produced a thin counter. The sheer was usually marked and
well proportioned. The New Haven sharpie was a handsome and graceful
craft, her straight-line sections being hidden to some extent by the
flare of her sides and the longitudinal curves of her hull.

[Illustration: FIGURE 2.--A New Haven sharpie and dugouts on the
Quinnipiac River, New Haven, Connecticut, about the turn of the
century.]

The structure of New Haven sharpies was strong and rather heavy,
consisting of white pine plank and oak framing. The sides were commonly
wide plank. Each side had two or three strakes that were pieced up at
the ends to form the sheer. The sides of large sharpies were commonly
1-1/2 inches thick before finishing, while those of the smaller sharpies
were 1-1/4 inches thick. The sharpie's bottom was planked athwartships
with planking of the same thickness as the sides and of 6 to 8 inches in
width. That part of the bottom that cleared the water, at the bow and
under the stern, was often made of tongue-and-groove planking, or else
the seams athwartship would be splined. Inside the boat there was a
keelson made of three planks, in lamination, standing on edge side by
side, sawn to the profile of the bottom, and running about three-fourths
to seven-eighths the length of the boat. The middle one of these three
planks was omitted at the centerboard case to form a slot. Afore and
abaft the slot the keelson members were cross-bolted and spiked. The
ends of the keelson were usually extended to the stem and to the stern
by flat planks that were scarphed into the bottom of the built-up
keelson.

The chines of the sharpie were of oak planks that were of about the same
thickness as the side planks and 4 to 7 inches deep when finished. The
chine logs were sawn to the profile of the bottom and sprung to the
sweep of the sides in plan view. The side frames were mere cleats, 1-1/2
by 3 inches. In the 1880's these cleats were shaped so that the inboard
face was 2 inches wide and the outboard face 3 inches wide, but later
this shaping was generally omitted.

[Illustration: FIGURE 3.--Plan of typical New Haven sharpie showing
design and construction characteristics.]

[Illustration: FIGURE 4.--Plan of a large Chesapeake Bay sharpie taken
from remains of boat.]

At the fore end of the sharpie's centerboard case there was an
edge-bolted bulkhead of solid white pine, 1-1/4 or 1-1/2 inches thick,
with scuppers cut in the bottom edge. A step about h