“…while other boys longed to be on the river fishing and playing hookey,
Elmer Andress wanted to be in the boat shop.”

— Shawn Thompson, River’s Edge: Reprobates, Rum-Runners and Other Folk of the Thousand Islands, 1991

 The Andress family have been building boats for generations. As early as 1890 William Francis Andress and his brother were building skiffs in La Rue Mills. William’s son William Edward ‘Ed’ was born in 1886 and was already building boats at 12 years old. Ed spent the next 70 years building boats and operating a well-respected boat shop in Rockport.

Using his father’s moulds, Ed began his career designing and building St. Lawrence skiffs. Over the years he produced hundreds of skiffs, building them during the winter months, and selling them in the spring. He built his last skiff when he was eighty-five years old. Ed was also known for long, sleek outboards, inboards, tour boats and even an airboat.

In the late 1920s he built the first of the Miss Brockville tour boats, which started his work supplying boat lines in Rockport, Brockville, Ivy lea and Long Sault. These larger boats took almost a year to build, were designed for stability and speed, and used on the River for many years.

In 1928, Ed built himself the 20-passenger tour boat Elva, named after his daughter. It was the first in a long line of tour boats by the same name, and the beginning of Elva Boat Tours which ran tours to Brockville, Kingston, and Alexandria Bay, New York, with Captain Ed Andress at the helm. The last Elva was commissioned in 1956, retired from the water in 2006, and still sits inside at the Andress Boat Works marina.

Ed’s son Elmer grew up around boats and was giving boat tours with one of his father’s 16 passenger tour boats at 16 years old. When he returned from the Second World War he joined his father, and the business was officially named W.E. Andress & Son. For the next 35 years the operation employed full-time year-round employees as well as a team of part-time summer staff, and the Andress family added cottage and dock building services to boat building.

By 1980 as Elmer entered his 70s, he wanted to retire and hoped his father would retire with him. The family faced the challenge of finding the appropriate ‘next generation’ to carry on the business.

In 1981, Ed’s granddaughter Wendy and her husband Art Merkley bought the business and engaged with her brother Dick to carry on the tradition of building and maintaining wooden boats. Before his retirement in 2006, Dick built skiffs, restored boats and completed a racing boat.

Andress Boat Works is still in operation today, with four generations having been involved in building boats. William Francis Andress would surely be proud to know that his original moulds remain on location today, having been used by four generations to build skiffs.

Boats built by the W.E. Andress & Son in the Museum collection:

The Museum is hoping to add a boat built by W.E. Andress & Son to the collection soon.