Purdy Boats, designer and builder of boats for the rich and famous, was an important part of Port Washington history. Alan Dinn, grandson of the company's founder, has painstakingly compiled the compelling and comprehensive history of the company, the family that founded it, and its clients. Boats by Purdy, which was released in July by Tiller Publishing, includes many photographs and line drawings of company-built boats, as well as replicas of original plans, drawings, specifications, and other documents. "What sets this book apart," said Dinn, is that every picture is referenced to the text. They are an integral part of the story."

In the introduction, Dinn calls the work "a labor of love," and indeed, it is. For over a decade, he put in endless hours examining family records and talking with family members, doing research in libraries, historical societies and museums, and collecting material from a variety of other sources. Dinn said, "Once word got out that I was working on this, information came from out of the woodwork." He commented, "The contribution that touched me most deeply was a copy of receipted invoices with my mother's original signature." (She was secretary of the company.)

Dinn's interest actually began many years ago when an aunt gave him a genealogy of the Purdy family. "I was probably in high school then, he said. "That got me interested in the family part." He added that although he used to "hang out" at the boatyard when he was a small boy, his interest in the "boat part" was really initiated around 1982 when the new owner of a house on Mackey Avenue found an old ledger book from Purdy Boats. The owner gave the book to Louise Haney, who for many years wrote the "On the Bay" column for the Port Washington News. Haney wanted to publish the ledger in the Journal of the Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society and asked Dinn to write an accompanying article about the Purdy family (published October 1982). Ginger Martus, author and historian whose family owned the Marshall shipyard in Port Washington, was also instrumental in sparking Dinn's interest in the Purdy Boat Company's history. She persuaded Dinn to collaborate on an article for WoodenBoat magazine, which Dinn described as "the premier journal in the field, with very rigorous standards." In doing the research for this article, "The Purdys of Port Washington," which appeared in the September/October 1995 issue, Dinn realized that there was far more material than could be contained within the scope of one article, and that, in fact, a book could and should be written. He said, "I felt driven to do this, because I was really the only one who knew the family history and the environment. Also, from my engineering training I knew how to read blueprints and so forth. After over 30 years of doing proposal writing at Northrop Grumman, I have learned how to take a lot of technical material and boil it down to a concise narrative." He added, "The only thing that I had to learn about was boats."

And so began the awesome but fascinating task of gathering and poring over mountains of material. "Our dining room table is still piled high," said Sue Dinn, Alan's wife, who supported him in so many ways throughout this process, including traveling with him on many of the research missions, and is now helping to promote the book. "As I continued my research, data came out of the woodwork," writes Dinn. To give one example, cousin Betty Purdy Ames, "showed up on my doorstep with a suitcase full of treasures. It took me months to decipher everything in that treasure trove." Dinn accomplished all of this while working full-time at Northrop Grumman.

The Purdy family history is a fascinating one. The first Purdys (the name is most likely from the Anglo-Norman or Old French for "by God") came to this country in the 1630s, initially settling in Connecticut. During the Revolutionary War, Dinn said, "they backed the wrong horse," and ultimately settled in Nova Scotia. Almost all of them started out as farmers, but during the 1800s, the overwhelming majority made their living as seafarers or shipbuilders. Alan Dinn's great grandfather, James Gilbert Purdy, went into the boat building business in the 1860s in New Brunswick (Canada). Some years later, he moved to Nyack with his family to work at the Seabury boatyard. Some of his sons, among them Gil and Ned, joined the business, and thus began the saga of Purdy Boats. It was while at Seabury that the Purdy men came to the attention of Carl Graham Fisher, self-made millionaire, real estate developer, and avid automobile racer. He set Ned and Gil up in their own shop, initially on the unlikely site of the Indianapolis speedway, of which Fisher was one of the developers. He then moved the Purdys to Miami Beach, which Fisher was developing. The location and climate were not conducive to boat building, so the Purdy Boat Company moved to Trenton, Michigan. In 1922, Carl Fisher moved his corporate headquarters to New York City. He also had a home in Port Washington, where he ultimately developed Bayview Colony. When the Gold Cup races were scheduled to be held in Manhasset Bay in 1925, Fisher brought the Purdys to Port Washington to work on his entry in the races. The firm opened for business on April 1 of that year on the shores of the Bay, near the three major yacht clubs: Knickerbocker, Manhasset Bay and Port Washington.

One of the Purdys best-known luxury yachts was the 74-foot APHRODITE, built for John Hay Whitney in the 1920s. In addition to the luxury yachts for which they are known, the Purdys designed and built extraordinary racing boats. One of their more famous clients was Thomas Edward Lawrence a/k/a "Lawrence of Arabia." Some of the Purdy crafts were used as rumrunners, some of which, Dinn said, were taken over by the Navy or the Coast Guard during various wars. The company built its last boat in 1954; after that, they provided maintenance and storage. The book begins with a quote from Jim Moore, a racing sailor, who summed it up as follows: "Anybody that wanted their boat kept like it was going to be in Tiffany's window, that's where you went, to Purdy's."

The book is carefully indexed, complete with appendices that give detailed information on the Purdy Boats. Dinn said that so far it has been well-received by those in the boating world. It is available for sale at Dolphin Books, the Cow Neck Historical Society, and Amazon.com. Pictures and other items from the Purdy Boat Company can be seen at the Port Washington Library in two exhibits: "Cross Currents: Baymen, Yachtsmen and Long Island Waters," in the Local History Center, and "Our Bay: A Tribute to the People, Events and Businesses ... that Contributed ... to the Nautical Heritage of Manhasset Bay," in the Nautical Center. Alan Dinn serves on the library's Nautical Advisory Council, where he will be doing a presentation and book signing on Wednesday, November 5.

Although the book is complete, Dinn would still be interested in receiving information about Purdy Boats. He can be reached by e-mail at purdyboats@aol.com or through his website at http://members.aol.com/purdyboats/.

Alan Dinn has lived in Port Washington virtually all his life (except for a brief stint in California). He is an active member of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, where he serves as Clerk of the Vestry and as a Lay Eucharistic Minister. He and Sue have a son, James, (who helped build the web site), one grandchild, and another on the way. Alan and Sue's preferred form of boating is kayaking.