1000 Islands Steel King boating in the 1960's

1000 Islands Boating – Wooden It Be Nice?

May 18, 2012 by admin

1940's Richardson "White Cap" (photo used with permission)

You know, of course, from this blog that I spent years as a kid with my family on a steel boat at Calumet Island marina in the 60′s. That doesn’t mean, however, I didn’t appreciate the beauty of wooden boats. I did, and still do. Which is what leads me to an interesting crossing of paths recently. Bored one day, I was searching online for pictures of wooden boats, especially cabin cruisers. You know them – Chris Craft, Richardson, Penn Yan, Pacemaker, Owens and others of the era. Beautiful boats, beautiful in design and painstakingly crafted. The look endures today, even among scores of capable fiberglass and composite designs. Some fine examples of these classic wooden boats can be seen each year at antique boat gatherings such as the New England Chapter of the Antique & Classic Boat Society’s Annual Antique and Classic Boat Show, and Clayton’s Antique Boat Museum Antique Boat Show & Auction. So as I scrolled through pictures and sites, I came across a listing for a “1940 Richardson Used Classic Wooden Boat For Sale” and that’s where I stopped. I gazed at the listing with photo, thinking “I remember boats like this in the 1000 Islands”. I looked further down the page to discover her name – “White Cap”. Something seemed very familiar. I visited a page in this site I had written years ago and looked down the list of boat names I remembered as a kid. There she was – the White Cap. Some 40 to 50 years later, this beautiful piece of history crossed my path again. I stared and drifted back – I can still picture Calumet Island marina as it was then, with so many families on so many boats on such a fine place at such a fine time. I don’t have many pictures of the island from back then, but in my head I can see the boats, recall many of the names, and now thanks to the internet can again see a boat built in the 40′s, remembered from the 60′s, that’s still around in 2012. My father’s boat, his steel boat, was surrounded by wooden boats at Calumet, like the White Cap, and it makes me happy to know that at least one of them is still around.

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Tweet Tweet…

May 2, 2012 by admin

See the upper left corner of the page? I just added a link to follow me on Twitter! Sure, it’s just getting started, but feel free to follow and share the 1000 Islands, Clayton, Steel King boats, St Lawrence Seaway, the American Boat Line of the 1960′s (Adonis, Venus, Neptune), etc with the twittersphere (yeah, that’s a word, I saw it on the internet, it must be true!)

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Orange ya glad?

April 20, 2012 by admin

OK, a mystery and a puzzler, but maybe so obvious as to not need a reply… but I’ll ask anyway because I always assumed I knew. Why was the Calumet Island Skiff House roof and the taxi boat painted orange? We called it “Calumet Orange” in our days there during the 1960′s for lack of a better term. Here’s what I think: advertising. Calumet Island was a marina back then and a business needs to attract proper attention. If you looked across the river from Clayton, there was no mistaking that orange roof! The island itself is beautiful to look at, but that glint of orange would surely draw your eye and make you ask “Why? What’s over there?” The answer was “a marina, a nice place to keep your boat”. A short while into the 60′s the marina’s small taxi boat got a hull of the same color. I suspect for the same reason. It became a matching extension to the marina at Calumet Island. What do you think? If there’s another reason you know about, it would be interesting if you’d share it. Orange ya glad I brought it up?

Category Recollections | Tags: , Orange | 2 Comments
Floating your boat

March 27, 2012 by admin

A short while ago I told you about a 26 foot Steel King that was ready for the melting pot. I heard recently that it has a new home and hopefully will be afloat again soon! Great news for a great boat. As you can see from the pictures, the new owners will have some work to do, but in the end it should be worth it. The Steel King I remember from the 1960′s was a solid boat and so much fun to be on.It’s funny when you spend a lot of time around a boat, even when you see a picture of one just like it many years later, you can recall so much. The stern here is white but I recall the brick red color of my father’s boat. The control center here is quite different from the original design, which would have had a much larger white wheel and likely a round, bluish GrayMarine gauge set with a single Morse control on the right of the column; at least that was the way my father’s boat was delivered. Anyone else know of a 26 foot Steel King out there?

