The Dory Shop changes hands

About 20 years ago, a scallop fisherman named Kim Smith decided he was tired of going to sea. He came ashore and took over the famous W. Lawrence Allen Dory Shop on the Lunenburg waterfront.
This unassuming little business, located in the last two fisherman’s shacks, or fish stores, on Lunenburg harbour, had been building dories steadily since 1917.

In those days, every Maritime fishing town had at least one shop where some guys would build dories in a drafty old shed with a wood stove to serve the fishing fleets hereabouts. Schooners from the Bluenose-building Smith and Rhuland Shipyard, and from up and down the coast, would put in their orders to get good dories. Even Gloucester fishing schooners sailing from Cape Ann, Massachusetts, would from time to time buy their replacement dories on the coast of Nova Scotia as their first set got bashed up in that hard dory trawling trade. Lunenburg dories in particular had an excellent reputation for strength, lightness and seaworthiness. Many Lunenburg dories ended up on the decks of fine, fast and able fishing schooners hailing from all over the Maritimes and New England states.

More recently, fishing draggers and shore fishermen have been ordering dories for their own purposes. And all this time, Kim has been making sure that anyone who needed or wanted a dory got a good one. All told, Kim figures he built something in the order of 300 dories.


Then Kim signed on as Ships Carpenter of the Sail Training Barque Picton Castle
on her first ‘round the world’ voyage out of Lunenburg in 1997-99 and the seafaring bug got under his skin again. Since that voyage, Kim has been building up his sea time and level of certificates and is now available full-time as a ship's officer for world-wide voyaging. In that same time, the Picton Castle has sailed almost 200,000 miles including four times around the world, twice up into the Great Lakes and several times to New England under the command of Captain Daniel D. Moreland. Dan started his Maritime career working in boatyards as a young guy, then in sailing (and repairing) some of the last wooden schooners and brigantines to work in the West Indies. Boat-building and wooden boat repair was a daily part of life in those days. Dan had restored the big 1894 Grand Banks fishing Schooner Ernestina, ex. Effie E. Morrissey, and had spent a lot of time in Lunenburg doing research and getting authentic fittings made for that venerable old vessel. In 1996, he brought the Picton Castle to Lunenburg for the big overhaul that readied the vessel for her current voyages as the well-known sail training ship she has become.

Over the last couple of years Kim and Dan got talking and it turned out that Kim wanted to get back to sea more with his new found certificates and Dan maybe wanted to go to sea a little bit less and get back to his roots in boatbuilding on the coast. In the spring of 2005, the two made a deal to turn the Dory Shop over to Dawson Moreland & Co. in order to keep the Dory Shop going and get Kim sailing more.

So the famous Dory Shop of Lunenburg is under new management and aims to build tons of dories. The plan, too, is to build outboard skiffs, Transom Dories, day-sailers and develop new lines of boats using the same construction techniques as dories and provide quality wooden boats for work and recreation that do not cost an arm and a leg. Notions are also being bandied about of building 38' and 48' schooners at the Dory Shop. Our guidelines? Fast, beautiful and sweet to go to sea in. Look to these pages for news as things develop.