Description

Built well before catamarans were common in the American sailing circles, Amaryllis II was constructed for Chrysler executive K.T. Keller. Keller had been talked into the design by Nathanael G. Herreshoff’s son, A. Griswold Herreshoff, who was then working at Chrysler as an automotive engineer.

Amaryllis II was based on Nathanael G. Herreshoff’s original experiments with catamarans in the 1870s. Herreshoff had experimented extensively with the catamaran form in models and full-size boats, borrowing rigs from iceboats and inventing a ball joint to allow the twin hulls to move independently in a seaway. Herreshoff entered one of these, the Amaryllis I, in the New York Yacht Club’s Centennial Regatta in 1876 and won handily, only to be disqualified after protest because the design was too much a departure from the norm.

When Amaryllis II was built in 1933, Nathanael G. Herreshoff was mostly retired except for projects of particular interest. Reviving catamarans was one of these interests: as Herreshoff wrote to Charles H. Foster, “For the actual sailing, I enjoyed these craft more than any I ever owned.”

Amaryllis II survives today in the collection of the Herreshoff Marine Museum.