Boston at the time was one of a dozen or so scattered villages on the Massachusetts coast in existence for about 10 years. New York was a fur trading outpost at the tip of Manhattan Island. There were scattered fishing villages along the New England coast sending cod back to England and Spain. Paul Revere, the Boston Tea Party and publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense were over 125 years in the future. Marblehead, Massachusetts was then a collection of a few fish houses and small farms.
    This was the England the ancestors of the Stanleys of Southwest Harbor left and the New World at Marblehead they came to in the 1640s. They were forced out of England, "accused of being sheep thieves," said Ralph Stanley. This was a charge that landlords used against those refusing to leave their homes and land under the enclosure laws. In many cases it was land occupied for generations by the evicted families.
    Marblehead was a rough and tumble fishing town. The merchants of Salem wanted this fishing community kept at a distance across the harbor, the Salem side being more focused on merchant shipping, religious fanaticism and witch hunts. The King Phillip's War that brought Indian attacks to many towns on the New England coast would not occur for another 30 years.
    The Stanleys fished out of Marblehead and were among the first to fish out on the Banks. Fishing the Grand Banks was preferred at the time because anchoring on Georges Bank was thought to be too dangerous. They fished the Banks until the 1750s when the French began seizing boats and fishermen. It was at this time that the Stanleys went to Cranberry Island off Mount Desert to fish. In the beginning they fished summers and went back to Marblehead, but by 1763 they had moved their families there permanently. Paul Revere had still not yet taken his famous ride.
    They would eventually move over to Southwest Harbor later in the 1760s, then a cluster of fish houses, barely a fishing village. They continued to fish, build boats and be among the founding fathers of the communities of Mt. Desert Island, indeed founders of the state of Maine, as this was where Maine began, in its coastal villages. Fishing, boatbuilding and lumber were the core of the coastal economy. Cod was caught inshore at that time, then salted and shipped to Boston and Europe. Settlers were just beginning to come into the area from western Maine and New Hampshire.
    In the middle of the 1800s the Stanleys built coasters, fished haddock and shipped fish to the Carribean. They also shipped beach stones to Boston where it was used to pave the streets. The great grandfather of Ralph Stanley was the master of five schooners. They included the 75' mackerel boat S.L. Foster and the Rosella, built at Essex, Mass. in 1840, which carried fish to Boston and cargo back. This boat with a blunt bow and high poop deck, much like the earliest New England boats, was used to handline from the deck.
    Not long ago a lot of Maine fishermen built their own boats. Variations on the lobster boat seemed endless when they were one off projects based on local standards, family tradition or whimsey. The Stanleys are still fishing, sailing and building boats, just what they have done around Southwest Harbor for two and a half centuries.
    One of the most noted, Ralph Stanley, builds boats - wooden lobster boats, sloop boats and yachts in Southwest Harbor. The yachts are often fishing boat designs that he modifies to carry the extra equipment and resulting weight that yachts carry. The underbody of these he modifies to bring the hull up to its waterline. In the last century when practically everything was made of wood, assumptions may have been more common about what was possible with wood. Ralph's boats would have been exceptional then, today they are well beyond that. The skills required to build something with the visual appeal and practical function of one of Ralph's Friendship sloops or more contemporary lobster boats can be difficult to imagine existing in one person. These interlocking skills are a blend of carpentry, architecture, cabinetmaking, art and engineering.
    Ralph, in his understated fashion, said he has "long been interested in floating stuff." After high school he went off to college, but he did not have enough money to finish. Back in Southwest Harbor and wanting a boat, he worked on a sailboat for summer people. During the winter of 1951 he planked up a boat. He recalled that the wood for that boat was sawn from trees salvaged from the great Bar Harbor fire a few years earlier. The boards, he recalled had burned edges. The next winter he had saved enough to put a motor in the boat. Two months later he was asked to build another and he said, "I've been doing it ever since."
    When starting out, he sailed a schooner for 19 years for summer people and built boats the rest of the year. He likes building lobster boats because he can see them being used and appreciated. Another favorite is the sloop boat or Friendship sloop, which was the lobster and fishing boat in the days of sail. He built his first Friendship sloop in 1962 for Reverend Albert Nelson, who still owns and sails the coast in it. In the early 70s he built a sloop boat for himself in the traditional manner right down to the hand spliced and seized rope for block straps. His sloop had no motor or outside ballast. Ballast was beach stones laid into the bilge. The fishermen preferred inside ballast because the boat righted itself slower than with deep outside ballast and the motion was easier on the crew.
    Ralph has built a variety of boats from 47' schooners to a fish class, but mostly lobster boats and Friendship sloops, about 70 in all, some of these were modified for use as pleasure boats. His boats are moored in harbors all along the New England coast. They are in European harbors from the English Channel to Olbia, Sardinia, Italy where the Friendship sloop the Ralph W. Stanley is moored.
    Over the years Ralph has developed various building techniques that make the boats better and last longer. The joints where two pieces of wood meet are like those in fine furniture. The two pieces become one. One of the biggest changes he said, from when he first started building, has been the use of silicon bronze fasteners. When he started building, fishing boats were built with galvanized boat nails, which gave out relatively quickly. He switched to silicon bronze screws on his fifth boat, found they lasted better and kept the boat tighter longer.
    Ralph has built a couple of 44' lobster boats and will be building one this winter. His son Richard has worked with him for years. In addition to 9 employees, Ralph has had students from the Eastport Apprenticeship working at the shop for twenty years. Over the years he has provided a place for about 25 apprentices to get hands-on experience and watch a master wooden boat builder turn a pile of timber and boards into a functional, highly prized, marvel of human ability. When approached to build a boat, Ralph designs it and gives the customer line drawings. From there he builds the boat. His business also maintains boats and does repairs.
    Last September Ralph was in Washington, D.C. to receive a National Heritage Fellowship for boatbuilding. The honor was bestowed on him by First Lady Hillary Clinton. The fellowship is the country's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts from the National Endowment of the Arts. Ralph Stanley also plays the fiddle. And yep, he builds and restores them, too.