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	MANISEES and DIANA, two identical 37' cutters, were the first boats built by Paul E. Luke, Inc. in 1939. They ushered in a remarkable boatbuilding career.

He attended the local four-room grammar school through the ninth grade and went on to the high school in Boothhay Harbor. He left school at Christmas in his junior year because he wasn't learning anything about boatbuilding, and went to work full time at the Goudy & Stevens yard in East Boothbay. His mother urged Wallace Goudy to work the boy so hard he would quit and go back to school, but the approach failed. From Goudy and his partner, J. Arthur Stevens, Paul learned more and more about boatbuilding and soon became a competent ship carpenter.
As the Depression deepened in the 193Os, work became scarce. Paul was sent with about ten others to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to rebuild the interior of the big schooner-yacht DAUNTLESS. Here he became an excellent cabinetmaker, "learning all the time," he once said.

He returned to East Boothbay and in 1937 married Verna Thurston, a farmer's daughter from up-country who was staying in East Boothbay with her sister who had married Jim Stevens, son of Arthur Stevens and a friend of Paul's. "I came down to help my sister," said Verna, "and just never went home." The first summer they were married, they lived aboard the 23' sloop SALLY IV, and Verna learned to row. She had to, for she took Paul ashore to his job each morning and had to get back aboard on her own.




	Verna and Paul Luke on a dinner outing.

By this time, Paul had had enough of working for other people. Being a formidable team that got things done, he and Verna set up a shop in a building next to the Rice Brothers yard, and there they largely rebuilt the ferry NELLIE C.

At the same time, Rice Brothers had a contract to build several sloops for designer Winthrop Warner. Warner was looking for a builder for two more yachts, and Paul's uncle recommended him.

On July 25, 1939, Paul and Verna launched MANISEES and DIANA, two identical 37' cutters, into the Damariscotta River on the same tide. Warner, pleased with both quality and price, soon contracted for a 43' motorsailer to be named ALARM.

At this point, things began to move very rapidly for Paul and Verna. They sold the little log cabin they had built and, with the sale's proceeds and the down payment on the motorsailer, bought waterfront property on Linekin Bay-the site of an old pogy factory. It had an old wharf, a more-or-less protected anchorage, and two good wells. They built a small house and mortgaged it for enough money to start on the motorsailer. However, first they had to move the shop-a building on pilings standing partly over the water-from near the Rice yard on the Damariscotta River to the new site. Paul and Verna, with what little help they could get, jacked the building up and skidded it onto a barge.