Stauter Built Boats
The name Stauter is synonymous with quality wooden boats and the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta. Lawrence Stauter grew up on Conway Creek, an isolated, swampy section of the Delta, where boats were a necessity. His father, Lence, a descendant of German immigrants, taught Stauter how to build boats in 1930 even though he had no formal training.
“It was very much a side hustle for Lawrence,” said Lois Stauter, a relative involved in the Stauter business today. “Then his dad had a stroke and he needed to take care of his mom and dad. It was after World War II and he knew people were coming back from the war and they were going to have more leisurely time. That’s when he decided to start his business. He didn’t count on how successful it was going to be because it just exploded.”
Stauter launched his Stauter Boatworks business behind his home on the Causeway in 1947. He made exclusively wooden boats, using native cypress, that could traverse the delta. His boats were extremely popular with fishermen, hunters and crabbers, and he would sell dozens at a time to fish camps on the Causeway.
“Just like you go to beach towns now and there are jet skis and pontoon boats for rent, that’s the way Stauter boats were,” Lois Stauter said. “Camps would rent them out. You would see Stauter boats all up and down the river. People used Stauters for their lives, their livelihoods.”
Stauter produced several models, including 12-, 14-, 15.5- and 17.5-foot boats, all of which were practical, rugged and stable enough even for inexperienced boaters. At the height of his business, Stauter built 400 boats a year with a crew of eight employees. When the price of cypress got too high, he switched to using mahogany for the ribs and marine plywood for the sides, bottom and decking, but still needed to raise prices. Business declined because the boats became more of a luxury item.
Stauter, 68, sold his business and boat patterns to close family friends, the Lamis, after Hurricane Frederic flattened the Causeway in 1979. The Lamis moved the Stauter workshop to Three Notch Road and continued building boats until 2010, then switched to doing repair and restoration only. In 2024, they will relaunch the boat-building aspect of the business.
“We’ve got a family tradition of uncompromising quality,” Lois Stauter said. “These are damn good boats. If you cover those suckers, you could have ’em for a lifetime.”