Racing Dory 21

Description

The Swampscott 21' Dory designed by Charles D. Mower represents a pivotal moment in American small boat racing history, created in 1898 as his first commissioned design for the Swampscott Club in Massachusetts. When C. D. Mower drew updated plans of the racing dory for Massachusetts Bay in 1911 he made some changes that seem to make it easier for the builder and might encourage building the boat, included scantlings and offsets missing entirely from the earlier plan, and included a deck slightly different from the decks that had been added to the earlier boats. This 21-foot vessel evolved from the traditional working Swampscott dories—those "aristocrats of the dory clan" that were far superior to their "clumsier, more crudely built cousins, the heavy, slab-sided working dories of the Grand Banks fishermen." Charles Drown Mower was a native of the Boston area and had worked with Arthur Binney and then B. B. Crowninshield. He had become the design editor for The Rudder in the summer of 1899, and this design was believed to be his first commissioned design. The boat was specifically designed for class racing under the Massachusetts Bay Racing Association (MBRA) X-Class rule, representing a sophisticated evolution from beach-launched fishing boats to purpose-built racing craft that maintained the essential seaworthiness and speed characteristics of the traditional Swampscott dory form.