Opposite: impressive take on leech-cut sails seen in this crisp 1891 shot of Gloriana, the 70-footer that helped to establish the Herreshoff name in yachting circles. Note the slightly hollowed – and rather elegant – clipper bow shaped to exploit the Seawanhaka Rule in use at the time. Constitution (left) was a favourite of Herreshoff but was beaten by his earlier Columbia in the 1901 Cup defence trials. Footnote: Columbia was also the cheaper of the two 135-footers, being built for just $90,000 against $126,000 for Constitution. You don’t always get what you pay for… even – or rather especially – in Cup World


power vessels for private and naval use, developing better engines and new, more efficient methods for construction (for instance, building the hulls upside down to provide workers with better access). The brothers’ own fast Stiletto held a speed record before the government


later


acquired her and converted her into a torpedo boat, one of many Herreshoff projects involving the US Navy. The yard’s priorities changed in 1891.


Problems with the Navy contracts and a boom in yachting led the brothers to shift their priorities to building innovative high- performance sailboats, starting with the famous 70ft sloop Gloriana, whose radical and unique bow shape, taking advantage of loopholes in the governing measure- ment rule (the Seawanhaka Rule), instantly made the yard’s reputation. As with all Herreshoff designs, these


He started sailing early, often serving as


the eyes for his blind older brother, John Brown Herreshoff, on the water and in the boatshed. ‘John B’ was hardly helpless, what with his remarkable ability to dis- cover a boat’s shape and construction by the feel of his hands. (In fact, a newspaper once described their relationship as John as ‘the hands’ and Nat ‘the eyes’.) Nat built his first boat when he was 10,


a skiff so small he named it Tadpole, and moved on to construct many more like it, mostly for his own use, satisfaction and (I suggest) something like therapy, with short sails around Bristol Harbor after long, hard, high-pressure days building America’s Cup sloops and other smaller boats. His profound affection for (and depen-


dence on) small boats for relaxation is clear in the most recent publication about the man, Maynard Bray & Claas van der Linde’s 2016 book, Herreshoff: American Masterpieces, which traces his and his family’s great sailing legacy through 36 boats that he designed, built and very often sailed. One of the boats in the book is a 16ft8in


lapstrake cat-ketch sailing dinghy called Coquina, developed by Nat from a boat that Nat and his brother Lewis (also blind) had built in France, and then sailed across the country using the country’s many rivers and canals. For nearly 20 years


Coquina carried him on his evening sails around Bristol Harbor after long days of labour in the yard before he gave her to Sidney, one of his two sons (with L Francis) who followed their father into yacht design and building. His favourite small boat of many years


was a small lightweight catamaran called Amarylis. He built her in 1876 and sailed her down to New York to compete in the great Centennial Regatta. The only multi- hull there, she did well enough to attract protests that she was not a yacht and was disqualified. Determined that catamarans had a good


future, Nat founded a boatbuilding com- pany that he promoted with slogans such as ‘A New Era in Yachting: the Patent Catamaran or Double-Hulled Boat’, and ‘Sailing in Them Is the Perfection of Enjoy- ment’. The marketing plan was clever and the boats he sold were successful, but there were nowhere near enough sales to make the project viable. After a year John B persuaded him to


join him in a boatyard, the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, in Bristol. Until his death in 1915 John B ran the business side of the company while Nat attended to designing and building steam engines, navy vessels and power and sailing yachts. For 13 years the brothers concentrated on building high-speed, steam-driven


vessels started life not as drawings but as small models carved by Captain Nat with remarkable accuracy and rapidity. The model for the enormous 1903 America’s Cup defender Reliance was carved in one evening. That was one Herreshoff system. Another is the Bristol yard’s detailed


roster of scantlings laying out the size of each frame and fastening. Such care inspired Olin Stephens to write in his auto- biography All This and Sailing, Too that the one feature that made Nat ‘the greatest yacht designer of all time’ was his ‘ability with structures’. Another Herreshoff system was the one


for selecting good wood. Olin and his brother Rod became acquainted with this when a former Herreshoff employee, Rufus Murray, used it at the Henry B Nevins yacht yard in New York in the 1930s. Murray, Olin wrote, was ‘unparal- leled in his knowledge of the nature of wood and how it should be put together and fastened to form a yacht hull’. He had a special trick finding the best


oak for a boat’s structural members, which was white oak. ‘To most of us they all look about the same,’ said Rod Stephens. ‘From half a mile away he could tell you what was white oak and what was yellow bark and what was black and what was “piss” oak and pin oak. I never knew how many kinds.’ Because some oaks have large, open, water-absorbing pores, but white oaks are plugged, all Murray needed was a cup of water, Rod said. ‘He would take a small sprig of the wood about 3in long,


SEAHORSE 39


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