Almost Famous: The Foster Boat Company

By Geoffrey D. Reynolds, Water Wonderland Chapter

Charlevoix, Michigan, has been the home of many successful ship and pleasure boat builders since the middle of the nineteenth century. Though little known today, the Foster Boat Company made its mark on the pleasure craft industry, military establishment and growing recreational consumer base. 

Harry G. Foster was a native of Alden, Michigan, who had established himself in the Grand Rapids coal market and is said to have been the founder of Hertz Rent- A-Car before selling the company during the Great Depression. In the late 1930s, recreational boating started to become more affordable to financially strapped Americans and Foster capitalized on that trend. He contracted with an Ionia, Michigan, boat-building firm to sell flat bottomed rowboats in Grand Rapids from a display room converted out of an old gas station, He remained there until relocating to Charlevoix in 1940. 

Foster’s return to northern Michigan was prompted by his desire to return to an area he’d grown up in and by the chance to lease an abandoned seed company building located on Lake Charlevoix. Once he learned of the building’s availability, he quickly contacted Charlevoix officials who controlled it. Built in 1892 to house the expanding Ferry Seed Company of Detroit operations in northern Michigan, this building had been a welcome addition to local farmers who were paid to plant, raise and sell seeds to Ferry for sale elsewhere. In 1923, the seed company moved its operations away from Charlevoix and sold the building to W.E. Parmelee for various manufacturing and warehousing needs until it was abandoned during the 1930s. 

Charles Duerr and family in Snipe Class sailing dinghy.

As the paint peeled and underbrush started to take over the property, the Charlevoix City Council began seeking alternatives for the building’s use. Eventually, the Charlevoix Depositors Corporation purchased the building from Parmelee, repainting it for the new renter, the Foster Boat Company. Under the lease agreement, the owners would decrease his rent as Foster’s payroll increased and benefited local residents. Over time, Foster assumed ownership of the building and property. Along with Foster and his family came Charles Duerr and his family. Duerr was an original investor, treasurer, purchasing agent and comptroller for the company. Another important addition to the staff was James Hilton Bellinger, a Charlevoix native who’d learned much of boat building skill from his father, William Bellinger. Bellinger also held a degree in science education from The University of Michigan, and was described as a marine engineer and a genius naval architect by members of the Foster family. 

Once in Charlevoix, Foster appointed Claire Webster as plant supervisor and production began in earnest on two models of panel plywood rowboats, a canoe, a Snipe-class sailboat, an outboard motorboat and a pontoon boat. One report in the Michigan Manufacturer and Financial Record predicted that 1,500 boats would be produced at the new Charlevoix plant. Next, came the purchase and relocation of a Grand Rapids canvas operation and the creation of an ash oar manufacturing division that would eventually produce more oars than any other company in the world. The company also made bowling pins from locally grown maple and sold them to the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company of Muskegon. Needless to say, the three-story Foster Boat Company building was a flurry of activity! 

During this time, much of the lumber used in the manufacturing process came from local area farmers’ lots and was milled at an onsite sawmill. Varieties of wood used included basswood and ash for oars and maple for bowling pins. Additional materials such as brass, fir plywood and canvas had to be shipped in by rail car. 

In January 1941, the Foster Boat Company had a booth at the Chicago National Boat and Sports Show where potential customers could fill out forms to receive future mailings and brochures. In exchange for filling out the form, potential customers had a chance to win a Foster-built canoe. By that February the company steadily employed a total of fifteen people to handle the orders that were rushing in from their boat show appearance. 

Even though business had improved, the company filed for receivership the next month with Harry Foster being appointed temporary receiver. Foster listed initial start-up costs as the main reason for the company’s financial problems. Nothing more was mentioned in the newspapers or boating periodicals about the situation; before long, war contracts provided the solid financial ground the company desperately needed. 

When World War II began in December 1941, the supply of necessary boat building supplies had dwindled due to restrictions imposed by the government for war production. At that time, Foster decided that entering the war production industry was a good idea; he was right, as it helped boost the company to its highest earnings and production. 

In 1942, the company was awarded its first defense contract to manufacture a specially designed seaplane rearming boat. The company turned out about 30 of these 33-foot boats designed to slip under the wings of the plane so that personnel could attach bombs and torpedoes. Additional contracts included the 17-foot line handling boat with a kapok fender used to tow and maneuver seaplanes, the 27-foot personnel boat used to transport seaplane crews to and from their aircraft, sailing dinghies for the Navy, and dinghies for the Coast Guard. During the war years, employees, represented by the Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, filed only one complaint concerning recognition of the union as a formal organization. 

33-foot plane rearming boat water test.

After the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945, the company hired extra workers to labor 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for several weeks, to manufacture hundreds of 16-foot plywood “storm” boats powered by 30-50 h.p. outboard motors for the Army. They could be stacked like teacups for easy transport, shipped express rail from Charlevoix to Detroit, loaded onto transport planes, and flown directly to the front. The military used the boats to transport personnel across German rivers, then discarding them afterwards. Foster was one of two Michigan firms to produce this type of boat; Century Boat Company of Manistee was the other. 

