HMCo #389p Little Gull II

"... The class M sloop [#1131s Istalena] for George M Pynchon has been set up and is partially framed and the company has started work on a 50-foot continuous sheer type cruiser [#388p Stroller] to be powered with a pair of Sterling Petrel engines and a 43-foot Hand designed boat [#389p Little Gull II] which will have Hall Scott engines. The names of the owners have not been made public, ..." (Source: Anon. "At Herreshoff Shops." Bristol Phoenix, January 15, 1928, p. 3.)

"Herreshoff's sheds are so full of boats that they would be hard put to find room to set up one of the 12 1/2-foot knockabouts. The 150-foot steel cruising craft [#385p Vara] for Ex-Commodore Harold S. Vanderbilt on the north railway fills the shop from end to end, but there is a practically completed 'S' knockabout under her port quarter, and another 'S' ready for decking under the flare of her port bow, while under the starboard bow a 43-foot powerboat is in frame, and further aft, flanking the Vanderbilt boat's midship section, is still a third 'S,' decked and ready to put the house on. The Hand designed V-bottomed cruiser is timbered out and partly planked in the small boat shop at the west end of the building. While on the south railway George M. Pynchon's 'M' sloop [#1131s Istalena], from the designs of L. Francis Herreshoff, is completely planked and has some of her carlines in. Astern of the Pynchon boat, the railway is occupied by the cruising houseboat Roamer [#215p] with a crew of men busy making changes in her deck houses. [Note: The reference to the 43-foot powerboat is unclear. The only 43-foot powerboat under construction during this time period was the William Hand-designed #389p Little Gull II which is referenced in the next sentence. Another powerboat built at the same time was #388p Stroller but she was slightly larger at 46ft 9in LOA. It is possible that the writer mixed up the two boats.]" (Source: Anon. "Yachts and Yachtsmen." Boston Globe, February 24, 1929, p. B13.)

"... Practically all the stock 'S' knockabouts, 10 to a dozen, three of which are to be added to the Marblehead class this season, are completed. While the 45-foot powerboat [#388p Stroller] for A. F. Rafferty of New York from the firm's design with a Sterling engine, and the Hand designed 43-foot power cruiser [#389p Little Gull II] for Irving Bonbright of New York, powered by a Hall-Scott engine, are nearly completed. ..." (Source: Anon. "Yacht Yards South of Boston Busy With New Work And Fitting Out." Boston Globe, May 5, 1929, p. A63.)

"... The power cruiser Little Gull II owned by Mr Bonbright will be in readiness to go overboard for the season next week. ..." (Source: Anon. "Aluminum Furniture For Yacht Weetamoe." Bristol Phoenix, April 21, 1930, p. 3.)

"42' WILLIAM HAND COMMUTER, built 1929 by Herreshoff. Bronze-fastened hull in sound condition, complete original hardware, needs complete restoration. $2,500 or b.o. Newport, RI. (401)847-4479 or (401)846-4504. [With photo.]" (Source: Anon. [Classified Ad.] Wooden Boat #51, March / April 1983, p. 154.)

"42' POWER YACHT, Wm. Hand-designed, Herreshoff built, 1929. Double-planked mahogany, enclosed teak wheelhouse, front and rear cockpits. Original hardware. No engines. Partly restored but partner deceased and must sell. Asking $8,500. 516-734-7464." (Source: Anon. [For Sale.] Woodenboat #60, September/October 1984, p. 183.)

"LITTLE GULL II. Hand/Herreshoff 42.5' commuter, 1929. Very complete, heavily documented. Too much to list. CT ..." (Source: Anon. "Classiefied." Wooden Boat #142, May/June 1998, p. 161.)

