S-Class Gob and Uncas

[Steve]

I hate to keep this thread going so long lest this becomes a case of flogging a dead horse.  There is a lot of good research represented by this discussion, but there are a few discrepancies that maybe we can resolve collectively, resulting in a reliable account of the Hawaii fleet.

Here is a list of the boats and their provenance as I have interpreted the evidence:

S1 - HMCo Hull 1077
1928 -         C.C. von Hamm      LOKELANI   
                           Jinky Crozier      YACA
1934 - 1954   R.G. Watt                      NALU   
1954 – c.1970   Linus Pauling      NALU
c.1970 - 1990   Linus Pauling, Jr.                   NALU
1990 - 1990   Shepard Williams                   NALU
         
She was broken up in 1990.  Parts were removed for use in the restoration of MOKULELE.


S2 - HMCo Hull 1035, 1036, 1037, or 1076
1928 -         Allen Bottomley      MAILE
      Harry Uhler      DUTCHESS
      
Disposition Unknown


S3 - HMCo Hull 1035, 1036, 1037, or 1076
1928 -         George Canavarro   ILIMA
1935      U.S. Navy      ILIMA
      
Disposition Unknown
   

S4 - HMCo Hull 1035, 1036, 1037, or 1076
1928 -         Henry  Dillingham    HUAPALA
      
Disposition Unknown      


S5 - HMCo Hull 1035, 1036, 1037, or 1076
1928 –aft. 1934   R.W. Atkinson      KAMAOLIPUA
      Edgar Crumpacker                   SOLITAIRE
     – c.1957   Frank Rothwell
      
Disposition Unknown


S6 - USN Hull 2120
1931 – c.1990   U.S. Navy       MOKIANA

She was broken up by the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation unit of the U.S. Navy in the early 1990s.

S7 - HMCo Hull 1020   
1927 – 1930   Isaac Merriman      VANESSA
1931 – 1933   Everadus Bogardus             PANINI
1933 – 1934   Gordon Mendelssohn   PANINI
1935 – 1956   Earl Thacker      PANINI
1956 - 1956   Frederic C. Humphrey   PANINI

She was destroyed in October, 1956.  The vessel had been stolen after having gone through an extensive refit, and was wrecked on a reef the following morning.  The keel and ballast are still owned by Earl's great-grandson, Peter Thacker.



S8 - USN Hull 2121   
1931 -       U.S. Navy                      MOKULELE
      – 1974   Byron Hanlon      MOKULELE
1974 - 2004   Shepard Williams                   MOKULELE
2004 – 2011   Howard Sleath      MOKULELE
2011 - now   Charles Barclay      MOKULELE
      
She is still extant, located in Kewalo Basin Harbor.


Two questions I am struggling with are:

The 1928 PHYC yearbook shows that Bottomley owned MAILE, #2, and that #1, LOKELANI, was owned by a C.C. von Hamm.  The PHYC score sheet, date undetermined, indicates that #1 was then named YACA, owned by “Jinky” Crozier.  This conflicts with the discussion about Bottomley owning #1 as NALU until he was killed and then selling it to R.G. Watt, who kept it until 1954.  It would be useful to review a few more PHYC Yearbooks, but the commodore told me he thinks 1928 was the only year they published one (BTW the entire book will be up on their website in a week or two.)

I think we have agreed that #6 was MOKIANA. The Advertiser photo shows that she was owned in 1958 by Henley Dillingham.  It has also been stated that MOKIANA was broken up by the Navy in 1990.  I had assumed, until the appearance of the photo, that the Navy held on to MOKIANA the entire time.  Do we now think that the Navy built her, sold her into private hands, and then bought her back again sometime prior to the 90s?

[Gregg]

Adam:  I'm shocked.  The owner, Gregg Germain, was very proud of her.  Did you take this shot?  Was the boat still in Marblehead?  Only a few months ago the owner confirmed to me that he still owned her.

