Herreshoff Museum RI USA

Bristol’s anchorage

When we had arrived in Newport we had thought about taking BV north to Bristol so that we could see the town, site of America’s longest continuously running 4^thof July Parade and, more importantly, the Hereshoff Marine Museum, previous site of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, at which many of the famous names in America’s Cup history were designed and even more were built.   But there is a half-hourly bus schedule between Newport and Provident and Bristol is on that route, so it made more sense to pay our $2 per head each way and save 20nm worth of marine diesel and engine hours.  And it would be drier too – it was raining again!

Bristol

By the time we got to Bristol the rain had stopped, so we spent an hour or so wandering around the town and taking in the atmosphere.  There’s more to Bristol than just the summer season but even so it did seem very quiet. The centre of the town is an interesting mix of lapboard houses, 1930s brick buildings and places built of who-knows-what rendered on the outside.  But in general it’s all very attractive and the streets are shaded by large mature trees, giving the place a cool and peaceful air.  Down the centre of Hope Street, the main street, and others, instead of a single white line a triple striped red, white and blue line runs, delineating the famous Independence Day parade route.

International America’s Cup Class yacht Defiant

At the far end of Hope Street, close to the water’s edge as you would expect, is the Herreshoff Marine Museum.  It’s a difficult place to miss with the America’s Cup yacht Defiant parked on a cradle outside.

We arrived at the museum just in time to see a 45min film about the Herreshoff yard; the relationship between brothers John, blind since his teens but a fabulous business manager who could provide accurate quotes for building boats in his head and in only a couple of hours, and Nat (Nathanael) the boat and marine engineering design genius; and the yard’s relationship with the America’s Cup.  Following this, and for most of the rest of our visit, we toured the museum with one of the guides (or ‘docents’ as the Americans term them). Frank proved hugely knowledgeable as well having the ability to speak incredibly quickly, a highly necessary skill given the amount of information he wanted to impart and the length of time we had available.

But that does Frank a disservice. The tour he gave was fascinating and drew out vast amounts of information that we would have missed had we just gone around reading the boards and looking at the displays and artefacts.  For example, he directed our attention to a display of steam engines and emphasised that the yard began as a steam motorboat factory, building sailing yachts and sailing work boats as a sideline.  From steam boats the yard branched out, building racing yachts for friends, yachts which challenged the current design status quo and which were incredibly successful.  As a result, Herreshoff was recommended as the designer of an America’s Cup defender. He designed, and subsequently skippered, Vigilant in the defender trials of 1893 and successfully defended the Cup itself in her against Valkyrie II later that same year.  Vigilant was the first of five yachts that Nathanael Hereshoff designed to defend the America’s Cup, over 6 separate challenges and his yachts were all successful.

(Bottom left) Reliance model. (Right)Reliance (90-footer, blue) against other America’s Cup yachts all to the same scale. Enterprise (J-boat, white), Oracle(AC-72, orange), Alinghi (International America’s Cup Class, black) and Intrepid (12 Metre, red)

The most famous of his America’s Cup yachts was Reliance, the largest gaff-rigged cutter ever built.  She was a staggering size – fractionally under 90ft on the waterline, 144ft on deck, 201ft from the tip of her bowsprit to the end of her boom and 199ft high! She needed the large deck for handling the enormous rig but the huge overhangs at bow and stern also meant that when she heeled her waterline length would increase dramatically and, consequently, so would her speed.

(Left and bottom right) Reliance and (top right) Reliance ahead of Shamrock III (1903 America’s Cup series)

From Nat’s first starting her design, and Reliance was designed twice because the owners’ syndicate didn’t like the first one, Reliance was built in 6months and 2 weeks!  But she was a ‘racing freak’, only suitable for use in certain conditions and entirely stripped out down below….except for the below deck winches.  In fact, she was the first racing yacht to be fitted with winches, below deck or otherwise; another  Nat Herreshoff invention!  This was the era of man-powered sailing pulling with blocks and tackles but, even with the more powerful winches, Reliance’s mainsheet was still over a mile long.  The stripped out below design of Reliance does, however, highlight just how difficult it was for the America’s Cup challengers at the time.  In 1881, the Deed of Gift, the rules governing the challenge to and defence of the trophy, was amended to require that challenges be accepted only from yacht clubs on the sea and that challenger yachts must sail to the venue on their own hull. No totally stripped out, super-light, ultra-extreme design racing hulls would work for the challengers, or they might not even make it across the Atlantic to race.  Arguably an unfair advantage for the defender.

