When Kent and Audrey Lewis sent their review of the Drascombe Dabber for this issue, it took me right back to growing up on the River Yealm in Devon, England, and summer days going to the beach by boat, often on a Drascombe Lugger owned by family friends. I didn’t think about it at the time, but now I recognize how perfectly suited the Lugger was to ferrying kids and dogs to be offloaded at the beach; to say nothing of bringing them home tired, wet, and sandy. Nor did I take note of just how many Drascombes of all sorts sat on moorings in the river. In hindsight, their presence is unsurprising: the Drascombe designer, John Watkinson, lived and worked beside the Yealm for many years.

John Watkinson at the helm of the 15′ speedboat he designed in the early 1960s; a young Douglas Elliott was along for the ride. Checking the engines during the sea trials was Eric Gynn.
I mentioned my connection with the Yealm to Kent, and he put me in touch with Douglas Elliott who had known John Watkinson personally. Before I knew it, Douglas was sharing with me a history that had unfolded on my own childhood doorstep.

John Elliott working on the Drascombe Lugger, REESKIP. John and Douglas Elliott would build more than 200 of the wooden yawls before John’s untimely death in 1980.
John Watkinson had owned the boatyard at Bridgend on the Yealm since shortly after World War II and had built a range of small wooden lapstrake boats. But in the early 1960s, customers were being lured by production fiberglass boats and, for a small yard like Watkinson’s, the pressure of the new competition was unprecedented. He decided to expand the yard’s range. Douglas, whose brother John worked at the yard at the time, remembers that Watkinson “designed a 15′ clinker-built motor launch of mahogany on oak ribs. It combined the rugged lines and seakeeping qualities of traditional West Country craft. It was powered by twin marinized Triumph TR3 sports-car engines, each 100-hp. It was very quick! But it was also economical and functional.” By 1964, Douglas says, the yard was building in wood and plywood, employing lapstrake, carvel, and strip-plank construction. They were doing well, but it was then that Watkinson decided to sell the yard and work full-time at design. That decision would lead to the building of the prototype Drascombe Lugger in 1965.

Douglas Elliott clamping the gunwale on REESKIP. Douglas worked alongside his brother, helping to build all the Drascombe boats that came from their yard. REESKIP was built for two Dutch sisters. When she was sold on to a new owner, she was renamed ELLIOTT in honor of John Elliott.
Douglas joined his brother at the boatyard shortly after Watkinson left, but recalls that “when he sold up, Watkinson moved to a farm in the middle of Dartmoor called ‘Drascombe Barton.’ The name was from the old English Dras for mud, and Combe for hollow; so really, Watkinson called his boat the Muddy Hollow Lugger! He designed it for his own family: a small trailerable boat that could be singlehanded and would sail well. And Kate, his wife, asked that she be able to step ashore dry shod and that there be no boom to crack skulls. The prototype had a dipping-lug mainsail and a sprit mizzen, and it sailed well. But Watkinson found the dipping lug a handful, so he altered the rig to a boomless gunter yawl. He built the first production boat up at the farm in 1967 and I was sent to load it onto a trailer and drive it up to the London Boat Show the following January. We sold it within 20 minutes of the show opening and before the show closed, we had orders for a dozen more.”

The almost-completed prototype Drascombe Scaith in the Elliott yard in Yealmbridge, Devon, England.
Despite Watkinson’s love of wood and the success of the first boat, within a year Honnor Marine of Totnes, Devon, was building the Lugger in ’glass under license. John and Douglas Elliott went out on their own and Watkinson gave them exclusive rights to build the Luggers in wood. They would go on to build other boats in the Drascombe range, including the Longboat and Longboat Cruiser, the Skiff, the Peterboats (in three different lengths), the Scaith (of which Douglas built 13 before Watkinson altered the design and it became the Drascombe Peterboat 4.5m), and the Mule 4.5m (a one-off variation of the Peterboat 4.5m but with a transom rather than canoe stern). All the boats were custom-built, and by 1979 the brothers had built 200 Luggers and were taking orders a year in advance. But the following year, on July 4, John Elliott died of a heart attack while at work in the boatyard, and Douglas wound up the business shortly afterwards.

John Watkinson in the prototype Scaith preparing to fend off from the wall at Bridgend Quay, site of his old boatyard.
John Watkinson returned to the village of Noss Mayo on the River Yealm in the 1980s and lived there until his death in 1997. After John died, Douglas Elliott went to work for Terry Erskine Yachts where, in 1980, he built a Peterboat 4.5m. From there he went to Marine Projects (now Princess Yachts) in Plymouth. “They built fiberglass boats, and I didn’t like GRP at all, so I moved on and retrained as a telephone engineer.” Now in his late 70s he still lives in Plymouth and still takes on boat repair work when he gets the chance. “I’ve remained involved in boats, particularly Drascombes. I bought back the original Scaith, FOOTLOOSE, and sailed her for several years before I reluctantly had to sell her. But I still work on people’s boats, I’m just a bit slower these days.”

