Capt. Nat Herreshoff, the Wizard of Bristol: The Life and Achievements of Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, Together with an Account of Some of the Yachts He Designed

Nathanael G. Herreshoff was the greatest yacht and marine designer and builder the United States has ever produced. He is credited with the introduction of more new devices in the design of boats than any other man, and the great yachts that he designed for the successful defence of the America’s cup caught the imagination of the world. #200322 Yachting
Nathanael Greene Herreshoff (March 18, 1848 – June 2, 1938) was an American naval architect, mechanical engineer, and yacht design innovator.[2] He produced a succession of undefeated America’s Cup defenders between 1893 and 1920.
While the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company’s early work centered on steam-powered vessels, by the 1890s the Herreshoffs turned to the design and construction of yachts for wealthy American clients, including Jay Gould, William Randolph Hearst, John Pierpont Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, William Kissam Vanderbilt II, Harry Payne Whitney and Alexander Smith Cochran. Herreshoff boat production incorporated power tools that increased productivity at a high level of quality, using craftsmen that received the highest boat-builder wages in the state of Rhode Island.[8]

Herreshoff was noted as an innovative sailboat designer of his time. His designs ranged from the 12½, a 16-foot (12½ foot waterline) sailboat for training the children of yachtsmen,[9] to the 144-foot America’s Cup Reliance, with a sail area of 16,000 square feet.[10] He received the first US patent for a sailing catamaran. The firm built the America’s Cup winning Cup yachts Enterprise – 1930, and Rainbow – 1934 (designed by Starling Burgess). Every winning America’s Cup Yacht from 1893 to 1934 was built by the Herreshoff yard.[11]

The 123-foot Defender featured steel-framing, bronze plating up to the waterline and aluminum topsides to achieve a lighter and faster boat. This combination of materials had been pioneered in the French fresh-water racing yacht Vendenesse, which had been described in a New York Times article and caught the attention of the Vanderbilt Americacup syndicate. In salt water, Defender was subject to galvanic corrosion, which limited its durability in water. Defender won the America’s Cup in 1895 over Lord Dunraven’s Valkyrie III, and she was used as an effective trial-horse for Herreshoff’s new Cup defender Columbia in 1899. She was broken up in 1901.[11]

Those of the 2,000-plus designs by Herreshoff that survive are sought by connoisseurs of classic yachts. Herreshoff S-Class sailboats, designed in 1919 and built until 1941, are still actively raced in Narragansett Bay, Buzzards Bay and Western Long Island Sound (Larchmont, New York). His 12½ design of 1914 is still being built and raced in New England as well. The New York 30 is well regarded as a one-design racer/cruiser.[9]

In the 1942 the shipyard built wooden hull APc-1-class small coastal transports to support the World War II demand for ships.[12]

The Herreshoff Marine Museum preserves Herreshoff’s legacy at the former site of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Co.[13]