GRANDY BOAT COMPANY
In 1903 Lewis Lee Grandy left Seattle’s Meadheart & Stone shipbuilders to strike out on his own. Operating a small shop within the vast buildings of Tacoma’s Puget Sound Iron & Steel, Lewis built the 8-14 foot clinker rowing skiffs then much in demand. He also built launches that Thea Foss and her sons used to supply fresh food to the sailing ships struggling through Puget Sound’s fickle winds. As soon as engine size allowed, those launches began towing ships into Tacoma, giving birth to the now international Foss Maritime towing company.
Five years later Charlie Taylor suggested a partnership building bigger vessels, leading Lewis to move his family to nearby Vashon Island where he and Charlie built skiffs, sail boats, and as the market developed, the new “raised deck” cruisers becoming popular with Puget Sound sportsmen. Essentially, 30 foot plus sailboat hulls powered by single cylinder engines, the cruisers usually had bunks, a stove and an open aft cockpit suitable for shooting ducks and drinking whiskey. Raised decks afforded a measure of luxury over the usual open skiffs, and the gas engines, while not especially reliable, were a great gift in the light winds of Puget Sound. Still, the 40’ Kingcole, built by Taylor & Grandy in 1911 has a mast stump in place, indicating that at least one owner backed his motor with an auxiliary sail rig.
Taylor and Grandy built at least four raised deck cruisers, the last being the 26’ double ender, the GloryBe, launched in 1914 for L.A. Jacox of Tacoma. Powered by a 16 h.p. Eastern Standard single cylinder gas engine, the efficient hull was capable of cruising at 7 knots. In and around school, Lewis’ two sons, Willard (Bill) and Earl learned the boat trade from their father and Charlie Taylor. Perhaps more important, they absorbed an ethic for hard work, long hours and unmatched craftsmanship immediately clear to anyone who ever worked at the Grandy Boat Company.
With the outbreak of World War I, significant naval defense money flowed into the Bremerton Naval Shipyard. Lewis moved from Vashon to Bremerton in 1917 where he and sons worked for good wages. Using his savings, Earl Grandy purchased a floating boatyard (possibly a former Boeing yard) in 1922. Mooring it on the Northwest corner of Seattle’s Lake Union, he opened the Grandy Boat Company as a repair facility. Brother Bill soon joined the business and success enabled them to purchase adjoining lakeside property complete with a haul out railway. Grandy Boat Company then competed with Blanchard, Vic Franck and Lake Union Drydock as a bonafide boat yard, quickly establishing a reputation for fast work of the highest quality.
While the prohibition years brought good money repairing fast runabouts, the yard’s bread and butter came from a steady production of skiffs and small boats. Legend holds that Bill Grandy, working alone, could complete a lap strake skiff in one day, and whether true or not, the yard produced hundreds of skiffs, which remained affordable even during the depths of the Depression. As late as the 1940s, Grandy skiffs sold for $3 a foot.
During the late 1930s, the Grandys began building power cruisers to the designs of Ed Monk who had established a drafting office in the yard. Monk had begun as a shipwright at the Blanchard yard, earned his naval architect credentials and went on to a long career designing a broad range of Northwest vessels constructed by Grandy and others.
Building upon experience gained building the Monk cruisers, the Grandy yard won many World War II military contracts. From skiffs to 40’ patrol to workboats, they built hundreds of military vessels. Like all the Seattle yards, they came out of the war years with a new level of financial security plus the tooling and knowledge for new directions. For example, despite the yard’s expertise with clinker skiffs, they were quick to embrace the “high tech” pre-formed Weldwood molded small boat hulls as a significant step away from leaky, high maintenance runabouts.
The yard’s quality reputation led many Alaska based fishermen to commission new workboats. When the sail-only restriction for Bristol Bay fishing was lifted in 1951 the Grandys were swamped with orders for 30’ “pocket seiners.” During the 1950s, the yard built several larger “limit” seiners for the Alaska fisheries, some over 50’ in length.
The relative prosperity of 1950’s America generated interest in pleasure boating. To that market, the Grandy yard began building “stock” cruisers in the 27-32 foot range. Lynn Senour, a Grandy shipwright and natural boat designer, developed a bottom for the Grandy 27 that enabled speeds up to 30 mph with a single engine. That feature, combined with the Grandy craftsmanship, set the Grandy built cruisers above most of their regional competitors. (Lynn Senour went on to a long career specializing in efficient hull shapes, most noticeable in the Nordic Tug line)
Extremely stable, quiet, predictable and comfortable in rough seas, Grandy yachts were gems waiting to be discovered by a larger public. That happened in 1959 when California automobile dealer Ted Tate went fishing aboard a friend’s Grandy 32. Ted, who owned a Chris Craft, was so impressed he flew up to Seattle and cut a deal with the Grandys. One thing led to another, and before long Ted had established a dealership for what he called the Marlineer Sport Fishing Cruising boats – i.e. boats built to his requirements by the Grandy Boat Company.
Ted’s well-heeled California customers were mighty impressed by the quality, seaworthiness and speed of the Grandy boats. They primarily used their Marlineers for offshore fishing along the Baja coast. It soon became apparent that in going offshore, bigger was better and by the mid-1960s, Grandy-built Marlineers were coming out of Seattle in lengths between 40’ and 56’. The largest Marlineers were 62’, the last of which came down the yard’s railway the day the yard burned to the ground. While a few Marlineers were built in other Seattle yards following the disastrous 1967 fire, the Grandy Boat Company was not to rise from the ashes.
Perhaps it was best to go out with a big fire, as a more insidious fire in the form of fiberglass construction was already licking at the edges of Northwest wooden boat builders. Within a decade, many of them would be gone to the creditors.
