A skiff in 1874 and a name in 1924.

Chris-Craft dates its heritage to 1874. English Wikipedia, citing the company’s own timeline, says Christopher Columbus Smith built his first wooden boat — a simple skiff, or punt — that year in Michigan. In 1881 he joined his brother Henry, known as Hank, to build boats full-time, and friends who liked his duck-hunting boats became early customers.

The business took several names before it took his. In 1910, English Wikipedia says, the brothers joined other partners to form the Smith Ryan Boat Company, building fast runabouts, which made their debut at the New York and Chicago boat shows that year. In 1922 Smith formed the Chris Smith & Sons Boat Company in Algonac, Michigan, on the St. Clair River north-east of Detroit, and in 1924 the company took the name Chris-Craft. In 1927 his son Jay Smith became president and general manager.

The Detroit-area company became known for racing boats in the 1910s and 1920s and sold powerboats to wealthy customers such as Henry Ford and William Randolph Hearst, English Wikipedia says. It then aimed lower. The company began assembly-line production at its Algonac plant, and in 1927 it introduced the Cadet, a 22-foot runabout, backed by advertising that promised a share of “the good life” and by instalment payments. Its engines came from Ford and Chrysler, and later from the Hercules Engine Company, English Wikipedia says.

Those boats set the look that still defines the name: hulls of mahogany, with teak and brass fittings. During the Second World War the company built patrol boats and launches for the United States military, and after the war it returned to pleasure boats. English Wikipedia names Dean Martin, Katharine Hepburn, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley among its customers in that period.

From mahogany to fibreglass, and through five owners.

The material changed in the 1950s and 1960s. English Wikipedia says Chris-Craft built its first fibreglass boat in 1955, and in 1957 bought the Roamer Boat Company to form a steel-boat arm, the Roamer Steel Boats Division. In 1964 it launched the all-fibreglass Commander, a 38-foot express hardtop unveiled at the New York National Boat Show on a cradle perched at the top of an escalator; the Commander line grew to boats from 19 to 60 feet, all “styled in fiberglass.” The last mahogany-hulled model, the Constellation, ended production in 1971.

Ownership changed many times. In 1960 the Smith family sold the company to NAFI Corporation, controlled by Shields & Company, which renamed itself Chris-Craft Industries in 1962. In 1981 Chris-Craft Industries sold the boat division to George Dale Murray and a group of investors that included the lawyer F. Lee Bailey, while keeping the Chris-Craft trademark and licensing it to the new owners. Murray Chris-Craft supplied its Stinger 390X to the television series Miami Vice in 1984. In December 1988 Murray Chris-Craft filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, The New York Times reported.

English Wikipedia says the Outboard Marine Corporation (OMC) won the 1989 court auction of the boat company’s assets, which included plants in Bradenton, Florida, Goshen, Indiana, and Swansboro, North Carolina. In 2000 OMC’s boat businesses passed to Genmar Holdings, and in 2001 Genmar sold the Chris-Craft division to Stellican, a British investment firm. Stellican then bought the Chris-Craft trademark from News Corporation, which had acquired Chris-Craft Industries, reuniting the boats and the name under one owner.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group are American builders of recreational powerboats. Boat builders of this kind sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to brands that now belong to larger boating groups, and a single name can cover everything from a small lake runabout to a cruiser with a cabin.

A boat brand’s identity is usually carried less by one hull than by a name on the transom, a set of model series and the place where the boats are built, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, added plants or moved its head office over the years. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its boats are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its boats are built and how its models and lettering have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Winnebago brand in Sarasota.

The current owner is an RV maker. On 4 June 2018, in a release issued from Forest City, Iowa, Winnebago Industries announced that it had acquired Chris-Craft from Stellican Ltd., which it described as a London-based investment firm that had owned the brand since 2001. Winnebago said it expected to keep Chris-Craft’s headquarters in Sarasota, Florida, and that Stephen Heese would continue to lead the business as president. The release speaks of “a brand heritage that dates back to 1874,” and the company’s boilerplate calls Chris-Craft “America’s Boat Builder Since 1874.” Winnebago Industries has owned Chris-Craft since 2018, and English Wikipedia describes Chris-Craft Corporation as a Sarasota-based maker of recreational powerboats.

English Wikipedia lists the 2024 collection as four lines: the Launch, an open-bow day cruiser; the Launch GT bowriders; the Catalina centre-console outboard boats; and the Calypso dual-console outboard boats, ranging from 24 to 35 feet.

The identity rests on a few constant elements: the hyphenated name, which Chris Smith’s company adopted in 1924; the image of varnished mahogany with teak and brass, which the company built from the 1920s to 1971; and the 1874 date, which the company still uses as its starting point. Its 1964 Commander launch, on top of an escalator at the New York boat show, showed a new boat as a piece of theatre.

For a design guide, Chris-Craft shows how a heritage brand can keep a material and a date at the centre of its story long after both its hulls and its owners have changed. Compare Boston Whaler, another American boat name that has changed hands, and MasterCraft, a runabout and wakeboat maker. For this guide we use varnished mahogany, teak and brass with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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