Tom Whitehurst
Active member
With Mr. Sanford documenting his latest project here I thought the might be some interest in this Long Island boat and how it developed. I hope it is ok to copy this from a defunct newspaper and it was written well over 60 years ago.
Here is a little history about the South Bay Scooter as developed in Bellport ( the eastern part of the Great South Bay). It was written by Wilbur A. Corwin whose father is credited with the development of the scooter. It was published back in 1957 in the Long Island forum when Corwin was in his eighties.
Birth of the South Bay Scooter, by Capt. Wilbur A. Corwin
Scooters Taking Water, Climbing to Ice, Bellport, 1904 – Suffolk County Historical Society
Men on Long Island’s south side bays since early times have fished, clammed, oystered, eeled, and set fykes, fishtraps, frostfish nets and smelt nets. Years ago they built small plumbsided flat-bottom scows and rowboats or sharpies. These made good carriers for their catches, and when winter came they placed narrow wagon-tire strips on the boats’ chines. Some men planted wooden strips on the chines and placed the tire strips on them, so boats or scows could be dragged through snow over the ice.
Now I am not going to even intimate that the scooter came from these scows, for it did not. That is another story. But with a lot of hard labor men got these crude boars through thin ice and up on hard, thick ice to work thier many sorts of fishing equiptment, and to carry their numerous kinds of foodstuffs in the raw that our bays have produced over the years. It was all cold, rough, hard work.
Applying this scooter idea to their work boats, the baymen produced small boats with planking running lengthwise and with wooden and flat brass runners screwed on, thus easing their labors. They push-piked these boats over and through the ice or water to set and run their fykes on the flats across the bay, returning with unbelievable amounts of fish (flounders) for market.
Then when sails were adapted to the gunning scooters and the jibsail used for steering, the baymen followed suit and long, hard jaunts were greatly reduced. All of this happened after the sailing gunning scooter appeared.
An interesting story was published some time ago in one of our south side papers with the picture of a boat labeled “an improved type scooter or glorified Seaford skiff”. The picture showed no skeg which every Seaford skiff has. I have a lot of respect for the wonderful little Seaford skiff. It is a fine type of sailing gunning craft for the water as was every designed, but a real Seaford skiff has a hollow bow and so much deadrise that it would not only wedge in the ice and cut the hollow bow, but also cut along the sides. And the skeg would not permit backing out of a water-hole to the ice or turning around in the ice.
The real scooter must have a specially designed bottom and be built to move in and out of a water-hole to the ice, either forward or backward. Else it would be stuck in the hole. It must further have so little deadrise that thin sharp ice will run under and not cut the hull. It must have its greatest width forward so that when the ice is once broken the entire sides are in water and the whole craft afloat in the track made through the thin ice.
As soon as the sailing gunner scooter was in operation here at Bellport a few local gunners used it on Narrow Bay and East Bay and as far west as Fire Island Inlet where strong tides quickly cut holes in the bay ice.
Great South Bay to the east was then filled with brackish water as we did not have all the present-day inlets feeding in so much salt seawater at every flood tide, while the many streams were then as now feeding freshwater into the bay. We also had cold winters, and with fresher water we had thicker, tougher and harder ice to contend with.
I have sailed from East Island to Bellport in a northwest wind with my father and my uncle, breaking thin ice all the way, and not one of our three scooters showed any sign of cutting. This trip back home followed a sail up to East Island in early morning on thick ice near the south side of the bay, and a fine day of shooting was enhanced by beautiful bags of fine redheads and broadbill.
All these statements about scooters are factual, but I would never presume to suggest that the scooter was the product of any inventions, ideas or studies of mine. However, having been so much with my father and having spent so many of my early days with him at his boatwork and in the practical use of scooters, I can freely reminisce and record a good many incidents connected with my father, Capt. Wilbur R. Corwin.
