Reminiscing with Harry Melges, Sr. An interview with Sam Merrick, E-Reporter, Summer 1978 Issue. Harry Melges, Sr.: I started sailing on Delavan Lake. My grandfather was alway good enough to buy a used boat somewhere like 18 foot C boats. We used to revamp them and rent them to people at the hotel. I sailed A boats on Lake Delavan when I was a kid. Sam Merrick: You sailed A boats before WWI?

Melges: Oh yes - alot. I was 17 years old when the U.S. entered WWI. Actually the first regatta I went to was on Oconomowoc Lake with Elmer Stevens when I was eleven years old - I was a sponge boy. That A boat was brought over on half a load of hay. And when we got there, they drove the horses into the water - that's the way they unloaded the boat. That was customary at the time. SM: Who built the boats then? Melges: Stevens' boat, the West Wind, was built by Ramaley of White Bear - Ramaley built one of the first E boats later. Jones and LaBorde (who built the first E boat with double rudders) - built A boats too - narrow boats with long water lines. Amundsen and Johnson also built A boats at that time. Palmer Boat Co. also built A boats. Charley Palmer built a boat for my father - a 24 foot boat with a centerboard - it was called an X boat then - we used it to carry passengers to and from the hotel.Charley Palmer came to Fontana (on Lake Geneva) around 1910. He built the 18 foot Norwest Association D boat. I had one of the first Marconi rigs on that boat - a cat rigged boat, no jib. Bill Napper also built A boats. Walter Jewel at Williams Bay also - he built sand baggers in the very early days before 1900. SM: How about Jimmy Jones? He must have been extraordinary fellow. Did you know him? Melges: Yes I did. He was a real enthusiast. He was a real guy who made you think you wanted to have one of his boats. He had a partner by the name of LaBorde. I had an A boat once that LaBorde built. LaBorde split off from Jones and LaBorde even though Jimmy Jones kept the name. LaBorde got himself a shed somewhere and built a few boats. I know of one boat he built - more like the modern type of boat we have today - named the Commodore. He built it for a fellow named Athern - the Athern Hotel in Oshkosh. Jimmy Jones was a helluva good sailor and always was crewing for someone - he never became prominent as a sailor because of the rule against so called professionals. Jimmy Jones was backed by the Kimberleys, a fellow called Will Davis and his son Steve - all around Oshkosh and Winnebago - all of them instrumental in keeping Jimmy Jones alive so to speak. He started Jobnny Bucks:aff sailing. He would loan the whole jig he used to build boats on to Buckstaff to build a boat with. Buckstaff built furniture. SM: Was Jimmy Jones a naval architect? Melges: No. The whole business in designing scows was one guy making boats a little better than the next. Nobody went hog wild usually. Boats were better because of who sailed them. But improvements were made over the years. I was more or less affiliated with the Palmer Boat Co. for many years. Charley Palmer had a high squeaky voice - a nasal tenor. He used to say "Harry, you'll never learn how to run a screw driver" - one of those old push button screw drivers - I used to work for him as a kid. Charley was tops with C boats for light weather. The first E boat they built was just a C boat lengthened out. It was bought by the Meyers boys - Arnold Meyer, Henry Meyer and Chris Meyer - Arnold was Mike's father. They had A boats before that - they were Palmer Boat Company minded. Then over in Pine Lake where the friends, the Galluns and Pritzlafs were all for Johnson. And Johnson boats were there. The first Johnson E boats I remember had pointed bows, centerboards and single rudders. The Palmer boats had square bows - good in light weather, but not much in heavy air. Jones and LaBorde, Johnson Palmer and Amundsen were the early builders. Oscar Nystrom, who worked for me 15 or 20 years, always thought a lot of Amundsen. SM: How long did Johnson build E boats with pointed bows? Melges: I would say 4 or 5 years. Then he built a boat with a shovel bow - the boat came up and the deck went down. I suppose you got a round or pointed bow whatever you wanted. Jimmy Jones' boats were not put together very well - that's why you fellows in the East stopped buying them. SM: Barnegat had a fleet of 10 E boats in 1925 - one Johnson and nine Jones and LaBorde. Each year until 1929 new Jones and LaBorde boats were delivered. But starting in 1929, nothing but Johnson boats came East until after World War II. Melges: Johnson built a fine cedar boat - they were tight and that's why you bought them. I went with Palmer in 1939 and designed an E boat pretty much what we sell now. Jimmy Jones built many