Hemingway's Boat by Paul Hendrickson

for the construction of the Whitestone yard, a new company was formed—Wheeler Shipbuilding Corporation. Soon admirals were journeying from the capital to both plants to present pennantsand to read telegrams of congratulation from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. The Wheeler women, black-gloved, wearing huge corsages, exploded bottles of champagne at the bows of the new boats—and these pictures get prominent display in the
Eagle
and the
Herald Tribune
. There were black-tie dinner-dances attended by military brass. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia appeared at christenings, jawing with the old man—Howard E. was now in his seventies—on flag-draped podiums in the middle of the yard, making speeches that defied syntax and went out live over WNYC.
    But if you live by fat government contracts, you can die by them, too. What happens when the war is won and six thousand people are on the payroll and your federal contracts are shutting off like water from a spigot? Wheeler tried to seize the postwar public’s imagination with a sleek new pleasure craft called the Sunlounge. Howard E. opened a showroom right around the corner from the Waldorf, an expensive dare. Other boat companies were doing it, too. Think of plate-glass showrooms on Park Avenue with gleaming yachts inside and people on the sidewalk staring at them with bewildered expressions: it’s a
New Yorker
cartoon. For the launch of the boat that would save the company, Wheeler brought in B-list movie stars and Broadway folk and local broadcast personalities. A fifteen-minute program on April 24, 1946, went out over the local affiliate of the American Broadcasting Company, WJZ. Reading a transcript of this old radio show—a copy is in Wes Wheeler’s basement in Stamford, Connecticut—you can sense the great giddiness of a country returning to leisure. You can also sense how Wheeler had bet the ranch.
    Good evening, everyone, this is Gene Kirby, speaking to you from the after cockpit or deck of the magnificent new Wheeler Sunlounge, as beautiful a boat as I’ve ever been aboard or seen.… We are in the beautiful new showroom of the Wheeler Shipbuilding Corporation, here at Park Avenue and 46th Street, 241 Park Avenue, to be exact, taking part in the gala ceremonies attending the first postwar showing of the new Wheeler Sunlounge Cruiser, in which I am standing. It’s been an exciting afternoon here, with stars of the entertainment, sports and boating world, dropping in to be thrilled by this spectacle of the forty-foot boat on Park Avenue. We’re gonna have many of these celebrities talk with us on this broadcast during the next thirteen minutes or so.… I could go on talking about this Wheeler Sunlounge for hours, but I don’t believe words couldreally do it justice. Let me just say it’s the dream of anyone from a small boy to the Ancient Mariner.
    The Sunlounge didn’t work. From court documents: “About December 13, 1946, Wheeler Shipbuilding, by its president, Wesley, filed a petition under Chapter XI of the Bankruptcy Act in which petition it admitted that it was unable to pay its debts.” The Cropsey Avenue property had been sold by then. Family members had to be hauled into tax court for alleged “deficiencies in income taxes determined for the calendar years 1946 and 1947” (quoting again from legal documents). The reports of these legal problems made the papers. In the end, the Wheeler family, individually, collectively, corporately, lost to the government and the banks and nearly everyone else. And still they somehow managed to stay in the boat business, or some of the family did.
    After the 1946 failure, several of the sons had reincorporated and taken over the property of Dawn Cruisers. There were new display ads in the papers to the effect that Wheeler boats were up and running once again at the foot of Patterson Avenue, Clason Point, the Bronx. But toward the late fifties, into the