That is not my boat.

If you want to see ENTERPRISE as she is, go here:

http://home.comcast.net/~saville/SBOATrestore.htm

[Gregg]

GOB - summer of 2009.

Not only is that not my boat - ENTERPRISE - that isn't even an S-boat. The lead keel is all wrong.  Not only that, if you know anything about S-Boats you will know that the S-Boat garboard is curved in cross section and not flat like it is in this picture.

 And when I bought the boat, the bottom was blue not green. After I bought it I went with a red bottom paint which is still on the boat.

What this is a picture of is the Triangle that is BEHIND my boat at the yard.

Go here to see ENTERPRISE.


http://home.comcast.net/~saville/SBOATrestore.htm

[Gregg]

I took the picture.  Next to the pond in Marblehead.

What you took a picture of is a Triangle that is BEHIND ENTERPRISE. I have never removed the rudder, for example.

[Gregg]

Steve - are we sure Mr. Germain has the original hull plate?

I have never had the hull plate. The fellow I bought it from - Ralph Aldrich of Norwich Ct. didn't have it. 

[Gregg]

  This makes sense to me, but conflicts with the assertion by the owner of ENTERPRISE that his boat is #828.  I have reached out to him to see if he can explain the basis of his claim.  As I recall, he has the hull plate.  I'll certainly post his comments to this thread when (if) I hear from him.

Actually I didn't make the assertion - I was informed of the assertion back in 1994 by the folks who put together the 75th anniversary book: "A History and Register of the S Boats"

I never had the hull plate.

[Steve]

Thanks for the updates Gregg!  I feel much better now!  Welcome to the Registry!

[Gregg]

Hi everyone,

 Sorry it took me so long to reply. 

I've replied in detail to many of the posts in the thread but now I will sum up.

I bought my S-Boat from Ralph Aldrich in 1987.  At that time she was known as "Red Witch" and had red topsides, a white boot stripe and blue bottom.

I scraped off the red and blue paint and painted the bottom with red bottom paint. For a few sailing seasons I painted the topsides green but removed all of that and re-painted the topsides white.

When I bought her, much of the original wood had been replaced.  There were terrible plywood decks on both the house and main deck; there was a plywood webbing used for the forward bulkhead just ahead of the mast, and for the after bulkhead just behind the tiller.

During her rebuild I got rid of all that stuff and have replaced every rib. The ribs DID HAVE the wedges at the foot.  I have kept a few of the old ones. And I will put new ones in.

I have re-planked most of the boat and rebuilt the bulkheads to original specs.

The pictures someone posted above, purported to be my boat are really a Triangle that is parked behind my boat. Anyone who knows the least bit about S-boats can see that right off if you look at the lead keel shape and the garboards - S-Boat garboards are curved in cross section and not, flat.

I will take a picture of both boats today and send it along so you can see how the poster made a mistake.

As to whether or not she is GOB - I didn't assert it; I took the word of the people who compiled the Registry in 1994. The only concrete evidence I can give is the sales receipt I have from buying the boat "Red Witch", and the frame wedges.  I assumed that the Registry people worked backwards from my purchase to trace her back to Gob but you will have to ask them how they arrived at their conclusion.

I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Gregg

[Steve]

Thanks for all of this, Gregg.  I think the conclusion that we are coming to is that ENTERPRISE is not #828 (that number most likely belongs to AQUILA.)  We don't know the hull number of ENTERPRISE, but believe her to be the boat that first appeared in the records in 1922 as UNCAS.  UNCAS was owned in 1922 by a Richard Crane of Marblehead.  We don't believe he was the first owner, but don't know from whom he got her.  By virtue of your observation of the wedges at the frame ends, we can assume ENTERPRISE is one of the earliest boats, possibly one of the first 10 built in 1920.