1/6^thscale model of the Reliance built to commemorate the 110^thanniversary of the original

Half models designed and built by Nat Herreshoff in a replica of his office

Though the Hereshoffs are most famous for building 8 consecutive successful defenders of the America's Cup from 1893 to 1934 (of which Nat designed 5 of the yachts which defended on 6 of the 8 occasions) they achieved far, far more than that.  The museum houses a replica of Nat’s study in which are a large number of the half models of the yachts he designed, all made by his hand and, from which, using a method he invented himself, the lines could be lifted off, drawn onto paper and given to the yard’s boat builders.  There are over 500 models in the museum’s collection – that’s quite some rate of design!  And the build rate matched that too.  Frank told us of the speed at which Reliance was designed and built.  Whilst the yard was building her they had full order books for their usual clients and, if we recall correctly, built over 100 other boats in that time too.

Models illustrating seminal developments in yacht design

Nat Hereshoff was something of a design genius in many ways.  He had built himself a yacht Clara along standard lines of the day, plumb bow, overhanging stern, long keel. But he didn’t like the way she handled so he stretched the bow out, elongated the stern further and made the keel shorter.  This yacht handled much better and was immeasurably faster than the competition. This was the yacht that got Nat the America’s Cup defender design recommendation.

Amaryllis II, 1930s reproduction of Nat Herreshoff’s 1875 catamaran Amaryll is, the first US patented sailing catamaran

Monohull hull design wasn’t the only area of innovation.  Nat designed the first US patented catamaran, which performed so well in her maiden regatta in 1876, the Centennial Regatta of the New York Yacht Club, that following this catamarans were barred from regular sailing classes, and this remained the case for nearly 100 years.  Nat also redesigned sails, making them cross-cut to reduce stretch.  However, no Rhode Island sailmaker would cut sails according to his design, so the Hereshoffs incorporated a sail loft into the yard and from then on built all their own sails. And he invented sail tracks and sliders, the modern winch (which were fitted on Reliance), the folding propeller, the method of splicing wire to rope……the list goes on; an incredible set of achievements for one man.

The boat hall at the museum.  The museum owns 62 Herreshoff designed boats and a large number of them are on display in the boat hall

Frank left us at the boat hall, by which time we were quite amazed by all the facts and figures with which he had bombarded us.  And the boat hall is another impressive part of the museum in its own right.  I don’t know how many boats they have on display in the hall but, as we understand it, they are all Herreshoff designs, most of them original too.

Torch, fabulously restored but one of the few yachts on display not to have been designed by Nat Herreshoff.  She was designed by A. Sidney DeWolf Herreshoff, one of his sons

Torch has been fabulously restored by museum volunteers and as owners of a 1999 42ft sailing yacht it was fascinating to be able to compare BV to a top of the range 1929 44ft yacht.

Torch, (left) companionway and saloon and (right) galley

Torch is truly beautiful, but we don’t think we’ll be trading in BV for her anytime soon.  If nothing else, the handpump at the galley sink looks far too much like hard work – we both like our foot and electric pumps too much….

Torch

…. and she’d be a nightmare to manoeuvre in reverse too with that long keel and offset propeller.

From NGH’s motor launch Thania, we got another view of the model of Reliance.  The only part of the model that isn’t complete to scale is the mast as a 30+ft mast just would not fit into the boat hall

From the boat hall we took Frank’s advice and walked the short distance to the workshops where the museum staff and volunteers restore old wooden yachts to their former glory.  The yards around the back are littered with dying, drying boats and we wondered how many would make it into the shed in time for restoration and how many of the yachts in the boat hall had had timbers as old, warped and open as some of those we saw on the trailers.

Inside, we found the shed full of boats undergoing or due for restoration work.  It’s slow work with most of it being done by volunteers.  It’s a lovely place to visit, with the smell of newly sawn wood and craftsmen’s beautiful objects being restored, if not to full life afloat, to a state where they can be admired once more.  Quite what Nat and John Herreshoff would think of it we’re not sure.  They don’t appear to have been sentimental about the boats they built – but then, they built so many.  And to restore old boats, whilst a challenge, is not cutting edge technology in the way that they were building yachts on the extremes of design boundaries.  I imagine that if Nat were here today he’d be looking at the AC72s, the foiling catamarans and, next, the foiling monohulls and wondering what loopholes in the design regulations he could find to come up with the next winner and so bring the Auld Mug back to America.

We spent far longer at the Herreshoff Museum than we had expected to.  It was fascinating and well worth the trip up from Newport.  Like most museums you could spend even longer but we had a bus to catch to return to Newport and Blue Velvet.

Bristol, Rhode Island, USA