boats with hard chines - they bent the ribs so hard they would crack. When I took over Palmer, the bilge curve I put in for all the boats was about the same as now. When Oscar Nystrom came down from Johnson to work for the Lake Geneva Boat Works he built a couple of E boats - one that was sailed by Brit Chance on Lake Geneva. He beat the pants off everyone, but they ruled him out. I sailed on Barnegat Bay with Bud Gartz. He wanted me to tend the main sheet. Gartz was used to sailing an A boat on its ear - you couldn't sail an E boat that way. He finally got me to sail it. You fellows from the East did pretty well. The year I went out, we had Ralph Wyer, Tom Ervine as the other skippers. Mike Meyer sailed with Wyer. Hib Winkler was the third crew. SM: You were with the Palmer Boat Co. all that time? Melges: Well off and on. During the summers off and on. But I was with them in 1939 for 2 years until the war broke out when we completely redesigned the E boat. With the war I got into the chicken business with Grunow. I remember the Kimberleys bought some of the last of Jimmy Jones' boats named Faith (an A boat), Hope (a 1927 E boat owned by Ed Loehr), and Charity (built in 1926 for the Buckstaff's with a pointed bow). Jim and Jack each had one - they all sunk, they were badly built - he pot nailed them; you drove in a nail and then bent it over - no screws. SM: How did Palmer build them? Melges: Screws - iron screws, some brass later and then aluminum. SM: I had a Jones and LaBorde fastened with copper rivets - that boat lasted. Melges: Well they must have done that a good deal. I remember an A boat called the Ilene built for Davis. It came down to Lake Geneva to the YMCA camp where they sailed it for years. I went over once to look it over and it was copper rivetted. SM: You really started Melges Boat Works after World War II? Melges: It was 1945 when the first boats were built. It was one of our first E boats that Bill Perrigo sailed in 1946 and won the Inland Regatta. SM: Let's talk about Palmer a bit. They put in a lot of fancy hardware and varnished bright work. Melges: That's what sold the boats. They were good on the small lakes - they couldn't go in heavy wind and sea that's where the Johnson boats always did well. He went in for double planking. Dorothy Palmer was the daughter of Charley Palmer and was married to a fellow who didn't know much about boats. I wanted to carry on. I almost got a war contract to build bridge barges and to build spars. She wouldn't go for it and that was the end of the Palmer Boat Co. After the war Bob Schieble bought it up. He went for a year or two - he was good competition because he had the forms from Palmer. When Oscar came with me, we started out with Oscar's forms. We widened his boat out a bit - it was a nice boat for ghosting conditions, but it was too tender. I needed a good boat builder, and Oscar was a great mechanic. You could tell Oscar "I want this bilge line to come in like that" - and use your hand to describe it. Oscar would know just flow to do it. I didn't expect to be in the shop, but would work in selling, so Oscar was just what we needed. When we decided on the M16, we had all this lumber around, too small for an A boat or E boat, so we decided to build the M16 - we laid it out on the floor - very much like the E boat, but cut down and with the same bilge curve. I don't know just why, but Dr. Otto Schmidt got Oscar to come down from White Bear with the Lake Geneva Boat Co. They never got into much boat building. You know how your national E got started? Right down here in Florida with Bus Maag was an E boat sailor - he was down here with a boat company. Ernie Schmidt was having some trouble with the Inlands. He called us up and asked whether we ever thought about doing any sailing outside of the Inlands. I said we ought to have a national organization get scows in from all over the country. Between Bus Maag and me, we had the first regatta under the International Scow Association - about 30 boats came. Dick Bertram sailed and Buddy (Melges) crewed for him along with Billy Grunow. Billy Grunow was the same age as Buddy - they sailed together. SM: You're telling me there was something like a national E regatta several times before 1959? Melges: Yes, the first one was at Geneva in '53 or '54, next Spring Lake, Michigan, then Pewaukee sometime. I have membership card showing "International Scow Yachting Association, Williams Bay, Wisconsin, June 1, 1954" signed by Marylyn Melges, Buddy's sister - my secretary. It was just for E boats. It was before people really started to travel. All of a sudden in 1959 the whole thing blossomed. Klem Harvey and Mike Myer did a lot of work getting it together along with Dick Turner from Lake Chataqua.