[Steve]

Magic:  Can you expand on the observation regarding the first ten boats having a wedge between the frame ends and garboard?  How certain are we that only the first ten were so constructed?  There seems to be a conflict ... if the only 2 unaccounted boats of the first 10 had records into the 1940s, and ENTERPRISE has the wedges, wouldn't we then conclude that HMCo used this construction technique for awhile longer than just the first ten?  And wouldn't that then bring into question the assignment of 828 to AQUILA?

[Gregg]

Magic:  Can you expand on the observation regarding the first ten boats having a wedge between the frame ends and garboard?  How certain are we that only the first ten were so constructed?  There seems to be a conflict ... if the only 2 unaccounted boats of the first 10 had records into the 1940s, and ENTERPRISE has the wedges, wouldn't we then conclude that HMCo used this construction technique for awhile longer than just the first ten?  And wouldn't that then bring into question the assignment of 828 to AQUILA?

What evidence is there other than this quoted source above:

(Source: Anon. "Yachts and Yachtsmen." Boston Globe, June 18, 1922, p. 55.)

??

Magic says:

"In 1921 both Gob and Uncas were in the Marblehead fleet, Gob with race records and Uncas from the BG articles cited earlier, so they could not be the same boat"

I'm not sure I'd place my bet on a 1922 BG article by an anonymous source.

The Registry claims that Walworth Pierce is *listed* as the owner at the CYC and EYC.  Are there receipts that show this? Is this listing correct? How do we know?

I do recall that I had a phone conversation with a Ms. Comito many years ago who sailed my boat and who knows it was sold from her family to Mr. Aldrich (then to me).

Another construction detail to keep in mind (according to Zachorne) is that the sheerstrakes were planed flush with the deck (as mine was).

Zachorne reports that the first S-boat built in 1919 was down by the stern a little. Mine certainly is when she sits on the water. Anecdotal.

The break of the lead keel on mine is where Zachorne claims the early boats had it - 8.5" aft of frame 18.

Cabin top had/has 11 deck beams as on the older boats.

Someone earlier in this threat talked about lining off marks and supposed they were used to build molds. I don't think this is the case.  The first boat (whichever it was) was built on a mold.

Before I would make any decision about the provenance of ENTERPRISE (and I have made none) I would *First* check with the people who built the Registry (Upham Hanson, Haskins, Barker and Zachorne) and ask them how they arrived at their conclusion.  They put a lot of research into this.

I can trace her back only to the Comito's.

Gregg

[Gregg]

Thanks for all of this, Gregg.  I think the conclusion that we are coming to is that ENTERPRISE is not #828 (that number most likely belongs to AQUILA.) 

I'm not really sure how you come to this conclusion.

I respectfully suggest that you do not change the Registry based upon a few things people post in a web page.  No disrespect meant to the posters but how serious was their research? How thorough?

Then someone posts something else, and the Registry gets changed again. And then again and again and there's no traceback other than the web page. Soon no one will know if ANY of it is true. Changes should only occur when there has been serious work done on the new information - at least as thorough as the work done to create the Registry in the first place.

I respectfully suggest you go to the people who put the time and effort into building the Registry and ask them questions:

In the tracing of ENTERPRISE backwards, what hard proof did they have?  What evidence did they have? And by proof I do not mean some anonymous entry in the Boston Globe, or hearsay. I mean receipts, bills of sale, municipal documents, notarized documents, taxes paid etc. This is proof:



And right there you can see that Mr. Aldrich did not know the year the boat was built nor it's hull number. That's important information.

If there's a document that shows that HMCo sold hull #828 to Nathaniel Ayer then that is proof. 

But even if they did, that doesn't tell you what happened to the boat after that.

Proof like these documents most likely won't exist for every step in the traceback. But one piece of paper connects two owners. Some of the dots will be connected.

The BG article is *NOT* proof nor even evidence. It's a lead, and one seriously worth following up.  Where did "Anon" of the article get their info? Were the creators of the Registry aware of the BG article? If so, what did they think about it? Why did they not accept it? What counter evidence do they have?  If they rejected it, did they have good reasons to do so?

