HMCo #1151s Pluckermin II

"... in some ways the most interesting product of 1919 was the one-design class of 'S' boats, which came out early that spring.
While there were few of them built the first year, perhaps twenty, the company continued building them off and on for the next eight or nine years so that eventually there were perhaps a hundred and fifty or more of them, and besides being good little cruisers they have furnished active racing up to the present time in widely separated districts. If I remember right these little yachts cost less than two thousand dollars the first few years, so they have been a good investment for some owners for they were built well enough to last for years if handled carefully. Perhaps the 'S' boats would even have been more popular if they had been a little better looking but that defect should not be wholly blamed on Captain Nat for it was the request of the original sponsors of the class that they have short overhangs and full bows and sterns. This feature has made them rather queer-looking Universal Rule boats, and consequently they are not particularly fast for their rating. But there have been few all-around better boats for afternoon sailing, cruising, and racing, and perhaps also the last one-design class that was somewhat comfortable." (Source: Herreshoff, L. Francis. The Wizard of Bristol. The Life and Achievements of Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, together with An Account of Some of the Yachts he Designed. New York, 1953, p. 306.)

"S CLASS
1979 is the 60th anniversary of the conception of the Herreshoff S class. A commemorative race and celebration will be held in August sponsored by the Museum and the Narragansett Bay Herreshoff S class. Still the most significant one design racing class of the Bay, the S boats are acknowledged by their sailors as having elegant sailing characteristics in heavy or light weather.
A group from the Seawanaka Corinthian Yacht Club of Oyster Bay, N.Y. with Paul Hammond as spokesman approached Nathanael Herreshoff in the Fall of 1919 to request a class of boats to win in the open S class. Captain Nat carved the S boat half model in November 1919 and completed the design soon after. The first seven orders were accepted by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company in December, and about fifteen boats were completed and delivered for the 1920 season.
28 feet over all, with moderate displacement, a high ballast ratio and large rig with a conspicuous curved mast, the Herreshoff S boat swept the open S class so that soon the term S became synonomous with the Herreshoff S boats. Racing classes in Maine, Marblehead, Rhode Island, Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake provided their sailors the very best of close one design competition. The shop built S boats until the start of World War II and they have turned up in many harbors including Honolulu, Hawaii.
Quite appropriately, Narragansett Bay is now the scene of the best S boat racing. This is because Alden Walls and his beautiful S NINA started off right after the War and influenced Russell Boss and many of his other friends to get S boats and race.
By 1960 there were 25 active boats with more than 20 on the starting line on numerous occasions. Many of the most active of our Bay sailors learned much about racing and gained great enjoyment in the S boats and today treasure S boat racing memories. Museum trustee Ike Merriman's father won the Bristol Yacht Club Regatta in the S class in 1930, Alden Wall's NINA in 1947 and my own COQUINA won in 1963.
Lightly constructed of cedar planking over steam bent oak frames with bronze strapped keels, the Herreshoff S boats seem to survive any number of competitive races in our summer sou'westers. This year's 60th anniversary is a significant event for the S boats, but we all expect them to keep racing for many years to come." (Source: Herreshoff, Halsey C. "S Class" In: Herreshoff Marine Museum Chonicle, Spring 1979, p. 2.)

"1943. ... Alden Walls bought the Herreshoff S boat Nina [#1151s] from Frank Orr at West Hartford. Russ Boss, who had been looking for an auxiliary cruiser, gave the idea up and bought Reginald Reynolds' Argument [#964s] to race against Nina. It started an S boat epidemic and at the end of the season there were eight S boats in the class. Frank Hodges bought the Quissetta [#1080s] at Marion, and called her Whistler. J. W. Corr at East Greenwich bought the Naut [#970s] at Marion and named her Red Jacket. Steve Kindelan bought the Surprise [#1129s] from Reginald Lanier at Newport. Leo McDevitt bought the Mig [sic, #858s] from E. Stuart Peck of New York and named her Colleen. Harold Sawyer bought the Dilemma [#1022s] from H. B. B. Ripley of New York and Newport, making seven active boats, and Roberts Parsons bought the Volante [#1019s] but left her at Marblehead to wait for his son, Sam, to get home from the service. ..." (Source: Davis, Jeff. Yachting in Narragansett Bay. Providence, 1946, p. 116.)

