By Peter F. Stevens
Reporter Staff

He arrived in Dorchester with a big reputation. His name was George Lawley Sr., and when it came to crafting sleek racing yachts, the term "Lawley built" stood for state-of-the-art vessels craved by Americas Cup captains and yachters with such surnames as Vanderbilt. In 1910 or 1911, the Lawley Boatyard opened for business at Port Norfolk.

As Dorchester became the base for one of the world's most acclaimed and gifted yacht builders, Boston and its other environs were losing small, custom boatyards that had flourished throughout the 19th century. A period Boston newspaper relates: "In the late 1890s, a [Boston] city business directory listed a half-dozen yacht builders in East Boston and companies in other parts of the city that specialized in fittings for yachts, such as 'water closets,' rigging, cushions, lamps and upholstery. But a decade later, the entry 'yacht builders' disappears from the directory. The final holdout appears to have been George Lawley."

From 1911 to the mid-1940s, not only graceful and speedy yachts would take shape in the Point Norfolk boat works, but also powerboats, tugs, and armored craft during the two World Wars. The man who established the venerable Dorchester boatyard was a transplanted Englishman who hailed from a London family long known for their skills as boatbuilders. He landed his first American slot with East Boston boat designer Donald McKay, who had a stellar reputation for turning out fine, durable vessels.

Lawley, as with most designers worthy of the name, planned to open his own shop someday; in 1866, he and William Maybury, a friend and colleague from the East Boston site, opened a boatyard in Scituate. They chose to specialize in pleasure boats that would fetch steep fees from the yachting set of Boston, the North Shore, Newport, and any other New England shore where the wealthy gathered beneath finely turned sails. Soon Lawley-built yachts came to epitomize "well into the 20th century…perfection in every detail.

The demand for high-performance yachts hit full-bore in the 1870s, and the boom pulled Lawley back to the Boston waterfront, where he could find a lot big enough to handle his burgeoning commissions. He set up his shop on a lot adjacent to the Boston Yacht Club, at City Point in South Boston. Even with the additional space, Lawley was nearly swamped by the sheer volume of commissions and was forced to seek more space. He moved the operation to the northern side of City Point; that still proved inadequate and pushed him to purchase additional seaside acreage in 1902, when he expanded to a tract formerly belonging to Boston's former House of Correction. There, Lawley built two near-legendary yachts, the Americas Cup racers Puritan and Mayflower.

Such international success continued to force Lawley to seek even more space. In 1910-1911, he chose to move his boatworks across Dorchester Bay to the large site of the former Putnam Nail Works, at Port Norfolk. The Dorchester home of the Lawley Boatyard soon claimed a prominent niche in American boatbuilding circles. A maritime writer records: " The Guinevere was built at the Neponset yard. It was the first yacht ever fitted with Diesel oil engines motoring her electric Westinghouse equipment that propelled the boat, hoisted the sails, lighted, heated and 'cooked' the craft, and twirled the big gyroscope which keeps the boat on even keel." The Lawley Boatyard remained in business at Port Norfolk through the mid-1940s. Today, little is left at the site, just a short distance away from the cars whizzing through Neponset Circle. On Dorchester Bay, waters where a number of Lawley racing yachts knifed through the water for the first time, the sailboats skimming the waves today may be scenic, but remain pale echoes of the scene a century or so ago.