(2018)
Flyer’s Boat Shop.
One of the last great, largely untouched remnants of the working waterfront is about 60 yards from shore; largely hidden from view in the back yard of 94 Commercial Street. (It’s actually best seen from Mechanic Street.) This is the two-story workshop of Francis “Flyer” Santos (1914-2015), boat builder extraordinaire and creator of the 66½-foot-long Rose Dorothea model in the Provincetown Public Library. Flyer’s daughter Janet Santos Greenquist said in an article for the 2015 Portuguese Fesival booklet that the 20-by-40-foot structure was erected in the late 1940s, when Flyer was operating from the beach in front of his house, before moving the boat yard to 131A Commercial Street. It “housed the band saw used to cut lumber for boat building and also stored the tools and machinery.” The loft is long enough to comfortably store some very long masts. All but one of the photos below were taken in 2018, three years after Flyer’s death, showing that the shop was largely as he had left it, complete with doors large enough to move small boats through. Just when you think old Provincetown has disappeared entirely …
¶ Last updated on 26 August 2018.
Josephine Del Deo and Francis “Flyer” Santos in 1984.
Photographs by David W. Dunlap.
For further reading online
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“Life at 94 Commercial Street,” by Janet Santos Greenquist, Provincetown Portuguese Festival booklet, 2015.
“A Scrapbook of the Making of the Rose Dorothea,” by Josephine Del Deo. Municipal Collection, Provincetown History Preservation Project, Page 5256.