Category Steel Kings still existing | Tags: , boats | No Comments
Ice Boat

March 12, 2012 by admin

Another interesting piece of history I recall from Calumet Island in the 60′s was the presence for a few years of an interesting flatboat known as the “ice boat”. I only saw it in the water, with a huge airplane engine on the rear for propulsion, but it makes sense that a boat like this would have been great on winter’s icy river. It had a huge rudder in the rear to guide it, and looked very much like the shallow water swamp buggies used in alligator country down south. I never knew what purpose it served, but it didn’t matter; usually high and dry, on the few occasions when someone would put it in the water and fire it up, it turned heads. What a sight!

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and the answer is…

February 17, 2012 by admin

OK, you probably wondered all week about the owls’ names on Calumet Island back in the 60′s (see a few posts back). Well, here you go: Pete and Repeat. Cool name for a couple of 1000 Islands owls!

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Meltdown

February 13, 2012 by admin

I think the Grafton Boat Works’ Steel King boats of the late 50′s and early 60′s were beautiful, as you can see from the other pages of this website. A few years after my father sold his in the 70′s I saw his boat again in the 1000 Islands near Clayton and it wasn’t pretty. It was being used as a work boat and all the looks it once had were faded and aged. Sad. I’ve always wondered how many other Steel Kings were out there and if any still exist today. Interestingly enough, the other day I found out about another 26 foot Steel King from the same era that is going to be sold for scrap or melted down and is apparently available for a short time if someone has the time to restore her. I’m told she’s currently in Maryland in poor but restorable condition. The original Graymarine V-8 engine is in the shop to determine if it’s re-buildable and to get an estimated cost for rebuild. So, if you like steel-hulled boats and are up for what appears to be a challenge, let me know and I can put you in contact with someone, since she is headed for meltdown soon if no one claims her.

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This bears repeating!

February 9, 2012 by admin

If any of you remember summers at Calumet Island in the 1960′s you most certainly remember the caretakers, Rollo and Betty. They lived in the base of the water tower as I recall, and for many years they had two owls on the island. I believe that was for pest control, as the island had a lot of water snakes, etc. Do you recall the names of the owls? I do, and will post them next time around! For now, feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think the names were. Mike

Category Uncategorized | Tags: , Owls | No Comments
Steel King Boats and those engines

January 18, 2012 by admin

The Steel King boat my father had in the 60′s was cool – I loved it! One of the things that always fascinated me was the Gray Marine engine; all 109 hp of it! For some reason, the name seemed cool and the color paint on it was a sort of, well, gray and green (I figure a reflection of the name). Do an image search on Google for “gray marine engine 109″ and you may run across a picture of one. Another thing I remember was the shape of the oil filler cap and the shaft that ran between what I believe was the water pump and the generator. The Grafton Boat Works folks did a great job on this line of boats, which evolved over time to larger craft and different designs. I would love to learn more about the Steel King line and its lineage. I believe from some who’ve emailed me that successor boats were sometimes called Grafton Yachts (and I’ve seen them listed that way in online boat-for-sale sites). Take a look at the product brochures from the late 50′s and early 60′s – isn’t that a neat looking design? Looked good in the St Lawrence River and 1000 Islands, too!

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Gale force: the Calumet Island outboards

January 7, 2012 by admin

Howdy 2012! If you were ever at Calumet Island in the 60′s when it was a full fledged marina, you might recall the Gale outboard motor engines on the fiberglass workboat and taxi runabout. I ran across a neat site that features toy models of these neat engines. Take a look for a glimpse of outboard history. You can find them at

http://www.toyoutboardmotors.com/gale-buccaneer.htm

As I recall, the island’s taxi boat used a 60hp Gale and the workboat a 25 hp. I believe for a short period, the taxi boat had twin Gale’s! If you recall these engines, feel free to comment!

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