Bit of history to succumb to the tides of fortune

   Clayton "Bud" Emerson scratched a stubble of beard and allowed he wasn't quite sure what he will be doing after he closes down his City Point Boat Yard.

   He isn't sure either where the 32-foot trawler under construction inside the main building eventualy will be moored.

   Emerson has run the boat yard at 65 South Water St. since he created it out of raw waterfront land in 1942.

   "I might just try fishing on the water instead of just looking at it," he says.

   But few friends and business acquaintances on the waterfront believe he'll stop working, and Emerson admits there have been a "couple" of job offers. A 40-hour workweek would be a "luxury," he says.

   Emerson sold his boat yard in January to the developers of a nearby condominium complex and is living on a month-by-month basis at the shipyard.

   The four marine railways installed by Emerson 30 years ago to haul large vessels out of the water are the only ones in existance between Bridgeport and New London harbors.

   He doesn't know whether the new owners, who plan to expand the present dock area as a marina for large pleasure boats, will retain the railways.

   Among the boats hauled out there in recent years have been the 66-foot J.N.Carter, owned by Schooner Inc., next door, as well as local oyster boats.

   A reticent man who can appear gruff or hostile to newcomers, Emerson has been part of the City Point scene for most of his life.

   He worked briefly on Long Island Sound oyster boats or in a West Haven shipyard but always returned to City Point. His wife complains that he only sleeps in West Haven, where they moved in 1956, but still lives in City Point.

   He was born in 1922, a block from the water, at 70 Sea St. He began "kicking around" the waterfront as a young boy, and had a natural curiosity about what he saw.

   Emerson spent many of his formative years at a shipyard that used to stand just south of the present Boulevard Sewage Treatment Plant.

   At the shipyard, which was owned and operated by the late Frank Anderson, workers taught Emerson how to fill seams and install hull fastenings. He clearly recalls a day, nearly a half-century ago, when the Norwegian boat-builders taught him to fair the yellow pine planks they were working on--and how the plane they loaned him slipped and skipped across the virgin wood before he learned to control it.

   He later got a job at the shipyard, working at 10 cents an hour until 1940 when the federal minimum-wage law went into effect. "I got 35 cents an hour then," Emerson said.

   The skills he honed in the Anderson boat yard were to stand him in good stead years later when he opened his own boat yard several doors away on South Water Street.

   "He's the last of a breed...the finest ship's carpenter I have ever known," said John Baker, former head of the Aquaculture Division of the state Department of Agriculture.

   Baker, who has known Emerson for two decades, often sent state-owned boats to Emerson's yard to be hauled out for repair work.

   Baker rememebers one project that Emerson completed, rebuilding the stem on the bow of the Ellen J., a 42-foot state-owned oyster boat. "It was a job virtually impossible to do by anyone else, because of the restricted area of the boat he had to work on," Baker said.

   Emerson was on familiar ground when he did repairs on the Shellfish, a 65-foot state survey boat. He helped to build it at the Anderson shipyard back in the mid-1930s.

   "He's one of the finest gentlemen I've known," said Baker.

   John Volk, who replaced Baker last year as head of the aquculture division, also recognizes Emerson's skills as a boat builder.

   "There are very few around with his skill and knowledge and it will be a great loss to the marine community," when Emerson closes down, he said.

  Emerson has seen a number of changes along the New Haven shoreline during a lifetime of work and occasional recreation on the waters of the harbor.

   The shorline itself has changed dramatically during those decades, he said during a drive in his battered green pickup truck last week along Sargent Drive.

   "Plenty of oysters are buried out there," he said with a sweep of his hand toward the Long Wharf area, which was filled in during the 1950s to make way for the Connecticut Turnpike and the commercial development that later flourished inland along Sargent Drive.

   "I used to anchor my 27-foot catboat, Lady Luck, right out there," Emerson said, pointing to the Sargent Co. parking lot, where cars and trucks now squat.

