I met him once, in his dark shed of a workshop smelling like the cedar shavings that covered the floor. His shop was close to the water by the marina in Northport, an important location for launching his boats. Friend of a friend, his appearance was not what I expected. He was barefooted, stoop shouldered, wearing varnish-stained old pants, and wild haired. He stuck out his hand in greeting and it felt as rough as sandpaper. My friend has a sort of reverence in his voice when he talks about this man, He describes him as a “tough, vanishing breed of man, whose life is his very own.” Bill Livingston was Northport’s unique and well-known boat designer and builder. Many articles in national magazines described both his beautiful wooden boats and his philosophy of life. He was humble and wise, and very gifted.

Bill was dedicated to his craft, preferring to work at night when he could work without interruption. During summers, his bare feet shuffling through wood shavings, he came to meet many summer visitors who stopped to chat and watch. Sleeping at home during the day and working at night solved the problem of too many visitors. When he got tired while working, he would nap right there on his work bench in an old sleeping bag, accompanied by his cats. The cats were his constant companions in the shop, but when it was time to varnish his boats, “six coats, each one hand burnished.”, the cats could be a problem. Once one of them jumped right up on his back while he was varnishing, and he threatened to “put them in stocks next time.”

Betty’s Boat – Witchcraft

Around these parts, Bill was known for the boat he created for his wife. “Betty’s Boat” we called it. The 33-foot Witchcraft (it is real name) was built by Bill as a gift to his wife Betty in 1965 or 1968 depending on who you ask. It is a very sleek sloop; indeed, the tip of her bow resembles that of a kayak and her stern is the size of a large dinner plate. “We would pick a name with 10 letters—and the transom’s only 18 inches wide!” Bill said once to a reporter about Witchcrafts name, which Betty got from a Frank Sinatra song she liked. When Betty first laid eyes on her in Bill’s shop, Betsy Winter, his daughter said she gasped. “She was shocked at how big it was.” “You’ll be all right,” Bill said, and she was.

Pure Sailboat

Witchcraft has no motor, never had one, though she was equipped with oarlocks so the boat could be rowed in and out of harbors or in dead air. It is a pure sailboat. Betty was considered an expert sailor. Regardless of weather conditions, she brought Witchcraft in for a perfect landing every time. Bill’s daughter remembers one time the family set sail for the Beaver Islands and just before they got there, the wind died. It had been a beautiful sail up until then. Suddenly they were dead in the water. Refusing to row into the harbor, the family sat and sat, and finally made it to the Beaver. As Mill Rodgers commented, talking about Witchcraft, “So streamlined would she be that it was said a baby’s breath would be sufficient to put her under way.”

Witchcraft was a head turner. It is the kind of sailboat you know instantly is hand crafted, and entirely of wood. She was planked with white cedar harvested on from South Fox Island and had a deck made of teak. Bill matched up the grain in the wood to the grain around the 5,700 hand crafted wooden plugs were used over the screw tops to conceal them. Pennies instead of washers because they were cheaper. The 1,600-pound keel of Witchcraft was made of lead melted down in an old claw footed bathtub with a wood fire going under it in his workshop.

Cedar Knees

Bill’s daughter, Betsy Winter, told me she liked to go trooping through woods and swamps with her dad when she was little. They would go looking for “Cedar Knees” to use in his boat building. Bill used them to attach the sides of the boat to the roof. He also located a clump of Osage Orange trees, which are not local to this area. They had been planted at the edge of a field probably to keep the cows in with their fierce thorns. Their wood had a beautiful natural orange-brown color that he used to make the tiller of the Witchcraft.

That was his way…. making use of the wood and materials he could find here. Bill would get lead sinkers from old fishing nets from Louie Schafer, a metal collector a little north of town. He would also pay the kids “candy money” for fishing weights they would find on the beach and melt them down for his keels.

Bill was a true boat lover from his boyhood years. When he was little, he built his first boat with his dad, a little rowboat. The family lived on a boat in the summer. Bill’s dad was a teacher in Chicago. In the summer, they went to Wisconsin, where they lived in a houseboat. His interest in boats continued when he was in the service. He was a Naval Architect during the war, learning to design boats. This explained the rolls of blueprints under his drawing board in his workshop. After having worked at some of the most prestigious boat works in Chicago, he arrived in Northport in 1949. He turned out a succession of beautifully crafted boats until 1970. As one observer said, “It’s a lesson in naval architecture and craftsmanship to see him at work.”

Success is how you measure it

Bill Livingston died in January 1971 at the age of 58. He died of a heart attack in his waterfront workshop. He was working alone at the trade to which he had devoted 37 of his 58 years. Shortly before his death he received an order for yet another sailboat. Betty took his ashes out in the Witchcraft all alone and scattered his ashes in the bay. “I’ve been very happy doing my work here building boats.” Bill once said of his work in Northport. “It has been very successful when I use my own yardstick. If you use monetary measurements, I did not do so well, but I do not seem to mind that.”

“The real joys in life consist of making something with our hands, not making money, but making something, and doing it with pride.”

Many thanks to Betsy Winter, Bill Livingston’s daughter for her additions to his story. Northport Area Heritage Association for their generous use of their archives where I found: Record Eagle, Tuesday, June 20, 2023, Story by LEIF GRUENBERG. Photos by the MARITIME HERITAGE ALLIANCE Apr 30, 2017. THE LEELANAU ENTERPRISE Thursday, March 24, 2005, story by Jim Brinkman of The Enterprise staff. THE NORTHPORT AREA, A Compilation of Northport’s Historical Past, The Way We Were, Published by the Northport Area Heritage Association Written by members of the Northport Area Museum mostly by Sue and Dick Hanson. A History of Leelanau Township by The Leelanau Township Historical Writers Group