Wooden Boat AtlasDesigners, builders & classes · v3.0

Atlas / Builders & Yards

1866 – 1945 or 1946 · Boston, Massachusetts

George F. Lawley & Son

Scituate, South Boston, then Neponset

About 1,677 hulls in eighty years, including two America's Cup defenders — the yard that was to Boston what Herreshoff was to Bristol.

Founded
1866 at Scituate by George F. Lawley, an English-born boatbuilder who emigrated in 1851
Moves
City Point, South Boston, 1874; Point Norfolk, Neponset, 1908–09
Output
About 1,677 hulls
Also
The US Navy's first airship, DN-1; naval craft in both wars
Archive
Lawley Family Collection, Mystic Seaport — about 500 items spanning four generations, 1839–1990
  • 1885Puritan — America's Cup defender, to Edward Burgess's design
  • 1886Mayflower — America's Cup defender, Burgess
  • 1895Columbia — schooner
  • 1891Helvetia — steam yacht
Sourcing notes & unresolved questions
  • Closing year given as 1945 by one source and 1946 by another.
  • Frank C. Paine is said to have taken a controlling interest in the yard from 1930. That is recorded in this atlas's Paine entry but was not corroborated in the yard histories consulted — worth confirming before it is treated as settled.

Wooden Boat Atlas v3.0 · built 30 July 2026 · a project of the Golden Gate Wooden Boat Foundation · licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · open data · corrections