Beals Island Man Inducted Into Maine Boat Builders Hall of Fame

Isaac Beal, 83, of Beal’s Island was inducted into the Maine Boat Builders Hall of Fame in May.

Beal was honored at a ceremony held in early May and presented with his own captain's chair. Photo by H. Beal.

As Jon Johansen wrote in Maine Coastal News last year, “Isaac did not start out as a fisherman, he began by working in the boat shop with his father, Mariner ‘Lovey’ Beal. His father built him a rowboat when he was ten and he did not start fishing for another three years. However, he remembers going in and helping when he was about six years old. He said, ‘When I started in the boat shop I would crawl up between the ribs, get in there and hold that big ax on that wood just as hard as I could so it would not burr the inside of the ribs. Then I’d have to hold it in along the side of the nail and then hit it two or three times to get it solid against the hull. Then I’d bend it over and I’d get right on top of that nail head with that big ax and hold it right down as hard as I could and he’d hit it two or three more times and that would be right flat with the rib.’”

Built in 1979, Christopher, a 28-foot wooden lobster boar, was Beal's working boar and a champion race boat as well. Beals Historical Society photos.

Isaac worked with his father for twenty years. Christopher was the next-to-the-last boat they constructed together. Isaac fished from Christopher through the 1980s. The boat was highly regarded on the Maine Lobster Boat racing circuit, and for good reason: Isaac won all seven years that he raced, 1999 through 2005, in his division (Gas Class C).

Beal followed many lines of work, from mussel dragging and herring seining to managing a salmon aquaculture business. He learned his boatbuilding skills as a boy from his father.