"Andy Giblin, one of the principals of MP&G in Mystic, Connecticut, writes with news of a significant restoration involving a notable power cruiser: 'We are currently restoring a 42'6' express cruiser designed by William Hand and built by the Herreshoff Mfg. Co. in 1929. This restoration is for the same customer who had us restore the Herreshoff Buzzards Bay 25 Mink [#733s] (see WB No. 258) and has similarly exacting standards.
'Little Gull II was built as a commuter and pleasure boat for Irving Bonbright, a Wall Street financier whose homeport was at Fishers Island, New York. Her restoration plan follows the same philosophy the owner wanted our shop to employ for Mink [#733s] --- i.e., restore to 'as-built, warts and all.' As with Mink, the emphasis is on saving original material even in areas not visible and discovering and reincorporating as many factory details as possible.
'We carefully disassembled and thoroughly documented the boat, even saving patches and plugs in the transom that remain as evidence of a change from a single rudder to two, which was likely done at the Herreshoff factory. We're also preserving Coast Guard registration numbers scribed into the planking and transom, which remain as remnants of her World War II service.
'Although this curatorial approach proved fairly straightforward on Mink, we are finding it more difficult on Little Gull II. She represents an early example of a high-speed hull employing hard chines, a fairly flat run, and two large gas engines, yet her construction still employed the standard HMCo. lightweight, double-planked, and bent-frame construction. The original tight-radius bend at the chines and multiple large fastenings in the same area proved catastrophic to the frames throughout the entire boat. This led us to the undesired acknowledgment that this technique should not be replicated exactly. Instead, we used a variation in method, bending the frames over curved and tapered 'backers' that effectively increased the bend radius to one that the frames should tolerate. We also kerfed the frames (which was a common HMCo. technique) in way of the turn of the bilge and the backers. Our only other variation from the original construction technique—again with some misgivings—was to eliminate the use of [galvanized] steel fastenings in the keel.
'The boat will be fitted with two near-vintage, six-cylinder, 250-hp Hall-Scott Invader engines salvaged from another boat. Naval brass propulsion shafts fitted with tin-bronze bearing sleeves will run in the original hull castings, fitted with the specified bushings of a phosphor-bronze alloy known as Pennsylvania Railroad bronze for the company that first developed it. The plan is to install mechanical, fuel, and electrical systems matching the original specifications. One of the most challenging tasks ahead is meeting contemporary safety regulations without compromising originality. As of this writing, the hull was completed and shaft fittings were being installed, along with the original ceiling, sole, and bulkheads. The engines are being restored by Phil Reilly & Company in Corte Madera, California. When completed, Little Gull II will stay here in Mystic and operate on Fishers Island Sound, just as she did back in 1929.' MP&G LLC, 929 Flanders Rd., Mystic, CT 06355; 860-572-7710; www.mpgboats.com." (Source: Anon. "Around The Yards." Woodenboat #263, July/August 2018, p. 20, 21.)

