Riverside Boat Company

From MaineBoats.com:

The arc of six generations of Maine boatbuilders in the Bryant family can be traced through common threads: a love and commitment to their Newcastle, Damariscotta River waterfront property, uncompromising standards of workmanship, the Lincoln Academy, the Landing School in Kennebunk, and wooden boats. But mostly wooden boats.

Nathaniel Bryant arrived in Newcastle from Massachusetts in 1765. By the late 1800s, the family was involved in shipbuilding on Great Salt Bay and had a business buying and selling Maine property.

In 1932, Nathaniel’s great-great-great grandson Creston Bryant graduated from Damariscotta’s Lincoln Academy. In 1946, he hung out his shingle as Riverside Boat Company on Liberty Street in Newcastle on the Damariscotta River. In the beginning, his focus was on designing and building small sailboats. The most popular was his 12′ Skipper class sloop—seven or eight were built in the late 1940s, mostly for members of the local yacht club. Another success was a flat-bottomed, 14′ Scottie class skiff with a catboat rig.

Soon after Creston’s son Paul graduated from Lincoln Academy in 1961, he took a course at the Westlawn School of Yacht Design and soon went to work for his father in the family business. When Creston died in 1971, Paul took over the shop. His son Nat followed in his father’s footsteps, and graduated from Lincoln Academy in 1993, attended the Landing School in Kennebunk, took the Westlawn design course, and then joined the family boat yard.

Today, the five-person Riverside Boat Company crew includes Linda, Paul’s wife and Nat’s stepmother, who is the chief painter/varnisher/bookkeeper. She began working with the father-and-son team in the mid-1990s.