Built in 1924, the 62.8-foot F.D. Crockett is one of only two log-bottom buyboats built exclusively for power, and represents the apex of log boat building on the Chesapeake.  Alex Gaines of Dare, Virginia, used the same techniques that were used to build the early sailing "canoes", when he designed and built her 9 log hull to accept a gasoline engine.  After Gaines completed the hull, she was taken across the creek to Smith Marine Railway, where John Franklin finished the boat.  For 70 years, the F. D. Crockett was used as a working vessel.  In 1994, she was converted to a pleasure craft.  In 2005 Ron Turner, a descendant of the Smiths, donated the boat and she was towed up the bay from Poquoson arriving in Deltaville on September 5th. 

Since her arrival at the Deltaville Maritime Museum as a beautiful but decaying hull in September of 2005, over 8500 hours of volunteer labor have gone into restoring the F.D. Crockett. Because the Crockett was continually worked until the 1990s, the logs, the longest of which is 55 feet, were still in excellent condition. However, her decks and pilot house started crumbling and her sides deteriorated once she was no longer an active workboat.

 First rebuilt was the Crockett's pilot house. While the decaying hull was still in the water, the Crockett's lines were preserved by the addition of new frames and timbers. Project manager John England and his volunteer crew used a combination of time-honored methods, traditional materials, and innovative techniques that should keep the boat alive for another century. Initial work was done to retain the integrity of its huge bottom logs. In a process which took over four years, deteriorated wood was carefully cut away; framing and planking were rebuilt while maintaining the dignity of her shape; and the log chunks of the bow and stern were replaced. The boat was decked over with 2” square strips of cypress, after which the re-created pilot house was lifted onto her new deck beams in August 2009.

 After the engine was started in 2010, work on all the details of the F.D. Crockett continued. Toe rails, monkey rails and bulwarks were added to the decks. Then hatches to access the cargo hold were built, the wheelhouse completed, and a forepeak cabin added to provide storage for rope and anchor chain as well as sleeping quarters for two or three crew members. Progress continues, as volunteers work on details which will bring the boat back to its nearly-original working condition. Many original fittings are incorporated into the restored portions of the boat

In 1924, sailing schooners and skipjacks would have still been working the waters around Deltaville, carrying the produce of the Chesapeake Bay and the farmlands that bordered its shores. But the gasoline engine was changing the way oysters, crabs and watermelon were transported. In the log boat building center of Virginia, Alexander Gaines and John Franklin Smith were building a boat that incorporated several centuries of knowledge and tradition with the newest technology of the time. The 62.8 foot nine-log bottom buyboat, the F.D.Crockett,  restored by the Deltaville Maritime Museum, combined a craft adapted from the Native American log canoe by European settlers and enslaved Africans and African-Americans. The addition of the then cutting-edge internal combustion engine marked the end of an era of sail and the beginning of a new one of motor. This motorized Poquoson log deck boat represented the culmination of three centuries of trial and error and development in log boatbuilding.

The last flurry of log boat building came about because the low sides of the log boats made it easier for men working in the burgeoning oyster and crab dredge fisheries to haul the dredge full of oysters and crabs up onto the decks. Because of this, demand for large log canoes continued into the 1920s. By then, deadrise, plank construction had pretty much evolved. As electricity and powered sawmills became more available, as occurred in the area around Deltaville, large frame built boats and smaller vessels such as the Deltaville deadrise replaced the log boats that had once been common. The F.D. Crockett was one of the last large log boats ever built on the bay. She is one of only two large log deck boats still in existence built specifically for gasoline engine.