Penobscot Marine Museum
William Frost (standing) readies one of his “Jonesport model” lobsterboats for launching. Frost first started boatbuilding in Nova Scotia; this photograph shows his second location in Jonesport, Maine, in about 1933. Frost is widely credited with the creation of the modern lobsterboat, which became highly influential for both commercial and pleasure boats.
Maine is blessed with a pantheon of top-notch builders of working boats, but few have the legacy of the Lowell family, which extends beyond commercial fishing boats to yachts and government vessels. They are the descendants of William (Will) Frost, widely regarded as the inventor of the iconic Maine lobsterboat, and his grandsons also became noted boatbuilders and designers. They, and most of the region’s powerboat builders, have been influenced in some way by Frost’s signature semi-displacement, semi-planing hull.
Jamie Lowell, one of Frost’s great-grandsons, has become something of a curator of his family’s 400-year boatbuilding legacy, along with his wife, Ruth, and other family members. Their legacy, which continues to this day, has stretched from Nova Scotia to southern New England—but it is centered in Maine. They sat down with me on a bleak winter day early this year in the library of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, to discuss the Lowell dynasty.