"... It was about this time [early 1940s] that I became interested in getting an 'S' boat I had seen them racing at Padanarum ten years earlier when we were there with [our Massachusetts Bay 21 Footer] Spry and had always admired the way they 'stood up' in a breeze especially going to windward. They had a fine class at Newport during the 1930's, but it petered out with the advent of World War II, and most of the Newport boats wound up in Larchmont and Buzzard's Bay. We found a buyer for [our Triangle Class Sloop] Pandora and went looking for a Herreshoff 'S'. Our search was rewarded when we found 'Nina' [#1151s ex-Pluckermin II] up the Connecticut River in Portland, Conn.
We had planned to race in Handicap Class C, but Russ Boss heard of our acquisition and picked up the 'Argument' [#964s ex-Bridget] from Rod and Reggie Reynolds right in Bristol, so that a new one-design class was born! The same year, 1943, six other S boats were brought back to the Bay and the Narragansett Bay Herreshoff S Class Assoc was off and running. The next few years saw the class grow rapidly to about twenty boats with some very keen racing each week of the summer.
In the early days of the class, we had some very thrilling duels between Argument and Nina. Most of the S boats were kept at the R I Yacht Club which ran our Pre-Sea son and Post-Season Series so that we would start and finish right off the club dock. Many afternoons these two boats would get out front and after ten or twelve miles of racing come into the finish line overlapped. We managed to win our share of firsts with Nina, but we found Russ Boss and his Argument just about the toughest competitor, as well as the best sport, we had ever encountered in sailboat racing.
We were fortunate to have a great crew on Nina, usually made up of my wife, Grace, plus Sonny Hough on main sheet and Art Moan or Bob Bride on spinnaker with Ken Walls or Helen Bride as the fifth member of our group. These were the chief reasons for our ability to win seven consecutive season championships from 1944 through 1950. Having the same enthusiastic crew aboard any boat, week in and week out, is probably the greatest single asset a racing sailboat can have. ..." (Source: Walls, Alden. "50 Years of Bay Racing." Bristol Phoenix, January 31, 1973, p. 18-19.)

• Benfield, James W. "Reviving the 'S' Class." Yachting, May 1945, p. 56-57, 104. (3,516 kB)
  Document is copyrighted: Yes. How the Western Long Island Sound S-class fleet was built with a deliberate strategy.
• Upham, Kenneth B. History and Register of the S-Boat. Privately printed, no place, 1994. (13,553 kB)
  Document is copyrighted: Yes, used with permission. The definitive source of info on the S-class, but unfortunately current only up to its date of publication in 1994. History of the class and its various fleets, technical comments, detailed vessel-by-vessel provenance, owner and name indices.
• Bray, Maynard and Claas van der Linde. "The Origins of the S-Boat. A Remarkable Herreshoff One-Design." Wooden Boat #267, March/April 2019, p. 74-79. (1,201 kB)
  Document is copyrighted: Yes. A short history of how the S-Class came about, including new insights from recent research of original Herreshoff documents. With photos and reproductions of the original construction and sail plans.
• Silken, Alan (text). Silken, Cory (photos). "Setting Sail in America. The Remarkable Story of Herreshoff S Class Sailboats." Seapoint Books, Brooklin, ME.
  Appreciation of the S-Class, history of the design and local fleets, portraits of surviving S-boats and a catalogue of all S-boats
• Silken, Alan (text). Silken, Cory (photos). "A Century of S-Boats. The Enduring Appeal of a Classic Herreshoff One-Design." Wooden Boat #267, March/April 2019, p. 80-85. (1,510 kB)
  Document is copyrighted: Yes. Appreciation of the S-Class and a history of the fleets in Narragansett Bay, Quisset and Long Island and a summary of the leading S-boat restorers.
• van der Linde, Claas. [No title. Note about S-Class Weight Discrepancies.] March 11, 2022. (11 kB)
  Document is copyrighted: Yes, used with permission. Copyright holder: Claas van der Linde. Note about discrepancies in published and unpublished sources of displacement of S-class boats and why 6030lbs is currently assumed to be the correct weight.

• Pluckermin II and #1152s Fair American (MIT Museum-made index card)
• Nina ex-Pluckermin 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.

Name: Pluckermin II
Type: J & M S
Length: 20'6"
Owner: Woodward, William

Source: Herreshoff Manufacturing Company. "A Partial List of Herreshoff Clients." In: Herreshoff Manufacturing Company. Herreshoff Yachts. Bristol, Rhode Island, ca. 1931.

• Pluckermin 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.

Name: Pluckermin II
Type: 20' 6" J & M
Owner: William Woodward
Row No.: 532

Source: Herreshoff, L. Francis. "Partial List of Herreshoff-Built Boats." In: Herreshoff, L. Francis. Capt. Nat Herreshoff. The Wizard of Bristol. New York, 1953, p. 325-343.

Year: 1930c
E/P/S: S
No.: 1151
Name: Pluckermin II
OA: 27.5
LW: 20.5
B: 7' 2"
D: 4' 9"
Rig: J & M
K: y
Ballast: Lead
Amount: 4100.00
Notes Constr. Record: S Boat. Mahogony fin. Paid 7/15/30. Sailed by Mr. Woodward 7/15/30.
Notes Bray: 1118 Class. Renamed Nina 1943. S#81 (so annotated in O.A. field)
Last Name: Woodward
First Name: Wm.

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.

"Sail numbers 4?, 14, and 1." (Source: Upham, Kenneth B. History and Register of the S-Boat. No place, 1994, p. 97.)

"Sail area approximately 425 square feet, measured." (Source: Herreshoff Manufacturing Company. Yachts by Herreshoff. The Herreshoff Manufacturing Company: Designers and Builders of Sailing and Power Craft since 1861. Bristol, Rhode Island, 1937.)

"See note about about weight discrepancies in published and unpublished sources under 'Further Reading' heading." (Source: van der Linde, Claas. March 11, 2022.)

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