Tammy Kennon

Special for USA TODAY

A vintage Chris-Craft runabout is the aquatic equivalent of a 1950s T-Bird convertible, certain to get attention for the vehicle and the driver. The runabouts are like mahogany jewel boxes, handcrafted with precision and catching every glint of sun in their mirror-like varnish and polished brass, waving the signature Chris-Craft burgee as a hood ornament. Try to look away, you just can’t.

While many boats serve a utilitarian purpose, a Chris-Craft pleasure boat is simply that, made to drive around on the water for the sheer joy of it. The ‘Chris’ in the name comes from Christopher Columbus Smith, a kid who found his calling early in life. He built his first boat in 1874 when he was 13. Seven years later, Smith and his brother began building boats full time in Algonac, Mich., across Lake St. Clair from Detroit. It was the launch of an agile family dynasty that would extend well beyond Smith’s lifetime — and the beginning of a boatbuilding tradition that continues today.

The Smith family’s resume is a testament to their ability to serve the boat market and transform with it as it changed over the decades. In the early years, they crafted hunting boats, vessels so popular that they soon reached production-level output. In the early 1900s, the brothers shifted their attention to custom pleasure boats for wealthy patrons, such as Henry Ford and William Randolph Hearst. But by the 1920s, they had morphed once again, focusing on fast, economically priced runabouts for the middle class, becoming one of the first production boatbuilders, and, at the time, the world’s largest builder of mahogany powerboats.

Through the tumultuous years of World War II, Chris-Craft, under the leadership of Chris’s son Jay, turned its attention from luxury watercraft to rugged military vessels. Using lessons learned in building recreational boats, they successfully bid on military contracts and began mass-producing a variety of vessels, including patrol boats, launches and rescue vessels. By 1945, they had built 12,000 military vessels .

However, it was during the post-war consumer expansion of the 1950s that Chris-Craft became the hallmark of recreational boating, crafting the vintage boats that collectors still value today. In their heyday, the high-end Chris-Craft vessels caught the attention of the equally high-end glitterati of the era, among them Katharine Hepburn, Frank Sinatra and Elvis.

As you’ll see in our Dream Boats gallery above, many of the boats from that era are still on the water and sometimes on the market today. Some are painstakingly restored, some updated with modern touches and others lovingly maintained in their original condition. Also included is one of the larger, custom pleasure craft built in the same era.

The company was sold by the Smith family in the late 1950s and has changed hands over the years. Today the Chris-Craft company, headquartered in Sarasota, Fla., continues to build a variety of luxury powerboats, including modern runabouts with lines reminiscent of the Smith family tradition.