As Idle as a Painted Ship

The late, great Yachtbuilder Henry B. Nevins was never a man to cut corners. His City Island yard in New York City seasoned its own lumber, designed and machined its own fittings, fastened its spars together with glue made of sour cream, sometimes trimmed them to the correct balance by weighing shavings. By such attention to detail, Perfectionist Henry Nevins built more cup-winning yachts than anyone else.

But now comparatively few U.S. citizens are able to afford big, custombuilt yachts. Over the past fifteen years, three of the nation's famed yacht yards -- Herreshoff, Lawley's, Robert Jacobs -- have shut down. Last week Nevins announced that it, too, will close, a casualty to foreign competition (mostly German and Dutch) and income taxes.

Perfection First. The Nevins yard has found the going rough ever since the death of its founder in 1950. Henry Nevins was born in New York in 1878, and wanted to be a doctor but was too frail, so he decided to work at his hobby, shipbuilding. He apprenticed out to Charles L. Seabury, and at 29 bought his own small boat shop and storage yard. He took a hand in building most of the boats.

As his fame grew, boatbuilders came from Scandinavia and Scotland to work for him. Nevins knew every employee by his first name. Even after he became a millionaire, he often brought his own lunch pail to work, ate outside with the loftsmen and mechanics. His friendship and personal ability invited them to do their best work; his high standards demanded it. Once he set down this principle: "The man who builds . . . yachts is a craftsman; outside of yacht building, there are few craft industries left. A good craftsman must have, first of all, a basic sense of integrity and pride in his work . . . He is only secondarily materialistic."

Cups & Minesweepers. Under Nevins' skilled hand, his yard turned out such ships (designed chiefly by Sparkman & Stephens) as John Nicholas Brown's Bolero, which has twice been first-boat-in in the Bermuda race; R.J. Schaefer's Edlu I, winner of the 1934 Bermuda; Henry Morgan's Djinn, winner of the Seawanhaka Cup in 1947; Stormy Weather, winner of the ocean race to Norway and the Florida Trophy; R. J. Reynolds' Blitzen, winner of the Miami-Nassau, St.

Petersburg-Havana, Havana-Key West, the Honolulu, and Detroit-Mackinac races; Lulu, winner of the Prince of Wales Cup in 1937; Nyala, winner of the Astor and King's Cups in 1939; Harold Vanderbilt's 12-meter Vim, winner of the same cups the next year; Goose, the outstanding international 6-meter for ten years; the New York Yacht Club's 325 and some 700 other yachts.

Most were sailing craft, but for Richard Hoyt, onetime board chairman of Curtiss-Wright, Nevins built the high-powered Teaser, which raced the crack 20th Century Limited from Albany to New York.

(The boat won.) Few owners ever asked Nevins for a price before signing the contract, even though it might be upwards of $75,000; instead, they relied on Nevins to set a fair charge when the boat was delivered.

During World War II the Nevins yard built minesweepers and aircraft-rescue boats. But when war orders ended, Nevins found he could no longer make profits on new boats. Nevertheless, he kept building, often turning out yachts at cost just to give jobs to his workmen, some of whom had been with him for 30 years. Then he was injured in a fall at the yard, and when Bolero was launched in 1949, he told his wife he expected it would be his last launching. In the last months of his life, he often asked to be carried out to the cockpit of his own yacht Polly, just to feel the swell of the sea again.

Decline & Fall. Before his death, he turned the helm over to Arthur Gauss, who had been with the company for eleven years, with instructions to keep the yard going. But Mrs. Nevins, who inherited all the company's stock, now finds that the cost would be too much. Gauss figures that the company's break-even point is $900,000 a year, and it is grossing less than $800,000, mostly because of the European competition. Says Gauss: "They pay a first-class mechanic 60-c- an hour, against $2.50 here. As a result, they can deliver a boat, including import duty, at one-third less than we can." European shipbuilders even have U.S. defense orders, e.g., the Navy has just ordered four minesweepers from Yugoslavia for $3,500,000. Snorts Gauss: "Imagine giving the contracts to a Communist country."

Many small yards have turned to operating a "marina," a sort of marine filling station, repair shop and soft-drink stand. But this would be too much of a comedown for the Nevins yard. The 50 custom craftsmen that Nevins trained are now looking for jobs where standards are lower and materialism higher.

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