$20,000 challenge grant kicks off Pocock Classic Cedar Singles entrepreneurial project

Rob O'Brien hoists a Pocock cedar single,

which our nonprofits intend to build and sell

to continue the Pocock legacy.

Photo by Dianne Roberts

In the history of rowing, the name Pocock signifies some of the best racing shells ever made. To the Northwest Maritime Center and Wooden Boat Foundation, it represents an extraordinary opportunity.

With the encouragement of second-generation founder Stan Pocock, President Bill Tytus and the Pocock Racing Shell Company have generously donated the jigs, molds, tools and materials used for building their “classic cedar singles” to our nonprofit educational organizations.

This summer, Port Townsend community leaders Dick & Anne Schneider offered a $20,000 challenge grant to kick off the entrepreneurial effort to build, market and sell these single-rower sculling boats. We are actively seeking to meet this challenge and begin building boats!

Bob Brunswick, the last remaining Pocock woodcraftsman, will mentor Port Townsend shipwright (and avid sculler) Steve Chapin on how to keep the Pocock wooden shell-building tradition alive. Development of lines drawings and a documentary video of the construction process will provide an accurate historical record. And profits from the small-scale sustainable business will support on-the-water youth programs at the Northwest Maritime Center.

Sculler and shipwright Steve Chapin

in his Pocock cedar single.

Photo by Dianne Roberts

The founding group of donors—known as “The Pocock Eight”—will each contribute $20,000 to fund the first nine boats. Eight of these will be gifted to the donors, with the first boat on permanent display in the Northwest Maritime Center, alongside eight oars recognizing the founding group.

This is the Pocock Classic Cedar Singles Project: turning cedar planks only 3/32-of-an-inch thick into the 26-foot-long boats that have become true rowing classics.

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Click here for the story of the Hoh, the Olympic gold-medal-winning Pocock “four” that was restored in Port Townsend and is being returned to the Pocock Memorial Rowing Center in Seattle.