Since beginning my research and writing concerning the pleasure boat building industry of Holland, I have found the history of the Mac Bay Boat Company one of the most intriguing. Maybe it is the early tale of personal tragedy or its final struggle against a wave of emerging fiberglass boat companies. I may never be able to put my finger on it, but that’s what makes studying history fun.
George Arthur Pelgrim, president of Bay View Furniture, began Mac Bay Boat Company in 1948 after his son-in-law, Jim White, returned from World War Two. According to White’s widow, Phyllis Pelgrim White, Jim spent time working in a few areas of Bay View Furniture. Before the war, White had been an avid power boater, sailor, and instructor at the Macatawa Bay Yacht Club. His love of the water and the many hours spent with local boat builder Kenneth Campbell, of Campbell Boat Company, must have also shaped his desire to start a boat building company of his own. Soon White’s father-in-law became involved as an investor and plans were set for starting a new company based in the basement of Bay View Furniture Company. The combination of White’s vision and Pelgrim’s desire to capitalize on the emerging pleasure boat industry gave birth to the Mac Bay Boat Company. On May 1, 1948, at 409 West 14th Street, the Mac Bay Boat Company was organized with the following officers: George A. Pelgrim, president; Mrs. George (Eva) Pelgrim, vice president; Jim White, secretary; and Henry Hopper, production superintendent. Now all they had to do was hire a crew of boat builders and start producing boats.
From the beginning, the directors of the new company must have decided not to use the standard practice of building small runabouts with mahogany planks. Instead, they introduced a sturdy, safe, and affordable molded plywood hulled boat equipped with quality hardware and inboard marine motors. This type of hull construction was new to the pleasure boat industry since it used heat, glue, and up to six layers of thin mahogany veneers molded together to create a sturdy preformed hull overnight. Other boat manufacturers, like the Chris-Craft Corporation, were still using planks of expensive Phillipian mahogany wood, thousands of screws, and days of manual labor. Mac Bay purchased ready-made hulls from several companies including at least one Canadian company, but mainly from United States Molded Shape in Grand Rapids. The hulls were delivered, sometimes fifteen or twenty at a time, stacked like teacups, via large trailers. Once the hulls were unloaded, the business of making them into boats was begun in earnest.
To turn an unpainted boat hull without a transom (rear portion of a boat) into a finished 16 foot 1,500 pound runabout took an engineer and many hours of labor from the company’s small group of employees. Lester Kaunitz was responsible for the design and engineering part of the process. Overseeing the estimated 3-8 workers was Harry Hopper, production superintendent. Under his direction, craftsmen were foreman Alva Burdett (A. B.) Melton, Donald Van Lare, Gary Versendaal, Doug McKay, Andy Riemersma and his brother, and William De Boer. After about one week of construction, a glistening white or natural mahogany runabout with a mahogany wood deck would emerge from the basement of the furniture company ready for shipment to distributorships around the United States. Each boat was complete with hardware, a choice of a 25, 45, or 75-horse power Gray Marine engine, and seating for five passengers at a price starting at $1,495. On June 29, 1948, the first of many Mac Bay Boat Company built runabouts, sold under both the Mac Bay and Play Boy names, was sent to a customer in Salt Lake City, Utah. A Holland City News article from July 1, 1948, described the new company in detail. According to that front-page article, the Mac Bay model, the Play Boy Sportster, was unique for its time. Mac Bay was the first boat company in the United States to produce an inboard motor powered (vs. an outboard motor) mahogany plywood molded speedboat.
According to newspaper clippings, independent boat broker Victor E. Watkins was said to have come to Holland about 1937, but no records of his presence before 1948 can be easily found. From historical sources, such as local newspapers, Lakeland Yachting magazine, and original sales brochures, it appears that Watkins was hired to sell boats to dealers for Mac Bay Boat Company. While this arrangement eliminated the name recognition gained by having the company name on the boat itself, this was not an uncommon practice as investors and owners constantly sought to keep payrolls and overhead low through outsourcing. This practice is still common today. With Watkins selling the boats under the Play Boy nameplate, sales were brisk. According to newspaper sources, trailers loaded with new models left for U.S. distributors as far away as California and international clients in Portugal and Argentina. While the newspapers quoted company officials as producing at least one boat per day with the help of 20 employees, past employees report it took more like one week to produce a boat with the 6-8 employees.
By January 1949, the model name had changed from Play Boy to Grayboy, and Watkins had added Lester Kaunitz as a partner. The change in name might be linked to a trademark infringement on another boat company of that same name. Most likely the name Grayboy came from the Gray Marine brand of engine used in the boats. Other than that, only small changes were made to the windshield brackets and deck hardware. Watkins and Kaunitz took the Grayboy to the New York Boat Show in New York City where spectators were reportedly impressed with America’s first molded plywood inboard.
