Historical multihulls

Ha ! Me to a "T"

 

A 'thin wood panel' which helps keep the strut at its outboard end in place?


...


As much as I'd have preferred it, I've not been completely idle the past weekend. There are digitized archives of several San Francisco newspapers from the 1800's and I've been doing some muddling through them (I've not yet accessed the San Francisco Chronicle's archives and am hoping to find more there).

In spite of all the time that has passed, earthquakes, fires, etc., There are numerous newspaper items relating to catamarans in San Francisco starting in 1877. It is still something of a puzzle to work out what was happening, because there are references to several boats!

... Anyone interested in hearing something about it?

 

Very interested, it would be great if you could do some more digging.

cheers

Phil

 

Gary,

What edition of Dixon Kemp do you have?
It would be interesting to see if an earlier version had different information.

 

^^^

Hah! Five minutes ago I accidentally erased my long 'stickies' note regarding 25 articles (so I better do a little summary while it's fresh in mind, before piecing it together again from all my screenshots).





Anyway!

Drumroll!

In 1877 and the following year or two, I've found mention of four catamaran projects in the San Francisco area, Catsketcher!
Here I'll deal with some of the items I found in chronological order.


24th June 1877, Daily Alta Californian:
A catamaran named "Experiment' probably built locally for racing, but no specifications given.



The Consuelo was the pride of the SFYC, their fastest schooner at the time, there are photos of her in the Oliver collection.


26th September 1877, Sacramento Daily Union:
A second catamaran under construction across the Bay in Vallejo, with interesting specs that sound fairly close to our 'Duster' (but the name is different, Gary!).




The local high point of the racing season is SFYC's 'Annual Regatta' on Saturday August 4th this year. The Daily Alta has a couple of articles about it prior to the race, listing participants and outlining the course, mentioning on the 21st July that "at least one 'catamaran' and probably two will compete in the race".
Then another article a few days before the race say that "the catamaran 'Experiment' will accompany the yachts" (the SDYC was using a handicapping system and hadn't decided yet how to formally include a catamaran).


5th August, 1877, Daily Alta Californian:
This is a partial clipping from the newspaper, with the race results. The 'Experiment' had capsized near Goat Island (Yerba Buena today) and the crew were rescued off the upturned boat. "Yachtsmen should note this advantage, of having two bottoms to cling to in case of accident":




8th August 1877: A brief note in the Sacramento paper as follows:
"One of the owners of the catamaran 'Experiment' contradicts the report that the hulls of the vessel parted in Saturday's race. He says the sole cause of the disaster was that the sheet had been made too fast, the result being an upset"

------

The above is just what I found for 1877 in an imperfect search. I suspect there is more in the papers that year, but the old newsprint confounds the search engine and you'd need to actually read through the papers to find it all.

The year 1878 responded very poorly to searches, there must also be items there I've not found. I have read the articles from that year about the SDYC's Annual Regatta (first or second Saturday of August), and no catamaran participated that year.

My hunch is that the 'Experiment' was owned and sailed by the same people as the 'Zarefa' - a Captain Peter Stofen helmed both boats - and that Zarefa's first outings resulted in her needing to go back to Mocadnock for improvements. Those improvements were finished in May 1879:


4th May 1879, Daily Alta Californian:



....

More about 1879 in the next installment!
Quite a lot of catamaran sailing took place that year in San Francisco!



A general observation: It is not often the newspapers name the owners of the boats racing. I wonder if it was considered somehow vulgar to do so. So I've not identified who was paying for these two catamarans, or two others which appeared in 1879.
The racing featured paid professional skippers for the most part, it seems it was unusual for the owner to be at the helm during races.
Peter Stofen and his brother operated a cargo & ferry company in the area, and they helmed different raceboats at times.

 

...

A few notes on sources:

Here is a link to the site where you can access the digital records of a number of defunct San Francisco newspapers, and on the particular page which is linked to here, there is a long article from 17 June 1877, describing the new invention of the catamaran, giving mention to Amaryllis.

California Digital Newspaper Collection

...

The records of the San Francisco Chronicle require a local library card or University ID to access, so I've not seen anything there yet.

The old archives of the San Francisco Yacht Club are in the possession of the Online Archive of California. Who knows what may be found there?

 

Great stuff, again Blackburn-thanks!

