25' Fantail Launch (1915) - INLET BELLE

A summer fishing camp was started in 1920’s near Barry’s Bay, Ontario by four families from Oil City, Pennsylvania. The Camp, as they called it, was named Barrymere because it was between Barry’s Bay and Combermere on the north side of Lake Kamaniskeg. One of the families was James Black (an opera singer). When he was in Toronto, he happened upon a used boat for sale at $300.00. Although he was not a “savvy boat person” he thought this to be a bargain to travel to his cabin in Barrymere.
The boat was purchased, to be delivered and floated at the dock at Barry’s Bay. At the appointed date the men from the Barrymere Camp went down the lake, some six or so miles, to Barry’s Bay to pick up the boat. They looked around the dock and finally spotted a line leading into the water and deep down was the new possession – The Bargain, as it became known.
The boat was retrieved, revived and survived to run again but not very well. The Bargain had to be parked in shallow water because it sank every night. It finally met its demise when some campers took it down the lake on an errand and it sunk under the bridge in quite deep water where the current was significant. There was no record of it being retrieved by anyone at the camp.
Some 40 years later the “gray hull” was discovered and retrieved in the late 1960’s when an old barn was being torn down for the barn boards. The hull was moved into Millar-Potter’s back storage area in Manotick, Ontario. where it sat until September 30, 2004, when the hull was moved into the shop to begin restoration.
The Inlet Belle was trailered from Ontario to British Columbia where it was launched in Port Moody BC on September 10th, 2005.
November 2008 some information was sent to me by Richard Gibson. Richard is a co-author with Cynthia Reith of Barrymore: A History. Published in 2000. He writes that “there is a very large probability that the Inlet Belle is The Bargain. The lengths appear to be similar. In the 1920s and 1940s, there were very few cottages on the lake, and fewer boats – not many power boats at all. A craft like The Bargain would be rare if not unique and for someone to find and recover another hull so similar, on the same lake almost defies reality. If boats have lives, The Inlet Belle/Bargain has been reborn as an Aphrodite.”
A club member from St. Joseph MI sent an email indicating that he thought that the Inlet Belle was built by Truscott Boat Manufacturing and provided me with catalogues dating back to 1898. Through the catalogs and pictures of these Truscott boats from St. Joseph MI, we were trying to identify the hull. The other interesting fact was that Truscott was proud of the fact that they produced everything in house, the wood planks, the hardware, the fittings, the motors, the canopies, everything under one roof.
To establish the provenance of the Inlet Belle, I compared the physical features that were original to the initial construction to a large fitting catalog from 1900-1910. It was most intriguing to see the similarity between the 1905 Truscott model 25 fantail boat and the Inlet Belle.
There were four important features that were original to the initial construction:
1) The hull was original cypress planking on oak frames, as specified in the catalogues.
2) The hull was restored over the original hull, so the hull dimensions and shape were not changed. As stated in the 1901 catalogue the 25-foot model has five feet eight inches of beam and will run in twenty-three to twenty-four inches of water.
3) The rudder post and steering mechanism was original to the location installed in the hull. This feature has provided me with the documentation to identify my boat as the same in an historical photo on
4) The shaft log and configuration of the rudder support is same as described by Richard Gibson and the picture of the Bargain on Barry’s Bay matches to the Inlet Belle.