Wooden Boat AtlasDesigners, builders & classes · v3.0

Atlas / Designers

died 1923 · Tiburon, Harbor View and Oakland, California

W. Frank Stone

Designer and yard principal — San Francisco Bay

The middle Stone. Son of the founder, father of Lester, and — on the evidence of Yankee — a designer as well as a builder, which is not true of every yard principal in this atlas.

Family
Son of William Stone, who founded the yard at Hunters Point in 1853; father of Lester F. Stone, who joined in 1911
Yards
Moved the yard to Tiburon in the 1890s; traded as Stone & Swann at Tiburon, then as Stone & Van Bergen at Harbor View, San Francisco, from 1899 to 1911
Firm name
From 1911, W. F. Stone & Son
Death
1923; Lester became sole proprietor
Yankee
Designed the 52-ft schooner Yankee in 1905, launched 18 April 1906
  • 1905–06Yankee — 52-ft gaff schooner; originally rigged as a gaff sloop
Sourcing notes & unresolved questions
  • Birth year not found.
  • The Golden Gate Wooden Boat Foundation gives Yankee's yard as 'the Stone Boat Yard near the Presidio'. In 1905 the firm at Harbor View was trading as Stone & Van Bergen, per Naval Marine Archive. Both descriptions point to the same place and people; the trading name is the open question.
  • Frank Stone is documented far better as a builder than as a designer. Yankee is the clearest attributed design; whether there are others is a question for the Ehrhorn drawings at the Online Archive of California.

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