"... I visited ... MP&G, where Andy Giblin and Jeff Steele are restoring LITTLE GULL II, a William Hand Jr.–designed 42' 6" express cruiser built by the HMCo. in 1929. She was the subject of WoodenBoat’s 'Save a Classic' in No. 183. The project has been taken on by the same owner as MINK [#733s], a Herreshoff Buzzards Bay 25, restored at MP&G to an extraordinary standard of authenticity --- going so far as replicating mistakes and using materials long out of common usage... That ethic has since extended to her sailing and care, down to the cork floats of her mooring pennant. The same ethic is being applied to LITTLE GULL II’s restoration.
'He asks us to back up everything we do in the boat,' Andy said. 'The first source is what the boat came with, the second source is the drawings of the boat, the third is photographs, and we keep moving down, to other Herreshoff boats, other Herreshoff drawings, then period-correct details from catalogs. He loves the decision-making process. What I’m trying to do in a long-winded way,' he joked, 'is to explain and to rationalize why it’s taking so long.'
The work involves taking every individual piece and analyzing what has to be done to save it instead of replacing it. Some --- the long cockpit sole planks, for example --- were too far gone. But in that case, wood of the same type and period was recycled from an old post office in Chicago, and the seams are payed with Jeffrey’s Marine Glue No. 2, as in the original. 'He’s willing to basically support us learning how to do this stuff,' Andy said. Enough pieces of the old cockpit deck could be salvaged to be useful by being laminated to the undersides of the bridge deck planks to bring them back to their original thickness and allow caulking bevels to be renewed. The person at the helm will literally be trodding the same planks that Irving Bonbright first trod when his boat was new in 1929.
Fitting is challenging when there is no room for error, and no 'trimming wood' in the final fits. Uncommon attention is paid even to bits of original cockpit perimeter staving: where a locker door had been cut in, they were restored by gluing them end-to-end with the unusual choice of hide glue. 'We love it,' Andy said. 'We never thought we’d love it, but it makes beautiful joints,' without telltale glue lines, especially in graving pieces.
All of the original double planking of the topsides and bottom survived. Even the carved U.S. Coast Guard Reserve wartime numbers were found, filled, and painted over in a way that would not damage them. The hull sides were separated to make way for the installation of a new keel; then they were brought back together over new CNC-cut molds. Frame replacements were difficult: the hull is hard-chined, and the original white oak frames were fitted to the coved inside faces of the chine logs at such severe bends that all had broken. One of the restoration’s only variations in original construction was to first compression-bend steamed white oak to make half-moon-shaped filler pieces that bear against the chine logs, which allowed a slightly more relaxed radius for the continuous frames bent to the inside of the fillers. However, even the original wedge-shaped fillers in the small gaps between the frames and planking at the top and bottom edges of the chine logs were saved and reused. The engines, two 275-hp Hall-Scott Invaders, are not original but are of the same type and period as the originals. They are the only known surviving paired engines of the type, with sequential serial numbers and mirrored carburetors; they are being restored at Phil Reilly & Co., automotive restoration specialists in Corte Madera, California. The sleeved shaft bearings are made of two specific bronze alloys, a technology from railroad locomotives that predates Cutless bearings. Copper fuel tanks were made to earn American Boat & Yacht Council certification, which took exceptional research; 'We learned a lot --- all the work you would have to do if you wanted to go into the tank business and set up a factory,' Andy said. 'You’ve got to remember, Tom, that we spent a really long time with Ed [McClave] and Ben [Philbrick] trying to get the jobs done on a certain budget. You’ve got to make decisions and you’ve got to have the confidence to move ahead. You’ve got to go.' Their ethic, they like to say, evolved from their observation of 'a hundred years of destructive testing,' and they found ways to use the same technologies but improve on original after observing failures. 'That was our thing,' he said. 'Then [this client] comes in and says, ‘I love what you guys have done: all those boats, it’s incredible. But --- put that aside.’ I think of Smithsonian people scraping the dinosaur bones, and they’re all excited in some lab somewhere when they put a little piece of femur in.' MP&G Boatbuilding and Restoration, 929 Flanders Rd., Mystic, CT 06355; 860–572–7710; www.mpgboats.com. [With photo.]" (Source: Jackson, Tom. "Around the Yards." WoodenBoat 288, September-October 2022, p. 16.)

"Only about 4 miles from Mystic, Bill Mills at Stonington Boatworks is undertaking a project close to the heart of LITTLE GULL II in conjunction with MP&G. After careful measurements, he has built a full-sized mock-up of the boat’s engineroom, Hall-Scott engines, and the helm station in order to determine controls and fittings that will work with the original 1929 wheelhouse engine throttle. 'Our guy Brian Madden out in California, who has the engines,' at Phil Reilly & Co., 'took a measurement of what it took to get an engine in gear on the lever itself, at a given distance out from the pivot,' Mills said. Mills’s task is to counterbalance the gear lever so that it takes a 'reasonable amount of force' to shift. 'I have no idea how it was done originally --- that’s part of the problem,' he said. 'We’re working from a couple of drawings from the Herreshoff Manufacturing Co., of similar boats from similar vintage. There are no drawings of LITTLE GULL II, as she was done, and no photographs of that part of the boat. So it’s a little bit of a forensic challenge to figure out how they would have done it.' Mills’s shop, which he built in 2004, includes a machine shop where he does patternmaking and metal fabrication. 'We can do pretty much anything,' he said. 'We sort of backed into it, in self-defense, just because hardware was getting harder and harder to find for what we were doing. But I enjoy that, too.' Having spent the winter refitting an Alden ketch for the Newport Bermuda Race and spring readying boats for the season, Mills is returning to the engineroom project in time for the rebuilt engines expected arrival in November ... Stonington Boat Works, LLC, 228 North Water St., Unit B, Ston ington, CT 06378; 860–535–0332; www.stoningtonboatworks.com." (Source: Jackson, Tom. "Around the Yards." WoodenBoat 288, September-October 2022, p. 16-17.)