 

As you can see, quite damaged copy. The cover and half first chapter gone (and three plans cut out by some turkey) and the last date I can find in the book is this Sibbick plan of 1897.

 

A real pity about the book, but it must be a slightly older edition. Did you find the Herreshoff catamaran?
I always thought there would be old boat enthusiasts who would like to see the plans if they were digitized.
Hence my discussion about taking my book apart to scan.
Even in your books condition I would hesitate a lot.
In one of the digital book projects like Google has there is an 8th edition ( I think) but the plans were not included. Big disappointment for a friend of mine. He made a copy and showed me, then I was unkind and showed him a complete copy.

My thought was to brush up on my old 3d modeling skills (very old) and model each of the boats shown as a higher tech way to preserve the designs. Probably as a retirement project (in 3 years). The digital model would probably show all the original errors, and those coming from taking the data off of 100 year old paper. Probably have to be re-faired, then it might not be very true to the original.

 

You're welcome!

There's a lot more, but it's still very confusing to determine which catamaran is referred to in various news items - found a few more clues today, but as far as 'Duster' is concerned it is still very mysterious.

I'll not be posting for a day or two, the weather is good and I need to be outside hacking away at my slate.

 

What an incredible coincidence! I haven’t checked into this site (I have been sporadically followed various threads, especially Gary’s posts on Sid and Groucho for a year or so) since going on holiday to the USA over a month ago. The holiday wound up in San Francisco, and included a trip to the maritime museum, where I was intrigued by a photograph of a catamaran named “Duster”, but disappointed by the lack of information regarding said boat – which I at first mistook as Amaryllis. I look forward to any progression in finding the story behind this revolutionary craft. Thank you to all concerned.

 

Upchurchmr, yes, the Herreshoff plan is in my Dixon Kemp.
On the point of tearing these historic and valuable books apart for digital scanning; there is a non destructive way of getting images - and that is to just take a high end digital Canon/Nikon preferably with macro lens, place the fold outs in good light and shoot, shift to computer.

 

Gary,

If the intent is to get the lines for further projects that method is not adequate.
The page in question needs to be absolutely flat to have a chance to take off coordinates.
The page needs to be sandwiched between a piece of glass and a hard surface to get a good reproduction, and the camera needs to be mounted on a copy stand, as far away as you can get.
If the purpose is just to illustrate / show the pictures like a coffee table book the simpler method will work.
The camera does not need to be extremely high end to work, but it certainly allows more extreme accuracy if you want the accurate lines.
There is actually an amateur website dedicated to making a copy stand/ mechanism for doing accurate images of whole books. If you are interested I'll look for the web site. I have it somewhere in 1000 bookmarks.
Unfortunately Dixon Kemp was bound with many of the illustrations are close to the binding, so it will be difficult to get a flat image to photograph when still bound.
As my librarian mother used to say, you would have to severely break the binding to get it to lay flat.

Its good to see someone else interested in these books. I have tried to introduce it as a treasure several time and got no response.

 

Lovely pic, Blackburn.

If Duster isn't a Herreshoff she's possibly a Thomas Fearon design and build; he made several of them, including two for Fred Hughes who bought Amaryllis from Nat.

It's not a great surprise that there were cats in SF; there were several in the southern states and at least one on the inland lakes.

Re newspapers and publishing of owner's names; the NY Times, Outing etc showed no reluctance to publish owner's details. That's how we know that the early cats were NOT outcasts owned by rebels (as sometimes claimed) but the property of established sailors such as commodores of yacht clubs.

 

I'm happy you brought that up CT249!

I'd been doing a little searching on Thomas Fearon, having read (in the biography of Nat?) that he built the boats after Nathaniel became absorbed in his more important designs/business. All I found was that Fearon was a formidable oarsman, that he took part in some early 1 on 1 catamaran races, and that his boatyard burned down later in the 80's (brief items from the NYTimes archives).

Did the design of Herreshoff's cats change while Fearon was building them?

I'm on another computer now without my files, but tomorrow I'll post copies of short articles from 1879 which refer to a boat shipped from the east that sounds like the Herreshoff, and its reported dimensions are similar to the other Herreshoff cats.

But whether or not Duster is the Herreshoff, among the 3 or 4 catamarans that then were either sailing brilliantly or capsizing/dismasting in San Francisco Bay... I'll be interested to hear your opinion.