Tyler Fields
Alexander “Sandy” Brown had built biplanes before, but his 18′7″ open launch built to plans by Robert Steward was his first boat. He used traditional carvel plank-on-frame construction and chose a design that reminded him of his youth on Cuttyhunk Island, just across from his current home in Westport, Massachusetts.
In 2017, Alexander “Sandy” Brown was given a copy of Wooden Boats: In Pursuit of the Perfect Craft at an American Boatyard, Michael Ruhlman’s book about the construction of the schooner REBECCA at Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. In the book’s step-by-step descriptions and photographs, Sandy was inspired about boatbuilding, and his thoughts turned to the small craft he had known in the harbor at another Massachusetts island, Cuttyhunk, where he grew up in the 1940s and ’50s.
The boats that especially made an impression on him were used in the quest for striped bass; two world-record-setting fish have been caught off Cuttyhunk. A picture on the wall of his home, hiding in plain sight, brought it all back: the photo showed Capt. Louis Ramos, an islander who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in saving the crew of the whaleship WANDERER when it ran aground on Cuttyhunk in 1924. But now, what drew Sandy’s eye was the open launch in which Ramos was shown at the tiller. He was determined to build a boat of similar design.