For those of us who love our sleek wooden boats, especially the original Trojan boats, 1949 was a year to remember. It was four years after the end of World War II, with U.S. manufacturers still converting to peace-time uses of construction materials no longer needed for the war effort – steel, aluminum, rubber, nylon, and newer products such as plastic and vinyl. Novelties of 1949 included inflatable plastic boats, and a surfboard coated with fiberglass. That year two young men tired of their jobs at Norman Owens Boat Company, and decided to leave to form their own company. Jim McQueen and Harper Hull traveled to Troy, New York, where they bought the Cottrell-Spoore Boatworks, a small builder of wooden racing boats and runabouts.

McQueen and Hull renamed the company The Trojan Boat Company and moved operations to York, Pennsylvania. There they bought a dairy barn, converted it to factory use, and started to build boats in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country where they had access to the local Amish work force, hard working and skilled craftsmen. Not long afterward they moved their main factory to nearby Lancaster. In January 2001, when Bob Cushman interviewed Larry Warner and John Leed, keepers of Trojan Boat archives, Warner recalled, Problem was they didnt have any idea on how to run an assembly line. So they thought, Lets go back and get ol Ernie Warner and get him over here with them. So Trojan at last ceased production of wooden boats and began production of fiberglass boats.

For more information, please visit http://www.trojanboats.net