It was in 1874 that my father, a lifelong resident of Bellport, built a pumpkin seed shaped gunning boat 13 feet long and 3 1/2 feet wide with runners on the bottom. In this little craft he went skimming over the frozen bay, scooting about in and out of water-holes. He propelled the boat by hand, using a hook with a spur and flange blade which he designed and was made by Bellport’s local blacksmith, Joseph Shaw. It was only natural that folks began calling the craft a scooter.
My father sold this boat to Sheriff Robert L. Petty who sold it to George Ed Corwin who in turn sold it in Bay Shore. Meanwhile father built another scooter for Sheriff Petty and still another for John N. Rogers, a West Hampton duck raiser. And so these ice-and-water boats began spreading out along the south side.
While he had his first scooter, father, Richard B. Hamel and Daniel Petty were occupying a gunning house on Great South Beach while engaged to guard a cargo of sea sugar that had been salvaged from the wrecked schooner Avlona, stranged on the far side of the beach opposite Bellport. The cargo had been transferred by a tramway from the schooner, past the dunes to the bay side of the beach where, encased in barrels and hogsheads, it was placed on driftwood planks and covered with the schooner’s sails. (See Annual Report, U.S. Life Saving Service, Year Ending June 30, 1885).
As the bay was ice covered, the little scooter was used by these men to get their supplies from Bellport across the bay. They used small mainsail on the scooter when the wind was favorable, but as the runners were flat it would slide sideways. So father took it into the beach house one night and beveled the runners to center 1/8 inch to the one inch width, giving the runners their low point on the inside. This stopped the side slipping.
For some years thereafter local baymen used the beveled runners, with pike hooks, balancing their own weight fore and aft and from side to side. As all these boats had long straight runs to their runners they would move more easily on rough or pebbly ice than on smooth ice. Not being satisfied with his first arrangement, my father took his scooter in the beach house the next night and rockered its beveled runners. It was a big improvement and made the scooter handier than ever as a winter boat for baymen.
I am nearly 76 years of age and can remember back to my boyhood when baymen used to come to my father to leave him shape the woods and runners on their boats. They used to say “he had the know how”. My father and R. B. Hamel, my uncle, sailed their scooters during an era when many sailing vessels were stranded and wrecked on the outer beaches. They were often called upon to scooter the underwriters’ agents and newspaper reporters across the frozen bay to the vicinity of a stranded ship to cover the story of the wreck.
When the schooner John S. Ames came ashore in the winter of 1893 at Fiddleton, about opposite Bellport, my father made his first trip to the wreck with mother, Marie L. Corwin, my six-year old brother Mortimer F. Corwin, and his schoolteacher Ida M. Henry. Traveling under mainsail, they crossed the bay in eight minutes. With brass runners and no shrouds to hold the mast up, that was quite a trip for a 13 1/2 foot craft.
During the entire trip they could see the masts of the wrecked schooner beyond the beach dunes. During the first part of the trip they had easy gliding on the smooth ice but when they reached the rough ice on the flats they got a good shaking up. In some way mother got her feet mixed up in the rope known as the jibsheet just when the scooter was heading for the bank of seaweed rolled up on the ice at the edge of the bay and although father tugged at the jibsheet he could he could not get enough slack to bring the scooter up into the northwest wind.
Result: the jumped the seaweed and kept right on going over the frozen meadow, heading straight for the schooner whose masts stood above and beyond the dunes. “Are you going to take us right to the wreck?” mother asked, and father replied, “I sure am if you don’t get off of that jibsheet.” The scooter finally came to a stop in the bushes, eight minutes after leaving Bellport. Then they walked over the hills and down the beach to the wreck.
During those years my father and Daniel Petty built a number of scooters for the Life Savers (Coast Guards today) whose stations stood about every five miles along the outer beachers. Eventually, however father gave instructions, his plans and molds for building scooters to Henry V. Watkins of Bellport who turned out many of them to be used for racing and other sports, shipping them to the Great Lakes and New England as well as to all parts of Long Island.
