John Brown Herreshoff was an American ship-builder and yacht-designer. He was a co-founder and sales manager of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company.
Background
John Herreshoff was born on April 24, 1841, near Bristol, Rhode Island, United States, the son of Charles Frederick and Julia Ann (Lewis) Herreshoff, younger brother of James Brown Herreshoff. His maternal grandfather was a sea-captain; his father was a farmer and ship-builder.
Career
At the age of twelve John Herreshoff constructed a rope walk and a machine shop with foot lathe; but in 1855, while engaged in building his first boat, he became totally blind. After a few months of despondency, he took a fresh bold on life, built a longer rope walk, a machine sbop, and, with the help of his father and brother Nathaniel, finished his boat, the Meteor. He built other boats and in 1863, with his brother James, doubled Cape Cod on his twenty-six-foot Kelpie. On the return voyage the Kelpie so far utsailed another yacht, the Qui Vive, that her owner, Thomas Clapham, followed the Herreshoff boys to Bristol and gave John his first commission. More orders followed, among them one for a schooner yacht Faustine, which made the transatlantic passage in seventeen days.
About this time Herreshoff built a number of small boats on the same model or in duplicate, being one of the first to discern the business possibilities of mass production. After a brief partnership with Dexter S. Stone, he resumed boat building by himself and in 1868 constructed his first steam yacht, the Annie Morse, for Samuel Shove of Providence, followed by a steam fisherman for Church Brothers of Tiverton. In 1874 he and his brothers contrived a tubular or coil-boiler, which proved such a success that an order for a small torpedo-boat was received from the United States navy. This was followed by a commission, apparently legitimate, for a fast steamer, but the vessel was seized as a prospective Cuban filibuster.
In 1878 John and Nathaniel formed the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, John having charge of the finances and construction, Nathaniel of the drafting, engineering, and experimentation. The first fifteen years were devoted chiefly to the building of steam yachts and torpedo-boats. They did not neglect the sailingyacht, however, for in 1881 their sloop Shadow was the only American boat able to beat the Scotch cutter Madge.
Turning once again to sail, the brothers produced in 1891 the forty- six-foot sloop Gloriana built on radical lines, with a shortened bow, scarcely any forefoot, and a decreased but rounder and fuller waterline that enabled her to carry an unusual amount of sail. The success of the Gloriana and of her successor, the Wasp, was so marked that when in the fall of 1892 a challenge was received from England for the America’s Cup, the Herreshoffs received orders for two prospective defenders. Their bronze sloop Vigilant was chosen and vanquished the Valkyrie II in three straight races.
In the four matches for the America’s Cup which followed in the next ten years, all the defenders were Herreshoff boats, the Defender in 1895, the Columbia in 1899 and 1901, and the Reliance in 1903. John Herreshoff conducted the negotiations for these yachts as well as for the Constitution, which failed to qualify in 1901, and supervised much of their construction. The designs and details were worked out by Nathaniel, through whose engineering skill the Reliance was able to carry as mainsail the largest piece of canvas ever fashioned for a sailing craft. For the proposed match of 1914, the sailing of which was postponed by the war, they built the seventy-five-foot sloop Resolute, which in 1920 defeated the Shamrock IV in three out of five races, making a record for the Herre- shoffs of eighteen races in twenty starts in twenty-seven years against the fastest of English yachts. Scores of other yachts nearly as notable were also built, including the large schooners Queen, Westward, Elena, Katoura, and two Vagrants, as well as a quartette of one design seventy-foot sloops, a pair of sixty-five-footers, a trio of fifty-seven-footers and many smaller one-design classes such as the Newport thirties of 1896, the Bar Harbor thirty-ones of 1903, the New York thirties of 1905, and the New York fifties of 1912.
Achievements
Connections
In 1870 Herreshoff married Sarah Lucas Kilton of Boston, by whom he had a daughter Katherine.