The Original Crosby Shipyards
A brief history

Brothers Daniel and Jesse Crosby, Jr., came to Osterville from Centerville in 1798 and leased sixteen rods of land on the shore of North Bay with the right to build a shop and dock. For this lease of sixty years they paid James Parker nine dollars.

North Bay, at the foot of Bay Street, is quite deep and there is a channel running through North Bay and Cotuit Bay, and then out to Nantucket Sound. There would be no West Bay Cut in Osterville for another ninety years.

The Crosby brothers must have built a number of vessels here, but we have a record of only one, the “Warrior.” The “Warrior” was a two-masted topsail schooner built in 1804 and lost on Block Island‘s north reef in 1834 during a violent storm. The “Warrior” was a “packet” running between Boston and New York on a more or less regular schedule as packets did, depending on the weather.

- The Hinckley Shipyard -

Oliver Hinckley, born in 1792, was an apprentice to the Crosby brothers. He took over the shipyard at the foot of Bay Street, probably in 1816-1818.

Following the Crosby brothers, he continued to build coasting vessels in this yard until 1857. His last vessel, the “Leanara,” was reported lost in the early 1900s. This vessel was a packet between Boston and Hartford, Connecticut. Hinckley built at least 23 vessels. There was one sloop, the “Echo,” (for which the Osterville Historical Museum has a rare hawk’s nest model), nineteen schooners, and three brigs. His schooner, “Page,” built in 1831, sailed down the coast of South America, around Cape Horn, and up to San Francisco where it worked as a lumber schooner into the early 1900s. He also built the “Spy,” a three-masted schooner, for Captain Jonathan Parker whose house the Museum now occupies. The logbook for the "Spy" can be seen in the Museum's permanent collection.