Ed Cutts Designer, Boatbuilder, and Cutts Method Inventor First edition by Brown, Wayne (2014) Paperback

by Wayne Brown

As a young boy, Ed Cutts grew up loving boats as his father took him to major boatyards in and around Long Island. He drew beautiful boats and at 13 wanted to be a designer. And he wanted to learn wooden boat building, but there was nothing for a teenager. Attending a new school at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he and others learned metal work half the day, and even worked on valves for a battleship. Following U.S. Navy ordnance work in the Pacific, he tried to find boatbuilding work. He met L. Francis Herreshoff in Marblehead, and asksed him questions about yacht design. Later he brought up his own drawings for criticism. The famous designer said a designer should learn to build his designs by working in a boatyard. Ed finally did basic work in a small boatyard, and then found an opportunity to become an apprentice at the great Nevins Boatyard at City Island, NY. He worked in all departments for about two years, learning under the top boatbuilders. Then he built and designed for other boatyards on Long Island, NY. For his own client, he designed and built a 23 ft. sloop, which won an Invitational race, with Ed sharing the helm for the owners. Married and living in Northport, NY, he built a shed in back of his house and built a 29 ft. sloop for a second client. His designs impressed executive John Case, who ordered a 33 ft. sloop. Then, he and Ed teamed up to open Cutts & Case Shipyard in Oxford, MD, in 1965. Ed was 38 years old. While creating beautiful boats, Ed began extensive research on an improved way to build boats, and received a patent for his "Cutts Method." This technique used the new Kevlar in epoxie between two layers of planking. Kevlar had 10 the strength of steel, so that frames were not needed. He used no exterior fasteners on the hull. He found the boats were lighter and stronger as a result. After testing he used this technique in major repairs and then on new boats, In his senior years, Ed designed and his shipyard built a 27 ft. cabin yacht, a 28 ft. runabout that went 50 knots, a 24.5 ft. sailboat, and a 65 ft. yacht hull. Boatbuilding students from Finland came to Cutts & Case for two years to work on this and to learn the "Cutts Method." Years before, Ed had been invited to Finland to lecture to boatbuilders and designers. Ed was one of the last classic designers who carved a half-hull to scale, to take the loft measurements. The author described him as "a vigorous, opinionated, talented, inventive, often humorous, and unique individual."

Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Wayne Vincent Brown was born on 18 July 1944 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. After attending school at St Mary's College, Port of Spain, he read English at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica from 1965 to 1968, and also attended the University of Toronto. He won the Jamaican Independence Festival Poetry Prize in 1968, and in 1973 won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for his first collection, On the Coast (1972).

Brown's candidature for the Gregory Fellowship appears to have been prompted by the success of On the Coast. Following the award of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize he was brought to the attention of Arthur Ravenscroft, editor of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, by Kenneth Ramchand; at Ravenscroft's instigation, he was approached and offered the Fellowship by Professor A. Norman Jeffares. (1) Brown was the first and only non-British writer to be appointed to the Fellowship, taking up the post in October 1974. Two years previously, William Walsh, a lecturer in the School of English at Leeds since 1957, had become the first Professor of Commonwealth Literature in the United Kingdom. Brown's own appointment might, therefore, be considered within the context of the development of the study of Commonwealth and Postcolonial literatures as an academic subject at Leeds.

Despite having found the University campus somewhat cold and impersonal, Brown appreciated the time to write that the Gregory Fellowship gave him. He later reflected on his time in Leeds as "A womby interlude. For which I remain very grateful." (2) He enjoyed meeting the students, finding them "unpretentious but high-spirited and hard-working" (3); held a weekly student poetry workshop; and contributed both poems and editorial advice to the literary journal Poetry and Audience. Volume 21:6 of the magazine, published in 1975, was issued as a Selected Poems, edited by Brown.
Also in 1975, Brown compiled and co-edited the 21 Years of Poetry and Audience anthology with Tom Wharton. Brown states that he felt "gratified at how readily the poets, some quite famous, agreed to their poems being reprinted, gratis." (4) This perhaps gives some indication of the esteem in which this small student publication was held. In addition to poems by former Gregory Fellows and other "Leeds Poets" such as Geoffrey Hill, Vernon Scannell and Robin Skelton, the anthology included contributions from poets including Philip Larkin, C.H. Sisson, Stevie Smith, Donald Davie and Ted Hughes. The cover for the anthology was designed by Brown's wife, Megan.

In 1977, Brown returned to the Caribbean, initially to Port of Spain, Trinidad, where he took up a teaching position at Fatima College, and was appointed information officer to the American Embassy. He edited a selected edition of the poetry of his mentor, Derek Walcott, in 1981. Brown went on to hold various fellowships in the United States connected with creative writing, and has also been involved in the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. He has lectured in English at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica; and is currently a tutor in Creative Writing on the Master program at Lesley University, Boston.

Wayne Brown has continued to write both poetry and prose, publishing a further collection of his poems, Voyages (1989), and two collections of short stories and remembrances, Child of the Sea (1990) and Landscape with Heron (2000). Since 1984 he has written the social commentary column 'In Our Time' for the Trinidad Express; he currently edits the literary pages of the Sunday Gleaner. He has recently started researching and writing the second part of his biography of Edna Manley, and is also editor of the online literary magazine Caribbean Writing Today.