EXPLORE the MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS DIGITAL edition @ www.maineboats.com 33

HANG AROUND just about anyMaine boat ramp and the oddsare good a Corson runabout

will show up sooner or later. Like lob-sters, potatoes, and blueberries, they area boat with as much “Maine-ness” asmaple syrup and whoopie pies. Eventoday, long after the Corson brothers—Gerry, Linwood, Clayton, and Anson—of Madison, Maine, ceased productionof their boats, they are prized for theirpracticality, durability, classic goodlooks, and affordability.

“I can’t even begin to guess howmany we sold,” said Howie KirkpatrickJr., who was a teenager in the 1960swhen Corsons were in the early days ofproduction. His father, Howie Senior,was an early Corson dealer at BFCMarine on the Kennebec River in Bath,Maine. He was among the few who sawthe potential of this newfangled “fiber-glass” hull the Corson brothers weretouting. “I do know they went out (ofthe showroom) about as fast as theycame in,” Howie Junior recalled. “Espe-cially after we got that picture of Ansonon the iceberg.”

Iceberg? Well, that’s only a slightexaggeration of the toughness and fam-ily-fun attitude that was built into theearly Corson runabouts, which rangedin size from 14 to 19 feet. The icebergstory (which we’ll get to later) was justone of the many mostly inadvertentmarketing tales to come out of Madison,

where the outboards were built by thetruckload in a barn not much biggerthan today’s average two-car garage.

“Yeah, it was pretty tight in there,”recalled Greg Corson, who as a teenagerin the 1970s worked for his father, Gerry,

and his three uncles, Linwood, Clayton,and Anson. Even in the barn’s limitedwork space, the Corson brothers eventu-ally turned out an estimated 350 boatsper year, many of which had to be tai-lored to the preferences of individualbuyers. Exact records of how many Cor-sons were built between 1955 and themid-1990s no longer exist. Most educat-

ed guesses put the total around 10,000.And most of those boats should bearound for a long time to come, Gregsaid, because “we built them to last. Wedidn’t cut corners and each hull was laidup by hand.”

It was the durability of the new “spaceage” materials that persuaded Anson tophase out building wooden boats in the1950s and switch to fiberglass.

Anson Corson began his boatbuild-ing career in 1937 at the SkowheganBoat Company, a few miles down theroad from his home in Madison. There,he learned to build mostly cedar-on-oak

Corson boats keep on runningBY KEN TEXTOR

C L A S S I C M A I N E

Plastic

Test driving a new Corson runabout on the Kennebec River in the early 1960s.P

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32 MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS | May / June 2017 | Issue 146

INSET: An early brochure for Corson.They sure don’t make then like this anymore!

The author restored this Corson runabout

and has taken it all over Maine. It dates to

1958 when the Corson Boat Company was

building its brand name.

EXPLORE the MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS DIGITAL edition @ www.maineboats.com 35

the chemicals produced heat—some-times a lot of heat. “It was not unusualto see smoke on one end of the boatwhile you were finishing the other end,”Gerry explained in an interview in1999, seven years before he died. As aresult, some early hulls never made it tothe finishing room and remained a“learning experience.”

In any case, early boatbuilders using

fiberglass could produce a hull in muchless time than it took to produce a wood-en hull. Fiberglass boats could thereforebe priced very competitively.

According to a 1963 Corson pricesheet, a 15-foot runabout cost between$750 and $950, depending on amenitiesand add-ons. In old boating magazines, alate 1950s-era wooden 15-footer similarlyequipped was about $1,000 to $1,200.

At boat shows, builders in fiberglassoften would invite potential customersto take a sledgehammer to a cured por-tion of fiberglass cloth mat that had beenreinforced with those exothermic poly-ester resins. Unable to make a dent in thenew hull material, the stunt participantscreated word-of-mouth advertising forfiberglass that spread rapidly and enthu-siastically. The end of wooden produc-

“lake boats,” which were primarily can-vas-covered flat-bottomed runaboutsdesigned largely for the calm waters ofMaine’s inland ponds, rivers, and lakes.Those design concepts stuck with Ansonwhen he started his own boatbuildingfirm in Madison in 1946. That wasshortly after Skowhegan Boat went outof business after a devastating fire.

Initially, Anson continued to build in

wood and for the wholesale market,becoming successful enough in the nextthree years to add his three brothers andhis father, Freeman, to the boatbuildingteam. Wives kept the books and ran theoffice while sawdust flew in the diminu-tive barn at 9 Houghton Street.

Soon enough, orders for boats werecoming from all over New England andoperations temporarily moved closer to

the dealerships, to Sebago Lake Village atthe south end of Sebago Lake. There, thewooden boats were sold by a local entre-preneur under the name Sebago BoatCompany; the boats were sold undersome other retail names elsewherearound New England.

