishing off the hull. This was the first time he had done anything like this while building a boat. But it’s an indication of his interest in the process, an interest in preserving knowledge of his version of the process, and a dedication to rugged quality craftsmanship. This dedication produced a respect in owners who came back for more boats.

Wesley Lash carries the skills learned from his father, who learned them in a part of the industry that no longer exists. Lash Brothers, like most yards these days, builds glass boats, but Wesley welcomes the opportunity to put his wooden boat building skills into projects.

The original shop burned in 1988. Winfield regularly draws boats at his office near the old shop site and goes to the new shop where his son and grandson are building several boats.