What is a hull number?
Chris-Craft was a very production-minded boat builder—the first among pleasure boat manufacturers to utilize automotive industry inspired assembly lines for efficient throughput. When most manufacturers were building dozens of boats per year, Chris-Craft was building hundreds. As well, Chris-Craft kept fastidious records on everything. As a “pre-computer” database, Chris-Craft generated “hull cards” for every hull produced—up to the sale of the company to NAFI on April 5, 1960. Fortunately, for all interested in these old Chris-Crafts, all factory records—including engineering drawings, memos, photographs and hull cards—were donated to The Mariners’ Museum in Newport New, Virginia. The Mariners’ Museum houses those records to this date. As part of this record, every hull produced was given a unique hull identification number. The hull ID number can be typically found in several locations: On a metal plate attached to the underside of the engine hatch cover or engine box on single engin