But Anson wanted his own brandand a special niche in the boatbuildingworld. So in 1955, he left Sebago Boatand returned to Madison to set up theCorson Boat Company in the barn onHoughton Street, along with youngerbrother Gerry, who had just returnedfrom Korea after a stint in the U.S.Marines. Together, they started experi-menting with fiberglass hulls. The newfiberglass boat designs were mostlybased on those old “lake boat” designs.

“It was all very new then,” Gerryrecalled decades later. “We had a lot tolearn.”

Other builders at the time were alsoexperimenting with, and then switchingto, fiberglass. Making fiberglass in thosedays required mixing petroleum-basedchemicals that reacted exothermicallyas they hardened. “Exothermic” means

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Anson Corson drove one of his boats right up on an ice floe in late spring on the Kennebec River todemonstrate fiberglass’s legendary durability, circa 1960. The legend of “Anson on the iceberg” was born.

Well-built and well-designed, Corsons remain a common

sight on Maine waterways today, even though the company

ceased production in the 1990s. This one was built in 1963.

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EXPLORE the MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS DIGITAL edition @ www.maineboats.com 37

annual spring pilgrimage to various Cor-son dealerships around Maine and else-where in New England. As was the caseat Kirkpatrick’s dealership on the Ken-nebec River, Anson often brought alongthe latest iteration of one of the five orsix Corson designs available that year.And of course, he always insisted ondemonstrating the boat.

“It must have been early in thespring that year, when the ice was stillgoing out of the river,” Kirkpatrickrecalled. After a few quick turns over theKennebec’s frigid waters near Bath,Anson decided to drive the little run-about right up on a particularly large icefloe. Photos were taken and the early1960s story of “Anson on the iceberg”was born, adding to the legends aboutthe durability of Corson boats.

Chemists finally got the process offiberglassing resins under better controlin the1960s. The smoking hulls disap-peared and the Corsons could concen-trate more on making refinements totheir boats. New models were intro-duced, cushioned seats replaced woodenbenches, outboard options multiplied,

and an inboard-outboard model waseven introduced. The 350 boats theyproduced each year were generally soldbefore they were even shipped.

Unfortunately, the same traits thatmade the Corson boats so desirable werealso part of the reason the brand eventu-ally faded out. The durability meant aboat would last for decades without need-ing replacement. So creating the brandloyalty seen by owners of a Ford or Chevywasn’t really possible. Additionally, those“cheap power” flat-bottomed designstended to pound loudly and bone-jar-ringly when winds kicked up a chop on abay or a larger lake. A V-shaped bottomcould handle choppy waters with muchless fuss, but required more horsepower.And Corson Boat Company only had onesuch design, which was rolled out late inthe company’s history.

Also, a business that relies on familyto keep costs low and products compet-itive can’t replace workers very easily.The 1970s were doubly challengingwhen brother Linwood died and theArab oil embargo forced the price offiberglass resins to nearly quadruple in

the space of a few years. By the 1980s,production was still profitable, but thedeath of Anson in 1980, followed byClayton in 1988, took a toll. Gerry car-ried on until the mid-1990s when pro-duction fell to only a shadow of thebrand’s best years. Attempts in the late-1990s to sell the business failed and, afterGerry’s death, his son Greg took over themodest and steadily dwindling inventoryof parts, plus the property.

Today Greg still hears from diehardcustomers who call every once in awhile, looking for a replacement parthere and there. “There’s not much leftof it,” mused Greg, who moved on tothe auto sales and body repair business,and is now nearing retirement himself.“Maybe they’ll become collector’sitems. I don’t know. There are so manyof them still around. We really did buildthem to last.” ✮

Ken Textor has been working on and writing

about boats since 1976. He resurrected a 15-

foot Corson runabout in 1999 and his family

has been using it around Bath and Boothbay

area every summer since.

tion boats became only a matter of time.Back in Madison, the Corson’s

trademark high-sided, flat-bottomeddesigns just added to the new boats’allure. “They were cheap power hulls,”said Lincoln Davis, a Maine-based out-board mechanic whose experience hasspanned the decades of the popularityof Corson runabouts. “Cheap power”meant you could use a fairly low-horse-

power outboard to move the flat-bot-tomed Corson boat very fast; as is thecase today, the lower the horsepower, thecheaper the outboard.

“Those high sides made people feelsafe, too,” Davis said. Boating in those dayswas considered a family affair, with Dad atthe helm of this rocket-like contraption.

Anson’s instinct to give his earlydesigns lots of reserve buoyancy—with

the trademark high sides and big, broadbow section—appealed to novices andexperienced boaters alike. Within fouryears of the founding of Corson BoatCompany in 1955, Anson and his broth-ers completed the transition from wood-en boats to fiberglass-only and neverlooked back.

Contributing to the Corson successstory in subsequent years was Anson’s

36 MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS | May / June 2017 | Issue 146

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(Left) Anson Corson discusses a new offering: cushioned seats. Early Corsons featured wooden bench seats. (Right) A boat show in the early 1960s was often a local affair, usually produced by a local boat and motor dealership, such as this one held at BFC Marine in Bath, Maine.

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