The Greatest Tent-Maker on Earth:

The William Hobson Story

“Their names are for the most part unknown; the things they do lost in the general oblivion of all teamwork.”

– Through the Back Door of the Circus with George Brinton Beal

Successful sailing requires its captain to hoist a canvas panel up the towering mast. A successful circus in the golden age—showing town-totown—must also raise its canvas among a series of masts. To do so, both needed a sailmaker’s craftsmanship to provide the apparatus of movement.

Canvas

In preparation for this article, the author polled a who’s who list of circus historians, asking if they had ever heard of the “World’s Greatest Tent-Maker.” Nearly all responses were, “Who is William Hobson?”  Hobson had been billed as the world’s leading tent-maker, the Dean of Tent-Makers, Cap’n Bill, and many other titles to signify his importance.  For over a decade, spanning the years 1928-1939, he was responsible for building the world’s largest big top, a structure that spanned one-hundred-ninety-four feet by four-hundred-ninety feet. It was more than ninety-five-thousand square feet, standing over five stories high with capacity for over fourteen-thousand fun-seekers.

“The World’s Greatest” was not only responsible for overseeing the stitch-by-stich process but also hand-drawing the designs according to the needs of the show. “The Dean” worked twelve months every year, re-designing, repairing, overhauling, and starting anew; outfitting The Greatest Show on Earth with a new dress each and every spring. The sanctuary in the greatest canvas city on earth was its big top, a cathedral constructed of eighteen sections of carefully sheared and sewn eight-ounce twill canvas, with each section weighing over fifteen-hundred pounds, supported by two-hundred-two poles, including six giant poles manufactured by a ship mast manufacturer in the Northwestern United States.