In 1842, William Watts and his brother Mathew, Scots-Irish boat builders from County Sligo, immigrated to Toronto Island, where they soon returned to their trade, their first recorded commission being a clinker-built sailboat for the light keeper. In 1850, they moved their business to a spot on Lake Ontario formerly known as ‘Hen and Chickens harbour’, but, with the arrival of the railroad, newly dignified with the name of Collingwood, after the British naval hero (Watts & Marsh 1997 pp1-7). The Watts brothers were part of a massive movement of people, from Ireland across the Atlantic in tthe 19th century (Bishop 1999). The brothers were fortunate, however, in that they left the country four years before the onset of the Potato blight which devastated Ireland in 1846.

Little is known about the Watts’ life before emigration, but the fact that William returned to Co. Sligo to marry a girl from the area of Dromore West, in the western part of the county, suggests that this may be where they originated. There are numerous small fishing harbours along this north-facing stretch of coastline. Nothing is known of the boats the Watts brothers built in Sligo. They lived at the south-western extreme of the zone in which the Drontheim was built. The McCann family of Moneygold, in north Sligo, a short sail across the bay, were Drontheim builders who continued to build boats into the 20th century. It is clear from the descriptions of the light-house keeper’s boat in Toronto that the Watts brothers were skilled in clinker-building techniques, Joyce describes it as “a pretty 17 foot clinker built sharp-sterned rowing skiff” (1987). William Watts was known to build boats by eye, without the use of a mould (Watts & Marsh 1997), exactly as practised by the family firms of Ulster, such as the Kelly’s of Portrush, County Antrim, or the Beattie’s and MacDonalds of Moville, County Donegal (MacPolin 1999).