Synopsis
Bill Simpson and Dave Kuntz
They first came to the banks of the great river on foot. The Mohawk. The Oneida. The Ojibway. The Europeans.
Islands, dozens of them, hundreds of them, littered the St. Lawrence between New York and Ontario. The islands were remote and rocky, and difficult to reach, as the river was strewn with shoals and rapids.
For nearly a century after the Revolution, the Thousand Islands of the mighty St. Lawrence remained mostly uninhabited. But some men will not be denied.
By the end of the 19th century the well-heeled gentlemen from Boston and New York who summered on the St. Lawrence had built elaborate estates on these remote islands: Castle Rest built by George Pullman, The Stone House built by Charles Emery, Carleton Villa built by William Wyckoff, Hart’s Castle built by Elizur Hart, and The Towers built by Frederick Bourne.
Of course there was only one way to reach these islands: by boat. Leyare, Fitzgerald & Lee, and Hutchinson’s Boat Works were just a few of the legendary shops to ply their trade up and down the river.
By 1905 the Gold Cup Races found a home in the Thousand Islands, and soon motorboat racing became the singular obsession among the summer elite. Some of the sleekest, fastest wooden boats ever built were piloted on the St. Lawrence.
One gentleman who epitomized this obsession was Charles Lyon, known as the King of the St. Lawrence. He was responsible for three of the finest boats to grace the waters of the majestic river: Finesse, launched in 1933. Vamoose, launched in 1936. And the one-of-a-kind runabout, Pardon Me, launched in 1947.