Pigeon Boats: some historical information
Pigeon Boats were unknown to us until until we listed a modified Pigeon on the Port Carling Boats website (ad number pb553 on the Classic/Antique Boats page). We recently received some interesting anecdotes from Ashlyn Ecelberger Brown and his mother on the history of their family’s involvement with the Pigeon Boat Company. (below) If any of our followers have additional information on Pigeon boats, we’d love to hear from you…
From Mrs Brown:
“My dad´s boats were named Blue Pigeon. Some of the newspaper articles I found mentioned Dick Crane as the owner (of Pigeon Boats). Dick and dad were friends. My dad lived at Westover plantation when he was young and my grandfather was captain of the Crane yacht. At that time, Dick Crane’s father owned the plantation but he committed suicide. …
My dad raced before I was born, maybe he was 15 at the time. He raced boats named Blue Pigeon for a man whose last name was Pigeon. He had a lot of championships, international I think. The boats were lapstrake and designed by my grandfather. We used to watch the Hampton (VA) races in the 50’s. We lived at a marina and just had to sit on the lawn to watch.”
From Ashlyn:
I have had a hard time finding much information. This all started because the Maritime Museum in Newport News VA has a runabout from the 1950’s that said it was a hydroplane. (Photo below)
I sent a photo to my mom remembering her stories. She disputes it – saying it is a runabout like she raced as a teen but different from the hydroplanes of the time.. I have always been fascinated by that side of the family. I have not been successful however is locating photos of the smaller Pigeon boats raced in the ’30’s.
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Monday March 30, 2015
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