Remembering Rob Pittaway

During Rob's time the Small Boat department was headed by the late John Gardner, an expert on small boat construction and restoration and a prominent figure in the national revival of interest in wooden boats. Today the mission of the Museum's John Gardner Small Boat Shop is "to study, teach and encourage the construction and use of traditional small sailing and rowing boats." (Museum website, 2020)  Rob was a member of the John Gardner Chapter of the Traditional Small Craft Association based at the University of Connecticut's campus at Avery Point, Groton. He was an avid sailor, of course, and his wife Louise shared his interest in all things nautical as curator for many years of Stonington's Lighthouse Museum.

Rob Pittaway, was the author of Building the Half-Model. He was a past president and trustee of the Custom House Maritime Museum in New London, CT. Here he shares a laugh with fellow trustee Russell DeMarco. 

To learn more about his book, see mcguirelibrary1998.omeka.net/exhibits/show/rob-pittaway-s-half-hulls--the/about-the-author

Robert Alexander "Rob" Pittaway was born Feb. 5, 1941, in New York City to Adelaide Lathrop Ketchum and Rudolph Alexander Pittaway. He died Aug. 11, 2025, at the Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London.

Rob grew up in Cambridge, Mass. where he attended the Shady Hill School and the Cambridge School of Weston. As a child, he was known for his sunny temperament and very blond hair. The family spent summers in Old Saybrook, where his mother called him "shiner" after the shiner fish in the Connecticut River.

He graduated from Colorado College and then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan where, influenced by summers spent learning to sail at a camp in Maine and family vacations in Westport Point, Mass., he studied naval architecture. He married Louise Davis of New York and they settled in Stonington, where he worked for the Mystic Seaport, mentored by John Gardner. In addition, he volunteered at the New London Customs House – and was a member of the Wooden Boat Club and the Formosa Yacht Club, where he was known for having consumed three hamburgers in a row.

Rob's passion was to design and create boats in many forms. At once a stickler to the rules of traditional design, he loved to experiment, and once made a square rowboat in his sister's apartment in Cambridge. He made small models out of whatever material was at hand and produced half models of sailing ships, some of which are on exhibit at the New London Maritime Museum. He designed the seaworthy Stonington Pulling Boat, launched to much celebration from Don's Dock in Stonington April 20,1980.

Rob was known for his humor, exactitude in all things, rich vocabulary, curiosity in understanding how things work, and his resilience in the face of the many health challenges that came his way.