Serial Number Madness

Benson Gray

Canoe History Enthusiast
Staff member
Many canoes and boats have serial numbers but this summary might help explain how confusing these can be. It appears that Morris, Old Town, and Carleton all started assigning serial numbers around 1900. Kennebec started in 1909, Joe Seliga in 1938, Shell Lake in 1940, White around 1946, the U.S. Coast Guard mandated that all canoes in the U.S.A. have hull identification numbers in 1972, and Canada implemented a similar system in 1981. Various builders from the Charles River area, Morris, Veazie, Penn Yan, Penobscot, Willits, Canadian, Chestnut, Peterborough, and other manufacturers added serial numbers to canoes but the timing is less clear since none of their records are known to have survived.

Most of the Old Town canoes and boats were recorded on paper cards starting around October, 1905 with serial number 1604 and stopped around May, 1996 with serial number 533392. Many of these have been scanned from number 1604 that shipped on April, 1906 to 253998 which shipped on November, 1983. Most of Old Town's production was tracked electronically starting in 1996. Their millionth serial number was issued in 2003. Some wooden canoes were also recorded on paper build cards with serial numbers from 786843 in 2002 to 786930 in 2005. Wooden canoe production was moved to Island Falls Canoe and they started with serial number 787030 in 2010 and have continued up through 787073 in 2020. The oldest one found so far is serial number 201 which is probably from 1901.

Old Town purchased Carleton in 1910 and started recording their serial numbers on cards like Old Town was using. These appear to have started with serial number 7046 in April, 1910 and continued to 20540 in April, 1943. Old Town used another series of serial numbers for their flat bottom wooden boats starting with number one in March, 1927 which continued to number 9733 in August, 1957. Their All-Wood cedar canoes began with number one in April, 1927 and ended with number 42 in August, 1930. Their rowing Skiffs began with number 01 in March, 1941 and ran to number 05525 in June, 1967. All of these have been scanned.

The Kennebec numbering is even more complex. Their canoes range from serial number 1001 in December, 1909 to 800353 in April, 1941 but there are many very large gaps of skipped numbers. Their old rowing style boat numbers range from 100 in June, 1914 to 4508 in April, 1941. Their work boats range from 01 in November, 1917 to 0300 in May, 1918. Their "new" motor boats range from number 100 in November, 1926 to 30498 in April, 1941. This series also has some large gaps of skipped numbers. Their Kiddie Craft and Aquaplane serial numbers range from one in January, 1931 to 249 in March, 1933. Kennebec is known to have occasionally used the same serial number on six different watercraft. All of these have been microfilmed and scanned.

The Willits brothers started with serial number one in 1905 and ended with 965 in 1963.

Joe Seliga started with serial number 100 in 1938 and ended with 676 in 2005.

Shell Lake assigned a different series of serial numbers for each model based on a limited set of records that have been photographed. The oldest one appears to be 1166 1 from March, 1940 and 1188 31 from August, 1954 may be the newest.

White frequently included a two digit year along with the length and serial number. The oldest one found so far is serial number 152 from 1946 and the newest is 2485 from 1955.

This may help explain why it can be a challenge to answer a serial number request when a low number is the only information provided.

Benson
 
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Adding to the challenge, when BN Morris decided to market some of his canoes using the Veazie brand, he opted to restart his numbering scheme.
A factory direct 1905 Veazie would have been assigned a low serial number (one through pick a number, 50?) whereas a Morris from the time would have been assigned a tag numbered somewhere in the range of the mid two thousand to the mid three thousand.
To further the possible confusion, some of these Morris/Veazie canoes are 100% identical in appearance, differentiated only by a deck or coaming decal.
Using some old journal entries, I hope to eventually assign a hull date to Veazie number 320.
In appearance this canoe is a dead ringer for a 1910ish Morris hull, but the low serial number suggests that it was built in 1900/01.
It most definitely was not.
 
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