I well remember by father telling me over a half-century ago that “when some other man makes a device one may operate wholly and successfully by sail, with no rudder, then you can say he has equalled your father.” He passed away in 1914, but before his death he said, as he had many times, “When will we be able to read a good definition of scooter in the dictionary?” Well, there is a fair one today, but it took over a half-century to get it in.
Today the so-called scooter is an ice yacht scooter type, but nine out of ten will not cross a water-hole from ice to ice. Nevertheless, they all give the world of sport a lot of fun. The real scooter is a one-man boat. If reefed to the breeze and not overloaded, it is the safest conveyance for travel over ice and water. In its early days it was a boon to the market duckhunters, taking them to and from their shooting spots in almost any weather, and permitting them to retrieve dead ducks — often impossible with any other kind of boat.
There was a time when baymen had only a flatbottom rowboat on a hand sled, dragging it over the ice and launching it when they came to open water, then reloading it on the sled to continue over the ice — which meant plenty of heavy work. When they put runners on boats, including the Seaford skiff, other than the real scooter, they got into all sorts of trouble.
For years I have talked with baymen of my own age and some much older all along the south shore bays, and they have all agreed that the first real scooters where produced at Bellport and that my father was the pioneer builder, with Richard B. Hamel as an associate. Capt. Frank D. Corwin of Brookhaven, retired warrent officer of the U.S. Coast Guard, now 84 years of age and no relative of ours, has told me that long before he entered the old Live Saving Service in 1895 my father and Richard B. Hamel were building and sailing the first scooters he had ever heard of.
Later Captain Frank built fine scooters and could sail them better than any man alive today, in my opinion. He competed in many of the races held on South Bay ice and he won most of them. He is a man respected by everyone who has ever known him and, having a fine memory, I am sure that no one would question his statement that my father, the late Capt. Wilbur R. Corwin designed and built the first South Bay scooter at Bellport and also perfected the device by beveling and rockering the runners, and adding the jib-sail for steering.
Here is a little history about the South Bay Scooter as developed in Bellport ( the eastern part of the Great South Bay). It was written by Wilbur A. Corwin whose father is credited with the development of the scooter. It was published back in 1957 in the Long Island forum when Corwin was in his eighties.
Birth of the South Bay Scooter, by Capt. Wilbur A. Corwin
Scooters Taking Water, Climbing to Ice, Bellport, 1904 – Suffolk County Historical Society
Men on Long Island’s south side bays since early times have fished, clammed, oystered, eeled, and set fykes, fishtraps, frostfish nets and smelt nets. Years ago they built small plumbsided flat-bottom scows and rowboats or sharpies. These made good carriers for their catches, and when winter came they placed narrow wagon-tire strips on the boats’ chines. Some men planted wooden strips on the chines and placed the tire strips on them, so boats or scows could be dragged through snow over the ice.
Now I am not going to even intimate that the scooter came from these scows, for it did not. That is another story. But with a lot of hard labor men got these crude boars through thin ice and up on hard, thick ice to work thier many sorts of fishing equiptment, and to carry their numerous kinds of foodstuffs in the raw that our bays have produced over the years. It was all cold, rough, hard work.
Applying this scooter idea to their work boats, the baymen produced small boats with planking running lengthwise and with wooden and flat brass runners screwed on, thus easing their labors. They push-piked these boats over and through the ice or water to set and run their fykes on the flats across the bay, returning with unbelievable amounts of fish (flounders) for market.
Then when sails were adapted to the gunning scooters and the jibsail used for steering, the baymen followed suit and long, hard jaunts were greatly reduced. All of this happened after the sailing gunning scooter appeared.
