H.A. Burnham Boat Building and Design: GO SEE HAROLD4

Actually, although there was nothing happening outside at the future job site, there was plenty happening on the project. For, Tom Ellis had commissioned Harold Burnham to build him a schooner to be used in the charter trade, and Harold was in the loft of his barn tearing out his hair.

"Tom Ellis is a smart man," Harold told me. "He’s determined. He decided what he wanted, and he started taking the steps to make it happen. And in the process, he came up with a design that had nothing to do with Essex." For this early design, Ellis had asked a local engineer and Coast Guard inspector to shrink a 120’ McManus design, with the emphasis being a safe vessel that would pass inspection. The inevitable distortions changed the boat’s character.

"Tom wanted a boat in which he could take people out and show them what a fishing schooner is all about," said Harold. "So I told him that his original design was good but it wasn’t a Gloucester fishing schooner. And so he said, ‘You seem to know more about boats and about history than I’ll ever know. Why don’t you just design me something and build it?"

Ellis had been a successful purveyor of antiques in Essex. After that, he and a partner ran a kayak livery that became the largest one on the East Coast. He sold that, took all of his money, mortgaged his house, and put it all up for the construction of a large wooden schooner, to be designed and built by someone who had done neither before. This raises some large questions: Why the leap of faith? Was Tom Ellis daft?

Above-The LANNON’s transom, says Dana Story, is correct. And "that’s what separates the men from the boys."

Above right- Shipwright Jimmy Lower dubs frames in preparation for the broadstrakes. Lower, says Harold Burnham, is a meticulous joiner who "really knows how to make two pieces of wood fit together."

Right-The LANNON’s bottom is planked with oak; the topsides are mahogany. Pictured here are (from left) Francis Cleary, Jimmy Lower, and Peter Little.

"I had been talking to Brad Story about building the boat for a couple of years," said Ellis. Brad Story, Dana’s son, is a will-known and respected Essex boatbuilder; Harold Burnham had worked under him on various projects. "I was hoping Brad would hire Harold to help on the project. But when I finally went to Brad and said, ‘Let’s go; let’s build it,’ he said, ‘Whoa! I thought you were kidding!’" Brad Story had just completed the construction of two 60’ motoryachts, and he had a contract to build a lobsterboat. It was August, and Tom Ellis wanted his boat for the following summer. Ellis recalls Story’s answer: "Go see Harold…he can do it."

Harold is characteristically candid about his reaction to Tom Ellis’s proposal: "I would say it was a leap of faith. And I was a little bit mortified. I was hired as a builder, and one week later I became the designer by default. I had never designed a boat of that magnitude, but I knew what a good boat was. So I went through Chapelle’s American Fishing Schooners and studied all of them. I picked two designs that I brought to Tome, and said ‘Look, we can do this clipper-style one, or we can do this FREDONIA-style one that’s a little later.’" The clipper was the 54’2" RIPPLE, built in 1856; the Fredonia type was NOKOMIS, a 57’ McLain model built in 1903. Ellis said something about wanting to take the boat around Cape Horn, and that cinched it. "He needed something very seaworthy," said Harold. "So we went with the Fredonia style" (see sidebar, page 85).

If all this sounds a little presumptuous on Harold’s part, it isn’t. For although he is extremely confident in his ability to move a project along, and although he has spent most of his life building and rebuilding smaller boats, raging ego does not appear to be one of his traits.