By David Kanally, Southwest Chapter
It was the spring of 1969. Without knowing he was about to start a forty-four-year saga, my dad got the itch to buy a boat. The weather would soon be warm enough and school would be out. Chautauqua Lake, just ninety miles away, would again beckon our family and closest friends to its shores for a summer in a shared cottage. We were ripe for a boat. My father was in his mid-forties, my brother was thirteen and I was sixteen. It must be stated that even then, my mother’s age was never discussed. I found out later that the boat purchase wasn’t discussed either, but that’s another story.
Once the boat bug bit, there was no choice but to act. We journeyed about an hour from our home in Port Allegany, Pennsylvania to Starbrick Marina in Warren, where the showroom glistened with new-looking and new-smelling boats, none of which fit our budget. The perceptive salesmen quickly led us to the back parking lot where, sitting alone and sorely neglected, was a blistering and peeling 1957 wooden runabout of noble lineage. A swooping script logo, “Cowell, Erie, Pa.” was affixed on the port side at the stern. We immediately saw the potential and overlooked the shortcomings of the slightly shabby craft. A few hundred dollars later, we drove off with the boat, a 1960 45-horse Mercury outboard and a Cox trailer built for the millennium. (Thirty-one years later, all three items would prove themselves to be Y2K compliant.)
Once home, we went to work gluing down the deck’s blisters, sanding, varnishing, and painting. The Cowell was launched on Chautauqua Lake as planned, and served us well all summer long. But soon, the kids became adults and the Chautauqua years came to a close. So the Cowell went on to other adventures in Pennsylvania, New York and even Quebec, Canada, with our empty nester-parents and their friends aboard. In the mid-80s, my dad performed a major restoration on the boat, replacing the foredeck, adding seating capacity and turning the Cowell to a gleaming mahogany jewel.
All this time, we thought we had an orphan boat. Then in the late ‘90s, my dad passed the boat on to me, and I brought it home with me to Texas. I was hungry for information about the boat. With the help of the internet, we found Ron Smith, who cited his work as a young craftsman at Cowell Boat Works on his resume.
Ron told us about Cowell Boat Works, brainchild of entrepreneur Tom Cowell. We then found Tom’s son Richard, an attorney in Erie, Penn. We even met several people who had worked at Cowell Boat Works, and we discovered about twenty surviving Cowells around the country.
Tom Cowell’s first career in boating was a legend in itself. During Prohibition, Cowell ran hooch from Canada to the States driving very fast boats at night, a lucrative if shady job. That chapter in Cowell’s life is chronicled in Midnight Herring: Rum Running and Prohibition on Lake Erie by David Frew.
But it was his venture into the boat livery business in 1953 that would lead to the full line of Cowell boats, from the 12-foot Sea Pup to the 21-foot Windswept inboard/outboard.
Ron Smith shared these reflections from his time at Cowell Boat Works. “Back in those days we used to drive the truck to the lumber company near the tracks and pick up a train car-load of wood, and drive back to the shop where we would stack the wood for drying.”
“Each boat was built entirely by hand. Each plank was cut and fit over a jig and then removed; brass screws and rivets were all applied by hand. The nose piece was formed by steaming, gluing, and cutting to fit each boat. Ribs were all from rough-cut oak, milled through a machine, put in a steamer, and bent over the jig.”
Ron continues, “Joe Dedinsky was the boss of the outfit. Joe taught all of us how to use the tools. He was a perfectionist—a real craftsman.”
Tom Dedinsky, son of Joe, recalls working on the boats as a kid. “I unloaded trucks, went on deliveries to dealers, steamed ribs, butted rivets, glued the keels and bows…not as a certified worker of course, but just helping out the way a kid helps out on a farm…until I got older. Then I did a lot more.”
Tom adds, “Tom Cowell just wanted to make boats for his livery to rent at first. They built a small building and about fifteen cottages, a snack bar on the beach, and opened a Lake Erie resort, Cowell Boats & Beach. Almost immediately, customers began asking if they could buy boats, so Cowell started building boats for sale and sought out dealers in the tri-state area to sell them.”
Originally printed in the fall 2013 issue of ACBS Rudder.
Well written, again!
What a great story, now I’ll have to keep my eye out for Cowell boats just to see if any turn up. Very pleasant writing style.
I grew up on Lake Chautauqua, my family had a home in the institution. Where did you live up there?
Our rented cabin was in Bemus bay. It has since been replaced with a much larger, two-story house.