An interesting story was published some time ago in one of our south side papers with the picture of a boat labeled “an improved type scooter or glorified Seaford skiff”. The picture showed no skeg which every Seaford skiff has. I have a lot of respect for the wonderful little Seaford skiff. It is a fine type of sailing gunning craft for the water as was every designed, but a real Seaford skiff has a hollow bow and so much deadrise that it would not only wedge in the ice and cut the hollow bow, but also cut along the sides. And the skeg would not permit backing out of a water-hole to the ice or turning around in the ice.
The real scooter must have a specially designed bottom and be built to move in and out of a water-hole to the ice, either forward or backward. Else it would be stuck in the hole. It must further have so little deadrise that thin sharp ice will run under and not cut the hull. It must have its greatest width forward so that when the ice is once broken the entire sides are in water and the whole craft afloat in the track made through the thin ice.
As soon as the sailing gunner scooter was in operation here at Bellport a few local gunners used it on Narrow Bay and East Bay and as far west as Fire Island Inlet where strong tides quickly cut holes in the bay ice.
Great South Bay to the east was then filled with brackish water as we did not have all the present-day inlets feeding in so much salt seawater at every flood tide, while the many streams were then as now feeding freshwater into the bay. We also had cold winters, and with fresher water we had thicker, tougher and harder ice to contend with.
I have sailed from East Island to Bellport in a northwest wind with my father and my uncle, breaking thin ice all the way, and not one of our three scooters showed any sign of cutting. This trip back home followed a sail up to East Island in early morning on thick ice near the south side of the bay, and a fine day of shooting was enhanced by beautiful bags of fine redheads and broadbill.
All these statements about scooters are factual, but I would never presume to suggest that the scooter was the product of any inventions, ideas or studies of mine. However, having been so much with my father and having spent so many of my early days with him at his boatwork and in the practical use of scooters, I can freely reminisce and record a good many incidents connected with my father, Capt. Wilbur R. Corwin.
It was in 1874 that my father, a lifelong resident of Bellport, built a pumpkin seed shaped gunning boat 13 feet long and 3 1/2 feet wide with runners on the bottom. In this little craft he went skimming over the frozen bay, scooting about in and out of water-holes. He propelled the boat by hand, using a hook with a spur and flange blade which he designed and was made by Bellport’s local blacksmith, Joseph Shaw. It was only natural that folks began calling the craft a scooter.
My father sold this boat to Sheriff Robert L. Petty who sold it to George Ed Corwin who in turn sold it in Bay Shore. Meanwhile father built another scooter for Sheriff Petty and still another for John N. Rogers, a West Hampton duck raiser. And so these ice-and-water boats began spreading out along the south side.
While he had his first scooter, father, Richard B. Hamel and Daniel Petty were occupying a gunning house on Great South Beach while engaged to guard a cargo of sea sugar that had been salvaged from the wrecked schooner Avlona, stranged on the far side of the beach opposite Bellport. The cargo had been transferred by a tramway from the schooner, past the dunes to the bay side of the beach where, encased in barrels and hogsheads, it was placed on driftwood planks and covered with the schooner’s sails. (See Annual Report, U.S. Life Saving Service, Year Ending June 30, 1885).
As the bay was ice covered, the little scooter was used by these men to get their supplies from Bellport across the bay. They used small mainsail on the scooter when the wind was favorable, but as the runners were flat it would slide sideways. So father took it into the beach house one night and beveled the runners to center 1/8 inch to the one inch width, giving the runners their low point on the inside. This stopped the side slipping.
For some years thereafter local baymen used the beveled runners, with pike hooks, balancing their own weight fore and aft and from side to side. As all these boats had long straight runs to their runners they would move more easily on rough or pebbly ice than on smooth ice. Not being satisfied with his first arrangement, my father took his scooter in the beach house the next night and rockered its beveled runners. It was a big improvement and made the scooter handier than ever as a winter boat for baymen.
