Modern Sharpie Development
The story of the New Haven sharpie presents an interesting case in the history of the development of small commercial boats in America. As has been shown, the New Haven sharpie took only about 40 years to reach a very efficient stage of development as a fishing sailboat. It was economical to build, well suited to its work, a fast sailer, and attractive in appearance.
When sailing vessels ceased to be used by the fishing industry, the sharpie was almost forgotten, but some slight evidence of its influence on construction remains. For instance, transverse tie rods are used in the large Chesapeake Bay "skipjacks," and Chesapeake motorboats still have round, vertically staved sterns, as do the "Hatteras boats" used on the Carolina Sounds. But the sharpie hull form has now almost completely disappeared in both areas, except in a few surviving flat-bottomed sailing skiffs.
Recently the flat-bottomed hull has come into use in small, outboard-powered commercial fishing skiffs, but, unfortunately, these boats usually are modeled after the primitive flatiron skiff and are short in length.
The New Haven sharpie proved that a long, narrow hull is most efficient in a flat-bottomed boat, but no utilization has yet been made of its design as the basis for the design of a modern fishing launch.