The prototype Drascombe Scaith sailing in a stiff breeze in the mouth of the River Yealm with its designer, John Watkinson, at the helm. Douglas Elliott built 13 Scaiths before Watkinson tweaked the design and developed it into the Peterboat 4.5m, which Douglas describes as “a very similar-looking boat from a distance, but a bit fuller aft and a bit finer forward.”
Wooden Drascombes are still built in limited numbers, but the fiberglass versions continue to be popular. To date, there are more than 6,000 Drascombes worldwide.
With many thanks to Douglas Elliott for sharing his memories and to Kent Lewis for the introduction.
For more on the Drascombe Dabber, read Kent and Audrey Lewis’s review.
Read about a cruising Drascombe in Douglas Elliott’s story of LEGOLAS.
Have sailed my lugger every year since I bought it in 1979. It was in the sellers yard on a trailer with a large tree across it . Got it for very cheap. Fixed the extensive damage. Sold the Seagull, got some long oars instead. Been all over Casco Bay and beyond. It now resides on a mooring at the Taylor Pond Yacht Club , Taylor Pond, Auburn, ME. I am 80 but still get off the mooring at least once a week May-October. On the mooring closest to me is a Caledonia Yawl. What a pair.
It would be hard to find a more giving, patient, funny, kind and knowledgeable sailor in our small boat world than Doug. We are honored to call him friend, and Bilge Rat.
Another builder of wood Drascombes was East/West Boats of Kittery/Eliot Maine. They built nine wood Drascombes in the 1980’s and another around 2000.
Kent, a very old man I knew once said to me. “Your kindness is exceeded only by your personal beauty.”
I think that was meant to be a compliment.
Doug
Your retrospective on the Drascombe family of boats has compelled me to share my enthusiasm for John Watkinson’s design (I sail a Lugger on the Puget Sound). As most of us know, boat design is an exercise in compromise so my observation is that Watkinson has selected the best attributes that a person would want in a multi-purpose, family dayboat. Here are a few of my favorites:
– A large open cockpit with boomless main (much appreciated when sharing the excursion with friends and family.)
– A yawl rig that allows many options for matching the sail area to conditions.
– A deep forefoot that handles steep chop with composure.
– A kick-up rudder that projects through the hull, forward of the mizzen, providing better grip in heavy seas and also putting the skipper’s weight amidship for better trim.
– Easy to go ashore (toss anchor off bow, back down onto the beach, off-load crew and picnic over the stern.)
While the boat is very capable (and I am still learning) I have accepted that she will not sail as close to the wind as her single-minded, high-aspect-ratio cousins. So, when I find myself on an upwind leg and late for dinner, I remind myself that she is a “multi-purpose” boat, and is so handy in so many ways, there’s no shame to dropping in the motor to help ensure a timely arrival.
The overriding requirement when John Watkinson designed the Drascombe Lugger was to have a boat that would give him, in his own words, “A rattling good sail, have good sea keeping qualities, but would keep my wife Kate happy.” He certainly managed to do that! I’m honoured to have been part of the Drascombe history.
Doug
Thanks for this really lovely, intimate history of the Drascombe boats and the people who were involved in their origin. I was thinking how remarkable my emotional response to this story is, especially considering that I have never seen one of these boats in the flesh, and suddenly I remembered Webb Chiles’ stories of his circumnavigation in a Lugger, and it all made perfect sense. My heartfelt thanks to all who have had a part in the making and telling of this story!
I intend to write more articles involving the Wooden Drascombe, I have wonderful memories about building them and some interesting people who we built them for. I recall one customer, who remained a good friend, we built a varnished Drascombe Lugger for him, as well as a small varnished Praam dinghy as a tender, his wife wasn’t too enthusiastic, but when he visited our Boatyard along with his wife, we’d just completed the Praam dinghy. Upon seeing it, his wife said “The dinghy has a better finish than my sideboard”. That was the moment that his wife decided she wanted to be a sailor. They spent many happy hours on their boat, named “Saga” because of his wife’s initial resistance to getting a boat.
Another thing about Drascombes is that they make friends, we always get a visitor or two wander by when we are rigging the Lugger, and they are full of questions, stories or both.
I have sailed Drascombes for more then 20 years. Since last year I have owned a very beautiful wooden lugger that was built in the winter of 2021. She is in a perfect condition and always stored in a garage. I give her the name ONIRO, Greek for Dream.