I am nearly 76 years of age and can remember back to my boyhood when baymen used to come to my father to leave him shape the woods and runners on their boats. They used to say “he had the know how”. My father and R. B. Hamel, my uncle, sailed their scooters during an era when many sailing vessels were stranded and wrecked on the outer beaches. They were often called upon to scooter the underwriters’ agents and newspaper reporters across the frozen bay to the vicinity of a stranded ship to cover the story of the wreck.
When the schooner John S. Ames came ashore in the winter of 1893 at Fiddleton, about opposite Bellport, my father made his first trip to the wreck with mother, Marie L. Corwin, my six-year old brother Mortimer F. Corwin, and his schoolteacher Ida M. Henry. Traveling under mainsail, they crossed the bay in eight minutes. With brass runners and no shrouds to hold the mast up, that was quite a trip for a 13 1/2 foot craft.
During the entire trip they could see the masts of the wrecked schooner beyond the beach dunes. During the first part of the trip they had easy gliding on the smooth ice but when they reached the rough ice on the flats they got a good shaking up. In some way mother got her feet mixed up in the rope known as the jibsheet just when the scooter was heading for the bank of seaweed rolled up on the ice at the edge of the bay and although father tugged at the jibsheet he could he could not get enough slack to bring the scooter up into the northwest wind.
Result: the jumped the seaweed and kept right on going over the frozen meadow, heading straight for the schooner whose masts stood above and beyond the dunes. “Are you going to take us right to the wreck?” mother asked, and father replied, “I sure am if you don’t get off of that jibsheet.” The scooter finally came to a stop in the bushes, eight minutes after leaving Bellport. Then they walked over the hills and down the beach to the wreck.
During those years my father and Daniel Petty built a number of scooters for the Life Savers (Coast Guards today) whose stations stood about every five miles along the outer beachers. Eventually, however father gave instructions, his plans and molds for building scooters to Henry V. Watkins of Bellport who turned out many of them to be used for racing and other sports, shipping them to the Great Lakes and New England as well as to all parts of Long Island.
I well remember by father telling me over a half-century ago that “when some other man makes a device one may operate wholly and successfully by sail, with no rudder, then you can say he has equalled your father.” He passed away in 1914, but before his death he said, as he had many times, “When will we be able to read a good definition of scooter in the dictionary?” Well, there is a fair one today, but it took over a half-century to get it in.
Today the so-called scooter is an ice yacht scooter type, but nine out of ten will not cross a water-hole from ice to ice. Nevertheless, they all give the world of sport a lot of fun. The real scooter is a one-man boat. If reefed to the breeze and not overloaded, it is the safest conveyance for travel over ice and water. In its early days it was a boon to the market duckhunters, taking them to and from their shooting spots in almost any weather, and permitting them to retrieve dead ducks — often impossible with any other kind of boat.
There was a time when baymen had only a flatbottom rowboat on a hand sled, dragging it over the ice and launching it when they came to open water, then reloading it on the sled to continue over the ice — which meant plenty of heavy work. When they put runners on boats, including the Seaford skiff, other than the real scooter, they got into all sorts of trouble.
For years I have talked with baymen of my own age and some much older all along the south shore bays, and they have all agreed that the first real scooters where produced at Bellport and that my father was the pioneer builder, with Richard B. Hamel as an associate. Capt. Frank D. Corwin of Brookhaven, retired warrent officer of the U.S. Coast Guard, now 84 years of age and no relative of ours, has told me that long before he entered the old Live Saving Service in 1895 my father and Richard B. Hamel were building and sailing the first scooters he had ever heard of.
Later Captain Frank built fine scooters and could sail them better than any man alive today, in my opinion. He competed in many of the races held on South Bay ice and he won most of them. He is a man respected by everyone who has ever known him and, having a fine memory, I am sure that no one would question his statement that my father, the late Capt. Wilbur R. Corwin designed and built the first South Bay scooter at Bellport and also perfected the device by beveling and rockering the runners, and adding the jib-sail for steering.
