Sharpies, Anyone?

[HenryC]

I'm currently researching an article on Florida Sharpies for Florida Wildlife magazine.  If you have any material or anecdotes about these classic American working boats that you'd be willing to share with me, I'd would be much obliged.

Sharpies were very popular working boats in late 19th and early 20th century Florida, although they originally evolved from the New Haven sharpie, a boat developed by oystermen in Connecticut in the early and mid 1800s.  Variants of the sharpie can be found all over the USA and even the world, as small (under 50 feet) fishermen, yachts, cargo vessels and packets.  The French Navy even armed one and used it as a revenue cutter.  They were known for their shoal draft, ease of construction, speed, ease of handling by small crews, and ability to carry enormous loads for their size.  They were characterized by being light, narrow-beam, double-ended, flat-bottomed, hard chine,  low-freeboard centerboard boats with unstayed masts, usually rigged as cat sloops or yawls. However, they were produced in many variants and adapted easily to a variety of environments and missions.  Although designed primarily for bay and coastal work, they were known for being extremely fast and weatherly craft in light air and capable of holding their own in rough weather offshore with heavier, deeper-draft vessels.

They played a major role in the development of the Florida frontier until the widespread introduction of  gasoline engines in the early 20th century.   Today, the sharpie design influence can still be seen in the Florida Mullet Skiff, a common professional motor fishing craft seen primarily on Tampa Bay.  Sharpies are prized by collectors, and are popular among antique  boat buffs and clubs in France and Great Britain as well as the US, and plans for modern variants are easily obtainable..

If you've got any sharpie tall  tales, pass em on! My own boat, when I sailed in Tampa, was a San Francisco Pelican. Not a sharpie by any means, but it shared enough features with them that old timers would often come up to me and remark on the similarities, and wax nostalgic about the old days of sailing Florida.

[Billy]

This is pretty good.

[Bob23]

Henry:
   Sorry, no info but I did own a Seapearl 21 for a few years. I believe the design was a workboat design by Hereshoff. Carpenters dory rings a bell but I could be wrong.
   San Francisco Pellican: Not the same Pelican that an article in Small Craft Advisor ran about 2 years ago about  those boat hippies built and sailed to Hawaii?
   I do have a copy of the Sharpie Book by Reuel Parker who some consider the pope of Sharpie-dom.
Best, Bob23

[HenryC]

I've got Parker's book on Sharpies, as well as the relevant chapter on sharpies in Chapelle's "American Small Sailing Craft".  I also located Munroe's biography (he was the Florida pioneer who introduced the sharpie design to South Florida in the 1880s, and it spread throughout the state from there).  He built or designed 50 some boats, mostly small cargo boats, and six of them were based on the sharpie concept.  I find this period particularly fascinating since both of my grandfathers settled in Tampa around that time, and I had an uncle who was a crabber there.

Yep, it's the same Pelican those hippies sailed to Hawaii.  And I have no doubt it would make it, either, providing you could load enough food and water aboard to get you there.  They probably had one of the larger versions with the cabin, the Pelican is available in 12, 16 and 18 foot versions, the latter two have cabins.  They are all incredibly seaworthy.

My own love-letter to my Pelican is available online, the article I wrote for Good Old Boat.  A Pelican builder has made the pdf available on his website.  Pelican was a dory-pram with a standing lug cat rig, a bowsprit and reaching jib.  Very 18th century...Check out the article, you'll see what I looked like 35 years ago, when I was a boat hippie.

http://www.platypusboats.com/f/GOB_MJ06_Pelican.pdf

[Billy]

sorry the link didn't post.

http://www.landsendmarina.info/mills.html

it's about Clark Mills and his sharpie designed windmill.

[HenryC]

Thanks!  I had no idea both the Optimist and the Windmill could be traced back to sharpies, and knowing Clark Mills was an old Florida boy, he must have remembered sharpies from their heyday and learned much from their original concept. That's going to be incorporated into the article.  Considering those two very popular one-designs, I guess you can say the sharpie is still #1 in Florida.