Wooden Boat AtlasDesigners, builders & classes · v3.0

Atlas / Designers

dates unverified; died within about a year of 1946 · Los Angeles, California

Merle Davis

Yacht designer — Los Angeles

A Los Angeles designer known almost entirely through his brief postwar partnership with Bill Lapworth — and through Bolero, a 1946 IC sloop still sailing on San Francisco Bay.

Practice
Ran a yacht design office in Los Angeles in the immediate postwar period
Partnership
Took Lapworth on as partner after the war; died within about a year, leaving Lapworth the practice
  • 1946Bolero — IC sloop
Sourcing notes & unresolved questions
  • Almost nothing about Davis is independently documented. No birth year, no firm name beyond 'yacht design office', no verified design catalogue. This is one of the clearest research gaps in the atlas.

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