Bill Keeling builds one more deadrise for himself

The art of building wooden boats is alive and well in the Chesapeake Bay region, as museum boat shops continue to turn out classic deadrise wooden boats. But a 78-year-old building a wooden fishing boat “in the wild” – his own shop – is pretty unusual today.

That’s boatbuilder Bruce W. (Bill) Keeling III, who is building a traditional deadrise and cross-planked wooden commercial fishing boat in Virginia’s Mathews County.

“A lot of people come around to see me working on my boat and they are interested, but very few ever ask anything about how I build the boat,” he says, standing outside of his boat shop in Bohannon, Va.

“I can name a few people still alive who can build a boat like this,” he says. “Jimmy Drewery of Newport News, Francis Smith of Gloucester County, Micky Parks and Jerry Pruitt of Tangier Island, Robert Green of Deltaville.”

“I guess there are a few more, but I can’t think of them right now, and I think all I have mentioned have aged out of the business.”

Virginia boatbuilder Bill Keeling has this 43-foot wooden deadrise workboat underway at his boatshop in Bohannon, Va. Larry Chowning photo.

When Keeling was growing up in the early 1950s in Eclipse, Va. on Chuckatuck Creek, noted boatbuilder Lepron (“Captain Lip”) Johnson at Johnson Marine Railway was building wooden boats right down the road in Crittenden, Va. Captain Lip was well known for building the 93’x 24.9’x7’ deck boat Chesapeake in 1936, the second largest deck boat built in the Chesapeake Bay region. The yard had three railways, and there were other railways nearby, which were manned by a community labor force of watermen and craftsmen.

The railways and boatyard provided steady part-time work for watermen with boatbuilding skills between fishing seasons, or during off-years when catches were low.

Keeling’s great-uncle, Henry Moger, fished for shad using fyke nets. He worked sometimes at the railway and built boats on the side. When Keeling was a preteen, he started helping his great-uncle fish nets and build boats.

“In those days, Chuckatuck Creek was loaded with boats and was a great place to grow up,” says Keeling. “I learned to build boats from my great-uncle. My father also built small wooden sportfishing boats in the 1960s, so I had boatbuilding coming at me from several ways.”

Keeling started building James River shad bateaux on his own in the 1970s. Later, he built larger oyster boats on Johnson’s lower railway, where the Chesapeake was built. One of Keeling’s first large deadrise commercial fishing boats was built in the mid-1980s for himself to go patent tonging for hard clams. The boat, named Kerry Shannon, still works the water today.

“I worked her until 1996 and then sold her and started building commercial fishing boats, but in the late 1990s, I found steady work in yacht restoration.”

Bill Keeling built the Kerry Shannon in the 1980s for himself to work in Virginia's patent tong clam fishery. The boat is no longer owned by Keeling, but is still being worked on the bay today. Larry Chowning photo.

Keeling’s heart was always in building commercial fishing boats. His new 43’x12’x3’ deadrise is a testament to that.

“I am not planning on selling her,” says Keeling. “If I want to work her, I will; or if I want to cruise on her, I will. When I get ready to sell her, some waterman will be getting a good boat.”

The boat’s structural elements – keel, horn timber, stem, etc. – are built from West Coast fir. The sides are North Carolina white cedar (juniper), and the bottom planks and frames are Virginia spruce pine. The vessel will be powered by a 500 h.p. Cummins 6-cylinder diesel engine with a 2:1 Twin Disc reduction gear, working through a 2” stainless steel shaft with a 28” x 28” prop that Keeling found in a scrapyard. He is fabricating many parts of the boat, including the wet exhaust piping, from stainless steel scrapyard materials.

The fasteners are stainless steel screws, nails, and bolts. “If the old boatbuilders had the fasteners we have today, there would be old wooden boats everywhere,” says Keeling. “They had the best lumber in the world in those days, but the iron fasteners did not hold up.”

At 78 years old, Keeling reflects on his mortality. “I know this is near the end for me and for cross-planked wooden deadrise boats on the bay. I would have never thought it when I was growing up because there were so many boatbuilders and so many boats.”

The boat is expected to be launched in the spring. It may be one of the last of its kind to hit the waves in the wilds of the Chesapeake.