I wanted to spotlight a blogpost that raises the interesting question that I’ve used in my title.  And I’ll limit my answer to small boats:  it’s about aesthetics.

The sleek launch Suwanee below (31′ loa x 4′ beam!!) (Notice Elizabeth standing waaay back by the stern.)  celebrates a century since launch this year.  Built in Clayton, NY, where it now resides at the Antique Boat Museum, Suwanee carries a four-cylinder Volvo engine.  Could this design possess the same beauty if it were built of anything but wood?  Frogma might think it a large kayak sporting a Volvo.

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More wood:  Chasseur, tender on Pride of Baltimore II, shows its intrinsic beauty, especially here juxtaposed with the versatile inflatable piled inside.

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Next exhibit:  Grayling lives a new life (built in 1915 in Boothbay 64′ loa x 12′ beam) after a career as a Downeast seiner and sardine carrier.  I may have seen her pre-conversion 20+ years ago in Massachusetts.

aaawdgr1Below, also in the museum up in Clayton is an Algonquin birch bark canoe built along the St. Lawrence in the 1890s.  If I could spend a few months learning to build one of these, ah, …contentment.  In 1975 John McPhee wrote a good book on a traditional canoe builder in New Hampshire/Maine.

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I’ve owned a wooden boat and enjoyed every minute working on the wood, but I admit  eventually, my coins were all spent and my friends thought me a fraud for never leaving the dock, and someone paid me to take possession.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.  If you see a stunning wooden boat, send me a foto.  From me, more wood later.