Boats Built in Mahone Bay Area

The database below lists boats built in Mahone bay area was prepared and researched by John A. Taylor and Graham Duncan and updated by Mahone Bay Museum staff as needed.

Mahone Bay’s boat building history begins with the Mi’kmaq. The Mi’kmaq were very skilled at building birch bark canoes and had been living in this area for over thirteen thousand years before Mahone Bay and Lunenburg were settled in 1753-1754 by “British Subjects” mostly from France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. For more information, visit our Town’s History page: https://mahonebaymuseum.com/research/townhistory/

The British claimed this land as theirs and this particular area was ideal for sawmills due to vast amounts of timber and the two rivers emptying into the bay, which made for easy transport of logs to the sawmills. These sawmills established by the early settlers produced first-rate lumber for shipbuilding.

Below is a short description of the six major shipyards producing many large vessels that were active in the Mahone Bay area between 1850 – 1942. For more information on these shipyards, look for the small blue and white signs at each of their locations or contact us at info@mahonebaymuseum.com

JOHN MCLEAN AND SONS SHIPYARD
SEE PHOTOS RELATED TO JOHN MCLEAN YARD HERE: https://www.facebook.com/media/set?set=a.10157716036634030&type=3
John McLean established his yard in 1865 (however, registrations for vessels have only been found starting in 1900). It was located between Maders Wharf and the present-day town wharf. John McLean earned his master shipbuilder credentials at the age of 21. Upon John’s death in 1910, his sons carried on the business, expanding by buying the John H. Zwicker yard in 1917, and went on to build 74 ships until 1959.

JOHN H. ZWICKER
John Zwicker, brother of Elkanah, began operation in 1862, in a location adjacent to the present-day town wharf. It is claimed that the yard built a total of 148 vessels, however to date only 51 registration forms have been found for vessels built by John H. Zwicker. One of his vessels was said to be the largest ever constructed in Mahone Bay, the 1200 ton (183 feet) full-rigged ship Kinburn, in 1873. The yard closed in 1906 and was purchased by John McLean in 1917.

OBED H. HAM YACHT WORKS
In 1901, Obed Ham established his shipyard on Main Street, just down the harbour from the Ernst yard. The yard focused on the design and production of custom-built pleasure craft, ranging from a 16-foot catboat to a 128-foot yacht. Ham retired in 1932 after building over 400 vessels. Obed Ham, written up in his time as “the genius of Mahone”, was Nova Scotia’s first builder of pleasure yachts, a trend that continued in Mahone Bay
until 1975 when Paceship Yachts closed.

ABRAHAM ERNST/ERNST & SONS/ERNST SHIPBUILDING
Abraham Ernst’s first recorded ship was built in 1888. His shipyard was located near the corner of the Fauxburg Road and Main Street in front of where the RPS Composites factory is today. Primarily building vessels for the fisheries and cargo, including some designed specifically for rum-running, the yard operated until 1942, during which time it built at least 100 ships.

ELKANAH ZWICKER/TITUS LANGILLE
The first commercial shipyard in Mahone Bay was established in 1850 by Elkanah Zwicker and sold in 1862 to Titus Langille. Between 1866 and 1889, Langille built 22 vessels. The shipyard was located near the Michael O’Connor Memorial Bandstand on Main Street near the parking lot of the Independent grocery store.

HENRY SCHNARE
Founded in 1884, Henry Schnare’s yard was located on the harbour between the St. James Anglican and St. John’s Lutheran churches. A relatively small operation, it produced approximately 24 vessels from 1888 to 1911, ranging from 22 to 100 tons (approx. 50 to 90 feet long). The ships had to be launched laid over on their sides due to the shallow waters
of the Bay.

Boats Built in Mahone Bay
The earliest official registration form found for a vessel built in Mahone Bay dates from 1817. By 1850, at least 43 vessels had already been built by small shipyards in the Mahone Bay area and larger shipyards began being established to build mainly schooners and other smaller vessels, primarily for fishing and moving goods. As years passed, the trend was to build larger vessels for longer distance trading with the United States, West Indies,
and elsewhere.

By the end of WWI, there was no longer much demand for sailing vessels so the local shipyards began designing and building power vessels that used engines instead of sails for fishing and moving goods (including rum-running). Shipyards continued producing vessels during WWII. During this period, as many as 500 people were employed in Mahone Bay shipyards.

Although fishing vessels were still being built until 1967, after WWII the industry transitioned to mainly constructing pleasure boats. Fibreglass sailboats were built on the site of the present RPS Composites factory located at 740 Main Street, under several different company names, including Paceship Yachts. The final days of commercial boat building concentrated on the building of pleasure crafts. Mahone Bay Plycraft Co. built thousands of laminated plywood “runabout” boats from 1949-1962. Commercial shipbuilding in the Town of Mahone Bay wrapped up around 1975, when the last fibreglass yachts were built at Paceship.

HOW TO USE OUR DATABASE OF BOATS BUILT IN THE AREA
-The little green plus signs on the left of the vessel name may include additional details.
-The list of boats will default to alphabetical for the name of the vessels.
-Use the arrows in the top column if you would like to view the database by year, or the builders names in alphabetical order, etc.
-Use the search bar at the top right corner of the database below if you are looking for something specific.
-The database will default to showing you 10 boat entries at a time but you can change this with the “Show _ Entries” option at the top left corner of the database below.

Looking for photographs related to boat building in Mahone Bay?

We have three boat building related photo albums on Facebook:
John McLean shipyard related photos: https://www.facebook.com/pg/MahoneBayMuseum/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10157716036634030
Heisler boatyard photos: https://www.facebook.com/pg/MahoneBayMuseum/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10157799237559030
Other shipbuilding related photos: https://www.facebook.com/pg/MahoneBayMuseum/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10154989657159030

We also have some archival items related to boat building in Mahone Bay that may or may not have been posted on Facebook. See the full list of our archival collection here: https://mahonebaymuseum.com/archival-collection/