   Harbor water used to extend all the way back to the railroad powerhouse, he added.

   Across the harbor, in Morris Cove, highway engineers excavated gravel for the turnpike construction which he believes "has changed the tidal character of the harbor."

   At age 60, Emerson said his is not really ready for retirement and is uncomfortable at the thought.

   Emerson isn't certain when he will be given the final 30-day notice to shut down operations. Meanwhile, he cleans up the accumulation of 40 years work and puts a new rib or plank in the 32-foot trawler.

   It's likely he'll be asked to close in the spring, Emerson continued, and he should be ready to launch the trawler by then. But in several weeks the hull should be sturdy enough to move. It could be completed at another location, if necessary, he said.

   Why is he leaving the business and neighborhood that has been an integral part of his young and adult life?

   "Increased operating costs and overhead," was all he would say.

   Clayton Lockwood "Bud" Emerson, the man who stood as New Haven's link to its boating heritage, died Wednesday. He was 82.

   His City Point Boat Yard, hammered together from discarded machine gun crates in 1942, became a neighborhood gathering spot for decades until he sold it in 1982...

   Today, Emerson's boatyard stands as part of the Sound School in New Haven.

   "It would please him that they didn't tear it down," said his only child, also named Clayton Emerson, of West Haven.

   "My father was a perfectionist. He said, 'The work you do is the mark you leave behind,' " Emerson said.

   City Point, a neighborhood tucked by New Haven Harbor next to West Haven, had once been called Oyster Point and boasted 10 oyster companies.

   During World War II, Emerson worked as a barrel straightener, perfecting the aim of machine guns. The gun crates sufficed as building lumber during the war's wood shortage.

   Emerson's boatyard hauled Oyster Point's oyster boats, repaired them, built new ones, and even built pilot houses for the oyster boats.

   He was once called the state's finest ship's carpenter by John Baker, the former head of the Aquaculture Division at the state Department of Agriculture, according to a 1982 Register story.

   "A wooden boat has a life and personality. It has character. A wooden boat is a reflection of the person who designed and built it," said his son.

   He started to learn the craft of building wooden boats at age 10 from Norwegian boat builders.

   They worked at a yard owned and operated by the late naval architect Frank Anderson at City Point. Emerson first learned to plug holes in boats with wooden bungs for 10 cents an hour.

   Emerson was the youngest commodore of the City Point Yacht Club, serving between 1945 and 1947.

   While Emerson lived in West Haven, he spent most of his hours at City Point, blocks away from his birthplace at 70 Sea St.

   He started teaching his son to sail by the time the boy was 8, and by 13, the child was working at the boat shop alongside his father.

   "It was like 'Cheers'. There were businessmen, factory workers; we had a good cross-section," Emerson said.

   The camaraderie gave way to practical jokes.

   Emerson said he recalls steering a friend's boat that was towing his father's rowboat.

   As a prank, the friend kept pulling the throttle to go faster and faster, dragging the little rowboat at a frantic speed.

   "He was surfing on our wake," the son said, chuckling.

   Emerson the elder championed historic sloops, and when the Clearwater, a 110-foot rebuilt sloop, sailed from the Hudson River into New Haven, the owners asked Emerson to sail the ship from breakwater to the dock.

   "He didn't know he would be taking the helm of the Clearwater. He got her in, first shot, with no assistance from any other boats."

   The Clearwater docked in the Emersons' boatyard for several visits between 1976 and 1979, and many schoolchildren got their first glimpse of a historic sloop at the City Point Boat Yard.

   The marine rails that Emerson built for the boatyard are no more, but the winch and tools went to Schooner Inc.

   Schooner has carved out a mission of protecting the area's sea heritage through education.

   Emerson spent his last days suffering from Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

   Besides his son, he is survived by his wife, Marguerite; his brothers Hoadley, Sherwood, Arthur and Robert Emerson; a sister, Alberta Wright; and two grandchildren...