Eastern Shore Wooden Boat Builder

Maynard W. Lowery, 88, and his sister,
Alma Lowery, 87, both of Tilghman, MD. were killed in St. Michaels when their car
drove into the path of a trooper heading to the scene of a crash, state police said.
Lowery was described in The Washington Post in 1984 as "the last builder of traditional
wooden Chesapeake Bay-style yachts and workboats" on Tilghman, an island town where
the water is both livelihood and recreation.

Maynard W. Lowery in 1999.

A boat builder for about 60 years, Maynard Lowery "built anything from fancy motor
yachts to local commercial boats," his son Doug said. At a boatyard of his own,
he worked from the designs of others, and from those he drew up. Boats he built
were "spread out all up and down the East Coast," his son said.



He was known for Cape Cod catboats, a kind of sailboat. One of his painstakingly
constructed craft was sold to former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.



The 1984 Post story described Lowery, his son and his brother in a drafty tin shed
at water's edge, shaping logs with hand tools, to build "in the time-honored way"
a 46-foot workboat for a waterman on Kent Island.



Last winter, the son said, he and his father built a catboat to order. It was the
fifth time the father had said a boat he was working on would be his last. "As it
turned out," the son said, "that one was."



To read more about Lowery and Eastern Shore boat building, we recommend a wonderful
article in the Bay Journal.
Click here.