Other contracts utilized the company’s sail and canvas operation to manufacture portable Arctic shelters from insulated fabric that could be dropped from a plane to provide a waterproof hut with an air-lock vestibule and built-in heating stove. 

16-foot storm boats on the Rhine River, 1945.

As the War raged on, the company maintained its relationship with its consumers through boating magazine advertisements, much like the larger companies. Later, when consumer demand rose and production increased, the company acquired the former garage of The Inn Hotel on Cherry Street, located on Charlevoix’s north side, and established Plant #2. There, workman put the finishing touches on the hulls and sent them back to the main plant for shipping by rail. The company’s 12,000 square foot Plant #3 was located in Petoskey, Michigan, on Petoskey Avenue. Together, the three plants employed about 175 people at peak production. 

After the War, the company returned to what it knew best: recreational boat production. But the market had changed since 1942 and the competition with Chris-Craft and others was fierce. To Harry Foster’s credit he forged ahead with an offering of time-tested small watercraft and a new 26-foot cruiser designed by James Bellinger. The cruisers were powered by either a 73, 93 or 102 hp Gray Marine Express Series motor and were constructed of marine plywood or planking of cedar, cypress or spruce painted with ivory paint. The decks and cabin top were painted blue with natural mahogany trim varnished to make it shine. The company retained many of the production techniques incorporated during the war years to make, sturdy, fast boats at a reasonable cost. Consumers could also purchase the smaller models as kits that could be assembled in two or three spare evenings, according to company literature. 

26-foot cruisers in company lagoon.

Some of the cruisers were even equipped with aircraft motors delivered personally by Preston Tucker, in August 1947. Tucker, who was later to gain fame as a visionary automobile designer and entrepreneur, was selling the motors to fund other ventures he was pursuing. Tucker’s connection to Charlevoix stemmed from his grandmother’s presence there as a summer resident who lived on the north side of Pine River channel. Many Charlevoix residents still remember the Tucker sons’ exploits on the water and around town as they skied the channel between Round Lake and Lake Michigan during the day and chased girls at night. 

Even though the cruiser received praise in boating magazines and consumers alike, the bulky, heavy cruiser did not sell well. In comparison, the rowboats and outboard boats did very well and by the 1949 New York Boat Show the company spotlighted their best selling product in a specially designed display, adorned with lights and a wire sound recording. 

LT Gar Wood.

The board of directors for the company included Gar Wood, Jr., son of the famous boat racer and builder. He began the Wood Marine Engineering Corporation in Foster’s Plant #2 after his return from the War. In 1947, Wood moved his company to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he had attended college, to produce Garform inboard motor-powered fiberglass boats. This company is believed to be the first in history to put this combination into production. 

As the 1940s drew to a close, the Foster Boat Company struggled on with its small craft designs (14-foot sailboat, 12- and 14-foot outboard powered boats, 16-foot outboard powered cruiser), toboggans, canoes, snow scooters (a ski with a seat attached to it), kapok life vests, and small contracts with the government before and during the Korean War. These contracts involved mostly canvas construction, initially completed in the Petoskey plant and later moved to Ironton, Michigan, in 1952, when Harry decided to also relocate his residence there. 

In 1950, the company’s naval architect, James Bellinger, left to open Bellinger Marine. His exit and the increasing competition in the pleasure boat building industry made it easy for Harry Foster to sell out to the newly formed Huron-Charlevoix Boat Company, in 1952. Foster was placed in charge of the company, which made 16-foot outboard cruisers for consumers and rescue boats for the Navy, but neither were successful. Huron-Charlevoix was part owned by well-known boat industrialist, George Glen Eddy, who also owned the Huron-Eddy Company. Eddy had owned many boat building companies, if only for a short time. They included the Century Boat Company of Manistee (1930-1933) and the eponymous Eddy Boats of Bay City, Michigan. He would later come to Holland, Michigan, in 1960, to start the ill-fated Power Boat Company; it only lasted one year before it also failed. Eddy died in Lansing, Michigan, in 1966, while working out of Holland as a navel architect at the George G. Eddy Company. 

With the increased competition, smaller profits, and with Harry’s bad heart and his wife finding it harder and harder to contend with Charlevoix’s winters, the company moved operations to Conway, Arkansas, in 1953. There it continued making oars for the world market until 1990s. 

The two Charlevoix plants were sold to Robert Schleman’s South Bend Tool & Die, which made fiberglass recreational equipment. He later sold the buildings that for many years were used for storage, until being converted into condominiums in the mid-1980s. Today, the Ferry Avenue building is known as the Foster Boat Works Association and contains a display of the Foster Boat Company history. A 1949 outboard boat is also owned by the Charlevoix Historical Society and periodically is put on display, A cruiser model has yet to surface and would be a real find for the right collector.