Grand Banks Yachts began its journey in 1956 as American Marine, Ltd. Founder Robert J. Newton and his sons, John and Whit, were running a custom boatyard on Junk Bay in Hong Kong, building heavy sailboats and big motor yachts to designs by the world's top marine architects - Sparkman & Stephens, William Garden, Nat Herreshoff, Ray Hunt and others.
In 1962, they commissioned Kenneth Smith, another well-known marine architect, to design Spray - a 36-foot diesel powered cruising boat with humble, workman-like lines. A year later, inspired by Smith's design, the Newtons left custom yacht building to focus on producing the first of a line of boats that would come to be known as Grand Banks.
Today, this design is recognized around the world as the Grand Banks Heritage Series, an iconic design built first of wood and then, beginning in 1973, of fiberglass at a new factory in Singapore. The design was so successful, in fact that the general styling of the GB was seized by a score of other builders for fleets of look-alike yachts sold under dozens of names. None, through, could match the quality of construction for which Grand Banks is famed.