Trojan Yachts for Sale

Jim McQueen and Harper Hull bought the Cottrell-Spoore Boatworks of Troy, New York at the end of 1948, renamed it the Trojan Boat Company and moved it to York and then to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where they built a 142,000 square foot plant and hired Amish woodworkers. Trojan grew into one of the biggest inboard cruiser builders anywhere, added plants at Elkton, Maryland and Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and bought the Canadian builder Shepherd in 1966. McQueen resisted fiberglass for years, so the change came late: wooden production was phased out by 1974, by which time Whittaker Corporation owned the company. The line most buyers meet today is what came after, the sedans, tri cabins, convertibles and finally the International series of the 1980s. Elkton stopped in 1989, and Genmar shuttered Lancaster in 1992 and moved what was left to Carver in Pulaski, Wisconsin, which built its own interpretation of the International line from modified Trojan molds until the brand was dropped in the early 2000s.

Every Trojan is a used boat and nobody honors a warranty, so treat the badge as a date stamp and survey accordingly. Understand which era you are looking at: a 1970s tri cabin or a 1979 convertible is a Lancaster boat, heavily built in early fiberglass with a lot of plywood in the deck, cabin sole, stringers and transom, and the survey question is simply how wet that wood is. A 1990s Express carrying the Trojan name was built by Carver in Wisconsin to Carver standards, a lighter and more modern boat that has nothing to do with Pennsylvania. On the older hulls budget for fuel tanks, exhaust risers, wiring and the transom around the shaft logs and swim platform, and assume the gas engines have been through at least one rebuild. What makes Trojans still workable is Beacon Marine Supply, which carries original Trojan parts and drawings and is the nearest thing there is to a factory, plus a deep owner community that knows exactly where each model rots.