If they weren't aware of it, that means something, too.

What suppositions and assumptions where they forced to make in the steps of the traceback? 

If I was not aware of the answers to those questions I'd be extremely hesitant to alter their work.

Now, would I love it if my boat was truly Gob? Sure.  Who wouldn't.

But I'd much rather know the true provenance of the boat. That way I can enjoy her history.  But in trying to trace things like this there are bound to be discrepancies, conflicting bits of hearsay, assumptions and supposition. 
And I would not make a change based upon some web page entries.

Just my opinion.

[Steve]

Gregg:  I'm sorry this place doesn't float your boat.  Much of what you see here is the process of people in diverse locations sharing discrete pieces of data, and trying to collaborate on an accurate interpretation of that data.  Watching the process occur is not alway pretty.  But you can rest assured that most of the participants here are serious

One of the challenges we face is documenting the state of the thinking in the face of imperfect but evolving information.  I have been thinking about assigning a confidence factor to each hull number assignment.  On a scale of 1 - 5, possession of the hull plate would be required for a 1.  Isolated, circumstantial evidence would rate a 5, with gradations in between.

What do folks think about the concept of a "confidence factor"?  Anybody want to take a swing at it?

[HerreshoffHistory]

Gregg wrote:
>No disrespect meant to the posters but how serious was their research? How thorough?

Rest assured, quite thorough! There is a pretty high level of expertise on this forum...

>And by proof I do not mean some anonymous entry in the Boston Globe, or hearsay.

The article may have been anonymous, but you can be almost certain that it was written by Leonard M. Fowle, Sr., then yachting editor of the Globe, or by his son Leonard M. Fowle, Jr. who in the summer of 1922 had been summertime assistant to his father. Between the two of them, the yachting department of the Boston Globe was under Leonard M. Fowle leadership from 1915 to 1967! And the Fowles were a force to be reckoned with.

By the way, a Bill of Sale may be based on wrong information, too. This is not unusual, not at all.

Wonderful discussion, this, and I appreciate the input of every one!

[Adam]

I’m finding this a most enjoyable thread – not only because of the S-class history (especially the Hawaii connection – and the construction facts) – but the bit of controversy that it has brought up.

As HH stated there are many very knowledgeable members of this site – I of course not being one of them, being the most “armchair” aficionado of them all. However, I think Mr. Germain does bring up a good point with regards to what is acceptable fact and does need further discussion. Provenance is akin to Genealogy - another “hobby” of mine – and how that is done in a methodical, repeatable, ‘scientific’ way has room for thought. I know (abet limited at best) that the great Genealogist Donald Jacobus, would never for example accept oral tradition – or any Non - “official” documentation – no matter how well accepted, as fact. He worked in absolutes so that even when there are discrepancies –say between a state census and a church baptismal record - it could be documented as such. Because of this he has been accused of being nothing more than a “compiler” rather than a researcher, but he certainly avoided to a high degree the pitfalls of documenting as fact wrong data.

Of course boats are in some ways far more difficult to document. There are few “official” records – State registrations, CG Documentation, Lloyds, YC Yearbooks, Newspaper articles, or bills of sale, etc. – all of which can (and have been) found to contain errors – and rarely are the documents linear or overlapping so that they can collaborate one another. We tend to have snapshots in time with large amounts of provenance in between as unknown. Unfortunately “hearsay” and conjecture is in many cases all that exists.

It is because of this that I find Forums such as this to be an important tool in vetting out what is acceptable as fact or not. Take this thread – we had data that is at odds – both have compelling sources – one called into question the validity of anonymous data, and was countered. Most enjoyable. Will we know for sure? – Doubtful at best. But I think we can begin to weigh the facts we do have and hopefully begin to put a picture together of what is most likely (in this case narrowing down what hull number to a range).

What fun. Keep it going…