Unfortunately, in August of that same year, the sales momentum that Victor Watkins and Lester Kaunitz had created tragically ended when Watkins was killed in an automobile accident near Elmira, Michigan. Kaunitz, the driver of the automobile, survived with only minor injuries. Evidently, Watkins and Kaunitz were on their way to Petoskey with a Grayboy runabout in tow when Kaunitz was blinded by the headlights of an oncoming automobile and lost control of the car. Their vehicle eventually hit a utility pole and threw Watkins from the car. Watkins died early the next morning, hours before they were to have demonstrated the boat for a potential customer.
After Watkins’ death, sales dipped dramatically according to sources associated with the company. Soon after this tragedy, Kaunitz disappeared from the scene and Mac Bay Boat Company was run by former foreman, A. B. Melton. An oral history interview with William De Boer, who started at the Mac Bay company in 1948, revealed that soon after Watkins death, the employees were given a “vacation” or they could take out their back pay in tools, which he opted to do.
In late 1949, under the direction of Henry Hopper and A. B. Melton, the company struggled to continue the boat line in new quarters located at 9 West 7th Street. The two past employees now were running the company using the inventory of unfinished hulls and other parts left after the Pelgrim era ended. Three other employees, Andy Riemersma and his brother and William De Boer, also stayed with the company. In addition, a new set of officers was assembled to include Melton as president/treasurer, William Edward Burns as vice president, and Muskegon resident D. K. Melton as secretary. While in business, the company expanded its offerings to the public with the introduction of a cabin cruiser model powered by a Johnson outboard motor and chartreuse colored rowboats. Past employee William De Boer remembers making about twelve cruisers before Melton and Hopper sold the business to George and Clifford Dobben of North Muskegon. The Dobben brothers had been interested in buying the company outright since its days at Bay View Furniture, and had been loaning money to the pair since relocating the company to East 7th Street.
Under George and Clifford Dobben’s ownership, the company again flourished still using U.S. Molded Shape hulls, now offering a choice of outboard or inboard motors to its runabout line, the 13' Thunderbolt and 15' Imperial. They remained at the East 7th Street location for a short time before relocating to an area on Riley Street between Butternut Drive and 144th Street. A small strip mall now occupies that area. They then relocated to a new factory on Airline Road in Muskegon Heights in 1956. According George Dobben’s son, Clifford, his father thought the boat model was comparable to Chris-Craft or Century boats, but at half the cost.
At the new factory, long time employees A. B. Melton, Gene O’Neil, and Andy Riemersma continued selling and making boats for Mac Bay with new employees Doug McKay, Thomas Fanus, and Otis Averal—growing to fifteen employees total during the good years. William De Boer decided not to continue because of the expense of the long drive and found work with Leon Slikkers, an up and coming boat maker who had just started his own boat venture, Slick Craft Boat Company.
In Muskegon Heights, Dobben was able to put many more boats into production at one time using construction bays, finish bays, and final assembly areas. He also continued to offer the consumer a 45 or 75 h.p. Gray Marine engine in a 17-foot Mac Bay, costing $1,795 for the larger engine and boat. Clifford believes the changes in colors and styles they made to a quality boat were the reason the company finally flourished with consumers. “We went to the shows and we stuck out, and that’s what we wanted—to make and improve sales.” They continued to “stick out” by offering seats, hulls, and decks in red, white, blue, and green. By watching the competition at the national boat shows, Mac Bay officials knew what trends were developing and what models needed to be changed. They epitomized the1950s boating market and worked to meet its needs. According to Dobben, “Color combinations were the turning point for us when we saw our sales volume double after that. We would even match boat colors to the outboard motors the dealers were also selling.” Eventually Mac Bay was selling around 200 boats per year until fiberglass boats became popular.
In an attempt to trim costs and still sell a quality boat, Mac Bay outsourced its upholstery and canvas work to Holland based companies. Auto Top did the upholstery work and Holland Awning constructed the canvas covers for many years, picking up and dropping off work regularly. They also cut costs by creating a dealership network that covered the United States and was serviced by salesman traveling with trailers containing the latest models of Mac Bay. Salespersons offered incentives to buy at large amounts at discounted rates. This way the factory could continue to run throughout the year and employ a consistent and trained workforce—the key to quality boat making. Nationally known dealers first learned of the company at national boats shows and would eventually set up dealerships in Brighton, Michigan; Corbin, Kentucky; and Amarillo, Texas, to name a few.
Eventually, the company started hearing from their distributors that wood boats were simply too much work for consumers to maintain, and that they should get into the fiberglass boat making business. Unfortunately, the Dobben family thought like many other longtime wood boat makers that fiberglass was just a fad and soon they were playing catch up with the likes of Leon Slikkers and his Slick Craft Boat Company. At one point, they dropped to 25 percent of the volume they had enjoyed the year before. According to Clifford Dobben, after an unsuccessful attempt at entering the fiberglass boat market in about 1960, the company discovered that it was too late, and they shut their doors for good in 1964.
