Three generations of one English family and a hundred and fifty years of continuous boatbuilding on San Francisco Bay — the longest single thread in this atlas.
William Stone came from Dartmouth in Devon and set up at Hunters Point in 1853, building commercial schooners, tugs and racing yachts for a city that had existed for four years. That yard is the beginning of organised boatbuilding on the Bay as a continuous business rather than an improvisation.
His son Frank moved the yard to Tiburon in the 1890s, operated briefly as Stone & Swann, then as Stone & Van Bergen at Harbor View in San Francisco from 1899. Frank's son Lester joined in 1911, at which point the firm took the name it kept: W. F. Stone & Son. Lester became sole proprietor on his father's death in 1923 and ran the yard until he retired in 1970 — a working career of nearly sixty years.
The high-water mark was Northern Light in 1927: a 140-foot schooner built at the estuary yard for John Borden's Arctic collecting expedition for Chicago's Field Museum, put together by forty-six men working two ten-hour shifts and finished in under a year. Latitude 38 calls her the largest schooner ever built as a sailing yacht on the West Coast.
The yard built Bird boats — Nos. 12, 16, 18 and 19 in 1928–29 — YMS wooden minesweepers for the Navy in the war, and a long tail of yachts afterwards. Master shipwright Jack Ehrhorn worked there from 1941 to 1970 and again from 1987 to 2004, collaborating with Lester Stone on design as well as construction; his drawings and photographs are now two large collections at the Online Archive of California, and are the single best primary source on the yard.
The Stone family sold in 1970. The business changed hands several times and finally closed in 2004 — which means that a yard founded before the Civil War survived into the era of GPS.
- Founder
- William Stone, of Dartmouth, England — Hunters Point, 1853
- Succession
- Frank Stone → Lester F. Stone (joined 1911, sole proprietor 1923, retired 1970)
- Later owners
- John Whitset (1970); Bill and Grace Bodle; David Olson (2000); closed 2004
- Master shipwright
- Jack Ehrhorn (1919–2005), at the yard 1941–1970 and 1987–2004
- Archive
- Jack Ehrhorn collection of Stone Boat Yard drawings (1898–1993) and photographs (c. 1885–2005), Online Archive of California
- 1900Richmond — tug
- 1913Golden State — 354-ton schooner
- 1914USS Lanikai — 209-ton schooner-rigged yacht
- 1928Water Witch — cutter; sometimes credited as a 'Lester Stone' design
- 1928–29Bird boats Nos. 12, 16, 18, 19 — Puffin, Cuckoo, Robin, Polly
- 1927Northern Light — 140-ft schooner for John Borden's Field Museum Arctic expedition; designed by the Chicago naval architect Henry C. Grebe
- 1943YMS wooden minesweepers — for the US Navy
- 1975Natoma — ketch
- Sources disagree on the yard's move dates. Naval Marine Archive gives Hunters Point 1853–1892, Tiburon 1892–99, Harbor View 1899–1911, Oakland 1911–42, Alameda 1942–2004. The OAC finding aid and Maritime Compass give slightly different years (Tiburon from 1893, Alameda from 1941). One source treats 1975 as an endpoint, which appears to mark the end of a particular ownership rather than the yard.
- Water Witch (1928) is sometimes credited as a 'Lester Stone' design. Stone is best documented as a builder; his role as designer of individual boats should be checked against the Ehrhorn drawings.
- The description of Northern Light as the largest schooner ever built as a sailing yacht on the West Coast, and the detail of forty-six men working two ten-hour shifts, both trace to a single lineage — Latitude 38's reporting, drawing on a 1992 WoodenBoat article. No independent source was found. Latitude 38's earlier (2004) version of the claim was broader still, 'possibly the largest sailing yacht, period'.
- One independent shipyard history gives the founder's name as William I. Stone rather than William Stone. A minor variant, but unresolved.
- W. F. Stone & Sons — Naval Marine Archive
- Jack Ehrhorn collection of Stone Boat Yard naval architectural drawings, 1898–1993 — OAC
- Jack Ehrhorn collection of Stone Boat Yard photographs, c. 1885–2005 — OAC
- Stone Boat Yard — Maritime Compass
- Revisiting the 1927 Schooner Northern Light — Latitude 38
- Stone Boat Yard — shipbuildinghistory.com
- The Borden-Field Museum Alaska-Arctic Expedition of 1927 — Wikipedia
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