Wooden Boat AtlasDesigners, builders & classes · v3.0

Atlas / Designers

dates unverified · San Francisco, California

David W. Dickie

Naval architect — San Francisco

Nearly six thousand of his drawings survive at San Francisco Maritime, spanning the 1880s to the 1950s — one of the largest single-architect collections on the West Coast, belonging to a man about whom almost nothing is written.

Archive
David W. Dickie records (HDC0128), San Francisco Maritime NHP — personal papers and office records including nearly 6,000 architectural drawings and plans, 1880s–1950s
Family
Of the Dickie shipbuilding family of San Francisco; understood to be the son of James S. Dickie and nephew of John Watson Dickie
Not to be confused with
David A. Dickie (1880–1968), John W. Dickie's son and partner, who left shipbuilding for insurance finance; or George W. Dickie, chief engineer of Union Iron Works and designer of USS Oregon
Sourcing notes & unresolved questions
  • No birth or death year, education, firm name or client list could be found. The genealogical placement as James S. Dickie's son rests on an OAC finding-aid note rather than a biography. For the size of the archive he left, this is the largest single biographical gap in the atlas.
  • No standalone finding aid for the drawing collection itself could be located — only the CAMM directory entry and the NPS plans page confirm it.

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