The Heritage Art of Model Boat Building by Steve Parks

Scott Todd is a fifth-generation waterman from Cambridge who’s been building model boats since he was 12. Recently, he stopped by the Dorchester Center for the Arts to speak with director Barb Seese about his upcoming presentation as part of the downtown center’s monthlong exhibit, “The Art of Model Boat Building.”

A small piece of his sailing racer model had come loose, and as he figured out where to re-affix it, he spoke about his longtime avocation, which may become his full-time vocation. Todd says he never thought of himself as an artist. His 1970s America’s Cup yacht racer model in the exhibit was built to compete in the East Coast regatta circuit. Any blue ribbon it collects is for winning a model race rather than an aesthetic art show prize. Other Todd models are of his 46-foot Endless Summer crab boat and the skipjack Lady Katie, which he restored and is now undergoing boatyard repairs ahead of its return to a Snappers restaurant berth in Cambridge.

Among others exhibiting their model-boat artistry is Don Willey of Fruitland. He erected a Chesapeake Bay Model Boats diorama arranged along a dock with a fish market, general store, and bait-and-gear shop with pleasure crafts and workboats moored there. In the same front-room gallery, take a seat for a video by Jim Moses. He started building model cars as a teenager and, after two decades of military service, turned his attention to models of wartime vessels ranging from frigates to submarines. Later, Moses built a lovingly rendered Mayflower model of the Pilgrim ship “as a gift to my wife Marti when she became a member of the Mayflower Society.” 

When Barb Seese came up with the idea of mounting a model boat-building show, the first person she turned to was Ed Thieler of Easton, a retired orthopedic surgeon from Philadelphia. After moving to the Eastern Shore 20 years ago, Thieler became fascinated by the waterman culture he discovered in Talbot County – so much so that he volunteered in the restoration of the historic oyster-dredge skipjack, the Thomas Clyde, at St. Michaels’ Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. As a result of his curiosity, while sharing dock space with oyster shaft-tongers and trotline crabbers, Thieler’s workboat dioramas reflect, in exquisitely minute detail, the real-life nature of a day in the life of Bay watermen.

Similarly, Web Lippert, who took up boat models as a hobby about 15 years ago, creates watercraft littered with what he calls “deck clutter,” including nets, anchors, tongs, baskets, and even the catch itself. Howard Freeman, who retired in 2008 from his contracting business of 30 years, displays his masterpiece on loan from the Caroline County Historical Society – a model of the Olivia Davis, a three-masted bark workboat. Ed Harrison of Wittman, a relative newcomer to boat modeling, makes his mark with a re-creation of the Annapolis-Claiborne Ferry, long in operation before the first Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened in 1952.

“Our thought in presenting this show,” Seese says, “is that it’s important to support heritage art.” That’s why she enlisted the Dorchester Historical Society to design the storefront window space of the High Street art center. The centerpiece is a model – itself an antique as it was built in the 1950s – of a late 19th-century schooner. The folk-art model, discovered in a Toddville outbuilding, was built by Reese Todd, for whom a public landing in Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is named.

At 59, Scott Todd, a family relation to the late Reese, hadn’t thought much until recently about retiring. “We put out crab pots, dredge for oysters and catch rockfish – all the good stuff,” he says. But COVID and the European war have him rethinking his future. “I’m amazed at what people will pay for models like this,” he adds as he calculates what diesel fuel costs for one day’s work on the water while handing me his Blue Crab Model Yachts business card. Depending on the size and artistic detail, model boats go from $50 to $2,500, while diesel fuel prices are up to $6 a gallon. “So I’m thinking about building models more and being on the water less,” Todd says. 

You can meet these boat-model artists at a free reception late Saturday afternoon to early evening. The two Eds, Thieler and Harrison, combine for a dual “Model Masters” talk on St. Patrick’s evening, March 17, followed by Willey and Lippert in a matinee talk on March 19. And on the final day of the Dorchester exhibit, March 26, Todd will present a free talk and demonstration on building such models. 

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and writer now living in Easton.

‘The Art of Model Boat Building’

Dorchester Center for the Arts, open Wednesdays-Sundays through March 26, 321 High St., Cambridge. Reception with the artists, 5-7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 12. dorchesterarts.org, 410-228-7782