E.H. Gerrish (1847–1930) is credited with being the first person to sell wood-canvas canoes commercially. From 1882 to 1909, Gerrish built and sold canoes from a shop in Bangor, Maine. Early Gerrish canoes contain elements of the birchbark canoes upon which they were based. If studied from earliest-to-latest, the canoes of E.H. Gerrish appear to show the morphing of the wood-canvas from its roots in the birch bark to the modern open gunwale canoe.
Evan Hughes “Eve” Gerrish is credited with being the first person to sell wood-canvas canoes commercially.[1][2] Born in Brownville, Maine, in 1847, Eve Gerrish was an established hunting and fishing guide when he moved to Bangor in 1875, set up shop manufacturing fishing rods and canoe paddles and began experimenting with wood-canvas canoe construction.[3] Canvas had been used to patch leaks in bark canoes, and native people had experimented with the use of canvas in canoe-building as the supply of usable birch bark became depleted with the rise in interest in use of the canoe for sporting activities.[4] These early canvas-covered canoes were built without metal fastenings and, as with bark canoes, they were built from the outside-in—the reverse of the later practice of building over a form or mold.[5]
By 1878, Gerrish was producing eighteen canoes a year and by 1882 hired his first employee. In 1884 he was producing over 50 canoes annually. That year, Gerrish exhibited his canoes in New Orleans at the World Cotton Centennial.[6] As the advantages of the canvas covered canoe became evident to a public interested in a replacement for the more difficult to obtain and maintain bark canoe, others entered the canoe-building market and contributed to the advancement of the manufacturing process.
I saw a man by the name of Evan Gerrish of Bangor riding in the Penobscot River in a canvas-covered canoe. I quickly saw the advantages of that kind over my birchbark, which more-over leaked. I examined the canoe closely, and in a short time was able to produce one which was so good someone wanted to buy it. [7]
E.M. White eventually opened a canoe shop in Old Town, Maine.
Gerrish canoes were exhibited at World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.[8] An economic depression known as the Panic of 1893 may have worked to the advantage of canvas canoe builders such as Gerrish: wooden boat builder J.H. Rushton nearly went bankrupt after investing in the promotion of his boats at this event,[9] while the less expensive and easily maintained canvas canoe continued to grow in popularity throughout the 1890s. Gerrish continued to build canoes until retiring in 1909 at the age of 62, selling the company to his foreman, Herbert Walton. Walton moved the company to his hometown of Costigan, Maine, where he continued to use the Gerrish name on his canoes but changed the name tag to reflect the new location of Costigan. Production of the canoes slowly declined until the shop finally closed around 1930.
