Wooden Boat AtlasDesigners, builders & classes · v3.0

Atlas / Designers

1901 – 1975 · Washington, DC

Howard I. Chapelle

Naval architect and maritime historian — Smithsonian

The man who wrote down American small craft before they disappeared. Without him a great deal of what this atlas describes would survive only as hearsay.

New Deal
Headed the New England section of the Historic American Merchant Marine Survey
War
US Army Transportation Corps, lieutenant colonel
Smithsonian
Curator of the Transportation Division, National Museum of History and Technology; senior historian from 1967; historian emeritus 1971
Also
Guggenheim Fellowship 1950 for colonial ship-design research; UN FAO fishing-boat consultant in Turkey, 1956–57
Archive
Howard I. Chapelle Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives; his drawings are in the NMAH Ship Plans collection
  • 1935The History of American Sailing Ships
  • 1949The History of the American Sailing Navy
  • 1951American Small Sailing Craft
  • 1967The Search for Speed Under Sail
  • 1973The American Fishing Schooners 1825–1935

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