We could really use some articles for duckworks magazine right now. Thanks to those who sent some articles but some more would be wonderful please. Mike John ed.
B. B. Crowninshield
ONE of the younger school of designers who has now come prominently into public notice through his having received the order for the ninety-footer which is to represent Boston in the trial races next season is Mr. B. B. Crowninshield, whose work is already well known to our readers, and to whom a brief sketch of his career will be of interest.
Mr. Crowninshield comes naturally by his love for the water, as he is a direct descendant of the old family of Crowninshields, who were so closely identified with the Salem and East India trade when Salem was the rich shipping port of Massachusetts, and his ancestry, which dates far back, has always been closely connected with the merchant marine, and to some extent with the U. S. Navy. He was born in New York in 1867, and in the following year his parents returned to Boston. In Boston he first attended the Prince School, and at the age of twelve was sent to the St. Paul School at Concord, N. H., where he remained for six years.
In 1885 he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and studied there one year, then entered Harvard. At Cambridge he took elective studies in the Lawrence Scientific School and graduated in the class of 1890. While in college he went into athletics to a certain extent, and pulled an oar in the 'Varsity crew.
In 1874 his parents moved to Marblehead, and it was there that Mr. Crowninshield got his first experience in boat sailing with a dory in which he and his boy companions knocked around and went fishing. From the dory he graduated to the little catboat Tatty, in which he and and his brother sailed many races, and after Tatty came another cat, Delphine. In 1879 his father bought the sloop Elfie Mary, and with the boys cruised in her for several seasons. Their next appearance in racing was with the twenty-three-foot cutter Witch, which they had built in 1884. In 1889 Mr. Crowninshield raced the twenty-one-footer Kathleen, owned by Mr. R. S. Peabody, and also sailed several races in the Gardner thirty-footer Kathleen. In 1888 his father bought the forty-footer Tomahawk, and they cruised in her a number of seasons. After his graduation from college he entered business and went West for a few years, which prevented his doing any yachting, but after a while his love for the water became so strong that he returned to Boston, and in a short time associated himself with John R. Purdon in the business of yacht designing and brokerage. In 1897, after one year with Mr. Prudon, Mr. Crowninshield opened an office for himself in Boston. His principal boat that year was the first Mongoose, a twenty-one-foot knockabout, which he designed for Mr. A. D. Irving, of New York. Although Mongoose failed to get the championship, owing to poor form in her early races and a late entry into the racing, she was at the end of the season practically admitted to be the best boat, and had no difficulty in beating the three Herreshoff boats built for the class that year. The next year he brought out a second Mongoose, and on account of his success the preceding season, had many orders for knockabouts and small cruisers. His racing this season was interrupted by a trip South in search of his brother, who had gone to Cuba with the Rough Riders, and contracted fever, and was for along time unaccounted for. Mr. Crowinshield has always taken a great deal of interest in the knockabout and raceabout classes, and has devoted a great amount of study to developing the type, and it can be justly said that he has done more than any other designer to make the knockabout the popular boat which it is to-day.
In 1899 he designed and built the raceabout Pirate, which he and his brother raced with great success, winning most of the races sailed that season, and capturing the championships of the Massachusetts Yacht Racing Association and the Corinthian Club of Marblehead. This season his business continued to grow, and many boats of all classes, from a twenty-foot skimming dish to a seventy-foot cruising schooner, came from his board.
Last season his two most prominent racing boats were Jolly Roger and Flirt. Flirt easily won the championship of the twenty-five-foot class in the Y. R. A. of Massachusetts, and Jolly Roger, after proving herself the champion raceabout in Eastern waters, sought new fields to conquer by a trip around the cape to Buzzard's Bay, where she met two Herresshoff flyers and divided honors, and then came down the Sound for a series of races with the Long Island Sound Association boats. Here she defeated Scamp, winner of the championship, and also Raider, but, unfortunately, her race with Sis, the Herreshoff production, was spoiled through lack of wind. While most of his boats have been in the smaller classes, he has designed several larger vessels that have been successful. Among these are the fishing schooner Rob Roy, one of the fastest of the Gloucester fleet; a seventy-foot cruising schooner of shoal draught for Southern waters; the forty-three-foot racing sloop Hebe, and any number of cruising sloops, schooners and yawls of from thirty to fifty feet water line. Mr. Crowninshield is thoroughly practical in everything connected with the build and rig of boats, and never allows his theory to get the better of his sound, practical knowledge. He is also a splendid boat sailer and helmsman, and especially clever at tuning up a boat, and with his brother Frank, who is always with him in fair weather or foul, and is an an equally good man in a boat, makes a combination of racing men that is a hard one to beat.
Personally, Mr. Crowninshield is a quiet and unassuming man, who treats everyone with respect and cordiality, and there is hardly a yachtsmen in the country who does not wish success to his latest venture, the Lawson cup defender.
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