"Pedigrees count, and LITTLE GULL II's would be hard to beat. Fast and sea kindly powerboats had been designer Hand's specialty from the dawn of marine gas engines at the beginning of the 20th century. He'd designed hundreds of them before LITTLE GULL and thoroughly tested each new concept as it evolved, using his Buzzards Bay home waters as the venue. First Hand experience, I call it, so by the time 1929 rolled around, no designer was better for a boat of LITTLE GULL's type.
Irving Bonbright not only chose a top designer, but selected a justifiably world-famous builder, as well. All around his home waters of Fishers Island Sound were Herreshoff-built sailing yachts, the most recent arrivals being the lovely 44' Fishers Island 31-footers. I've been aboard LITTLE GULL, and you'd swear, as you enter her virtually unchanged main cabin, that you're in a Herreshoff sailboat. And, besides the simple-but-elegant proportions and detailing, the great thing about these interiors is that they can be removed intact using little more than a screwdriver. (Despite the boat's still-decent appearance, it may be time for a complete reframing, not just over the aft chine logs where the broken frames are visible. The logical access to all frames --- to preserve the hull's beautiful double-planking ---is from the inside.)
After Bonbright, this baby commuter was renamed NUBLUMOON by her next owner --- DuMont Elmendorf --- and ran out of Port Washington in western Long Island Sound from 1947 until 1968, according to Lloyd's Register. Then came the tough years when most of the deterioration occurred, until about 1984 when the present owner bought her and put her inside his new shop with a 'someday' kind of first-class restoration in mind. That unfulfilled dream has now run its course.
Virtually nothing original is missing from this boat: all the custom fittings (including twin cast-bronze outboard rudders) come with her, as well as a considerable archive of documentary material. A complete set of plans can be obtained from MIT's Davis-Hand Collection --- part of the Hart Nautical Collections. (Thank God for places like that!) A matched pair of Hall-Scott engines similar to what she had when new will also be included.
The brightwork, now weathered, was once varnished teak, and that includes the entire deckhouse as well as the toerails, hatches, skylights, and transom. Although sun-dried and open at the joints and seams, it's all still there for reference. In one sense I think it's better if the cosmetic condition is just over the edge like this so that replacing rather than refinishing makes economic as well as aesthetic sense.
LITTLE GULL II Particulars
LOA 42'6"
LWL 41' 6"
Beam 10'4"
Draft 2'22"
Official No. 286665
Designed by William H. Hand, Jr. as design #572
Built by Herreshoff Mfg. Co., Bristol, RI, 1929, as hull #389." (Source: Bray, Maynard. "Save A Classic. Little Gull II. A 1929 V-Bottomed Cruiser by Hand & Herreshoff." Wooden Boat #183, March/April 2005, p. 152.)

