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.

A white-hulled lapstrake 15' speedboat with varnished trim getting up on plane.Photographs courtesy of Douglas Elliott

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.

A boatbuilder shapes the transom rail on a wooden Drascombe lugger.

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.

Man in coveralls adjusts a clamp while building a wooden boat.

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 prototype wooden-hulled Drascombe Scaith in the workshop.

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.

A man lifts an oar to fend off a small double-ended sailboat from a stone wall.

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.”

A Drascombe Scaith with tanbark sails sails in a stiff breeze.

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.