A rare racing catboat built on Cape Cod 131 years ago has been lovingly restored and is sailing again, three years after local cat lovers found her in considerable disrepair in East Dennis, Ma., hauled her to Westport and slowly brought her back to life at the F.L. Tripps and Sons boatyard.

Now re-christened “Suspect,” she likely started her life as either Marvel or Elaine, two D-Class racing catboats built by Herbert Crosby in Osterville, Ma. in 1892.

Unlike the workhorse cats that once hauled pots and fished these shores extensively at the turn of the 20th century, D-Class boats were a different breed. With massive sails and sharper lines than their working class cousins, they were built from around 1890 through the first years of the 20th century for the well-to-do, who competed in them from Marblehead down through Boston, Quincy, the Cape and Buzzards Bay, and down through Connecticut to New York.

In days when a workboat cat would cost $600, D-class cats could run as much as $6,000, and their owners were known to commission them in pairs to guarantee a race when they wanted.

Diamond in the rough

When Westporter John E. Conway first laid eyes on the boat in the fall of 2019, she was a sore sight.

Conway, the author of “Catboat Summers” and “Buckrammer’s Tales,” and a director of the non-profit Catboat Association, had been contacted by former association president Bob Luckraft, a friend and one of a “gang of five” on the Cape who had owned the boat, then known as Susan but thought to be the original Marvel, for about 15 years. Though they had established a restoration fund for her repair, they didn’t have the resources to bring her back to life, and offered her to the association, through Conway, for $1.

Having seen his share of basket cases, Conway wrote, “my immediate answer should have been a resounding “Not interested!”

“Little did I realize how, at the ripe age of 69, I would yet again become seduced by the charms of a water-borne woodpile that by all rights should have been some coastal town’s July 4th bonfire long, long ago. Nor would I have ever expected to learn and continue to learn more about her builder, her owners, her triumphs, tragedies, heart, and soul than ever thought possible. Damn boats!”

But Conway fell under her spell as he peeled an old tarp that covered her at the end of a residential driveway in East Dennis in October 2019. It was clear she wasn’t an ordinary working boat, but also that she would need considerable help.

“It was not in sailable condition,” he said. “Her ribs were gone, a lot of her planking was rotted. The steel centerboard had somehow gotten jammed in the centerboard trunk. The mask and spars were all discombobulated, the decks all rotted out.”

Various parts from the boat were scattered about the property, and others were later retrieved from property owned by several of the other co-owners of the vessel. Over the coming months, all were gathered and the boat was brought to Westport in June 2020, in the midst of the pandemic.

Twists and turns

That year, association members started raising funds for the boat’s restoration via online fund-raising and private donations, and formed a subsidiary organization, the Catboat Preservation Group, for tax and fund-raising purposes.

As the pandemic wore on, many area and regional boatwrights and other skilled tradespeople on pandemic furlough heard about the project and volunteered their time in the effort. In the end, dozens of people had a hand in the restoration.

As work continued, Conway and other association members set about trying to trace the boat’s history. It proved more difficult and convoluted than they’d originally anticipated.

The word when they got the boat was that she was built in 1905 by Herbert Crosby, one of the most famous of the catboat builders of the day.

In the coming months, researchers including Stan Grayson scoured archives from the Quincy Yacht Club, Mystic Seaport, State of Connecticut, Osterville Historical Society and other sources, hoping to find out when she was built, for whom, and where she’d spent most of her years.

Their research later led them to suspect that she was built in 1892, and might not be Marvel at all, but her sister ship Elaine, which has very similar lines.

In either case, they now believe she was originally built for an AA Lincoln, and likely acquired by Ira Whittemore, a Boston glass magnate, in about 1904. They believe he sailed her until about 1907, when he sold her to an owner on Long Island — records show she was loaded aboard a tramp steamer that year and shipped to Long Island from Boston.

Later, she was moved to Queens, NY, where she was kept at land owned by the Steinway Piano Company that is now home to LaGuardia Airport.

“She was there until about 1920, then sold to a group of boat builders in Connecticut,” Conway said. “Then we lose track of her at that point ... until about 1962, when a boat with her description surfaces in Greenwich, Ct.”

The 1960s owners re-christened her Sunnyside and kept her in the family until selling in the 1980s to a couple on Long Island, who sailed her for a number of years before selling to the East Dennis group. They again re-christened her Susan.

Small parts of her mystery and missing pieces of the puzzle were solved along the way with nearby assistance and other catboat lovers far afield.

When found in East Dennis, Susan was missing her maker’s plaque, which researchers suspect may have been stolen by a Cape Cod resident known to remove boat plaques and re-purpose them as belt buckles. But they had a fuzzy photo of the plate taken in the early 1960s, and found a Crosby owner in the Chesapeake Bay who agreed to let them borrow his original plaque, which was recast at a Westport foundry and will be affixed to her hull at a small ceremony this coming Saturday.

Another day, Conway was cleaning out gunk from the mast step and discovered a 1921 Morgan silver dollar, which helped the determine that in all likelihood, the boat had undergone a major refit that year. After cleaning out the step, the coin was put safely back where it was found — “don’t want to anger Poseidon,” Conway said.

They also re-christened her Suspect, in a nod to the uncertainty of whether she’s Marvel or her sister ship Elaine.

Ready to sail?

By last year, work had progressed enough that volunteers decided the time had come to take her out for trials, but after a quick attempt brought her in for more repairs to the hull. She was successfully launched this Spring.

The last few months have been spent learning to sail what Conway calls a “thoroughbred,” and he said it’s been tricky but exhilarating. Her rigging and the sheer volume of her sails makes her a finicky, temperamental beast.

“So we’ve been learning, sometimes the hard way, how she works.”

Suspect is one of only two D-Class catboats known to exist out of an original fleet that probably numbered about 25 to 29. But undoubtedly, Connor said, there are other treasures waiting to be found and restored.

To that end, Suspect is now the flagship boat of the Catboat Association’s newly-formed preservation group, and the plan is to start bringing her next year to catboat rendezvouses in the Northeast, from Westport to the Cape to Marblehead, where owners of similar vessels gather “to experience what it’s like to sail in a historic catboat.”

She’ll also be used to spur interest in the preservation of other historic cats. Currently, he said, the association has heard of at least four boats that are candidates for restoration, and they hope to use their example in Suspect to help raise funds for their restoration too.

For now, Suspect is based out of Westport, though the association has received offers from enthusiasts who have offered to take her in each winter and time will tell where she ends up.

“We’re glad she’s in the water and sailing,” Conway said, adding that anyone interested in seeing her and sailing aboard her need only contact the association for more information.