"[Item Description:] Spreadsheet listing original contracts (from 1923 to 1940) by HMCo in the collection of HMM (apparently from the gift of Everett Pearson). Listed boats are: #380p, #381p, #388p, #389p, #391p, #392p, #393p, #395p, #886s, #933s, #934s, #954s, #955s, #962s, #983s, #999s, #1002s, #1017s, #1054s, #1055s, #1057s, #1074s, #1078s, #1122s, #1125s, #1130s, #1131s, #1147s, #1152s, #1153s, #1154s, #1156s, #1157s, #1164s, #1170s, #1173s, #1174s, #1175s, #1175s, #1176s, #1177s, #1179s, #1180s, #1191s, #1192s, #1193s, #1195s, #1196s, #1198s, #1199s, #1200s, #1201s, #1202s, #1203s, #1206s, #1207s, #1208s, #1209s, #1210s, #1211s, #1212s, #1213s, #1214s, #1215s, #1216s, #1217s, #1218s, #1219s, #1220s, #1222s, #1224s, #1236s, #1226s, #1227s, #1228s, #1230s, #1232s, #1234s, #1237s, #1238s, #1240s, #1241s, #1243s, #1244s, #1245s, #1246s, #1247s, #1248s, #1249s, #1250s, #1251s, #1252s, #1253s, #1254s, #1255s, #1256s, #1257s, #1258s, #1259s, #1260s, #1261s, #1262s, #1263s, #1264s, #1265s, #1274s, #1275s, #1277s, #1279s, #1280s, #1281s, #1282s, #1283s, #1284s, #1285s, #1286s, #1287s, #1302s, #1303s, #1315s, #1508s." (Source: Rickson, Norene (creator). Table. Herreshoff Marine Museum Collection Item LIB_4220. HMM Library Rare Books Room (HMCo Contracts), Folder [no #]. No date (2010s ?).)
① ② ③ ④

Note: This list of archival documents contains in an unedited form any and all which mention #389p Little Gull II even if just in a cursory way. Permission to digitize, transcribe and display is gratefully acknowledged.

• Little Gull II (MIT Museum-made index card)
• Little Gull II (MIT Museum-made index card)
• Note: The vessel index cards comprise two sets of a total of some 3200 cards about vessels built by HMCo, with dimensions and information regarding drawings, later or former vessel names, and owners. They were compiled from HMCo's early days until 1920 and added to in later decades, apparently by Hart Nautical curator William A. Baker and his successors. While HMCo seems to have used only one set of index cards, all sorted by name and, where no name was available, by number, later users at MIT apparently divided them into two sets of cards, one sorted by vessel name, the other by vessel number and greatly expanded the number of cards. Original HMCo cards are usually lined and almost always punched with a hole at bottom center while later cards usually have no hole, are unlined, and often carry substantially less information. All cards are held by the Francis Russell Hart Nautical Collections of the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Mass.

• Little Gull II
• Note: The L. Francis Herreshoff index cards comprise a set of some 1200 cards about vessels built by HMCo, with dimensions and / or ownership information. Apparently compiled in the early 1930s, for later HMCo-built boats like the Fishers Island 23s or the Northeast Harbor 30s are not included. Added to in later decades, apparently by L. F. Herreshoff as well as his long-time secretary Muriel Vaughn and others. Also 46 cards of L. F. Herreshoff-designed vessels. The original set of index cards is held by the Herreshoff Marine Museum and permission to display is gratefully acknowledged.

Year: 1928
E/P/S: P
No.: 389
OA: 42' 6"

Source: Vermilya, Peter and Maynard Bray. "Transcription of the HMCo. Construction Record." Unpublished database, ca. 2000.

Note: The transcription of the HMCo Construction Record by Peter Vermilya and Maynard Bray was performed independently (and earlier) than that by Claas van der Linde. A comparison of the two transcriptions can be particularly useful in those many cases where the handwriting in the Construction Record is difficult to decipher.

"Restoration at MP&G in 2015/2016. Acquired by Brad Baker from Tucker Reynolds of Deep River, CT." (Source: van der Linde, Claas. February 14, 2015.)

"Built in 155 days (order to build to delivered; equivalent to $157/day)." (Source: van der Linde, Claas. January 16, 2024.)

Note: Research notes contain information about a vessel that is often random and unedited but has been deemed useful for future research.