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Despite the probable suspicions to the contrary of many bluejackets and officers over the years, the U. S. Navy has tried hard to avoid the situation of "Liberty hut No Boats.” Here is a brief survey °f the products of those efforts, the boats themselves used to transport men and gear to and from naval vessels. If (he old sailor’s adage be true that you can tell a ship by her boats, then perhaps 11 is also the case that you can tell something about a navy by its boats.
Some of the small craft to be described are "traditional,” having been ^signed decades ago and built of wood; others are "modern,” having been designed within the last few years and built of fiberglass as well as wood. The drawings of these ships’ boats and their specifications are taken from the publication, Boats of the United. States Navy, NAVSHIPS 250-452, which also contains the same kind of data on many additional Navy small craft, such as landing boats, aircraft rescue and plane servicing boats, hydrographic and sound survey boats, torpedo retrievers, and patrol boats. We will cover ships’ boats only here; Captain Richards T. Miller, U. S. Navy, wrote an excellent article, Fighting Boats of the United States,” for a previous issue, Naval Review 1968, and he also published a fine article coveting these same small vessels in the February 1968 issue of Yachting magazine.
We will describe eight basic types of ships’ boats and, within these types, forty-three individual designs. The types ate the: wherry; punt; motor whaleboat; motor launch; utility boat; motorboat; personnel boat; and dinghy. In addition,
we will suggest an interesting design for a training and recreational boat that could well be carried in U. S. naval vessels.
The Wherry
There are six wherry designs, three traditional clinker-built wood pulling boats with lengths of 12 feet, 14 feet, and 16 feet; and three fiberglass wherries, a 12-foot and a 16-foot pulling boat, and a 16-foot outboard motor boat. These are nice boats, and it is perhaps unfortunate that only a few of the 12- and 16-foot fiberglass wherries are still in use.
The design of the wooden wherries represents a nice compromise between a fine-lined, light-weight, fast rowing craft, such as a Whitehall boat, and a relatively heavy, high-sided craft that would be much harder to move under oars, such as a New Jersey Seabright skiff. The Navy wherry is a substantial boat that will pull with reasonable ease, is quite seaworthy for her size, and has good carrying capacity. She’s a good, all-around rowing craft.
NAVSHIPS 250-452 does overstate the carrying capacity of these wooden wherries, however, in our opinion. The publication says the 12-footer will carry six men, the 14-footer, eight, and the 16- footer, ten. Common sense small boat seamanship would indicate that these boats would be overloaded at those capacities, even in calm water, to say nothing of in a little harbor chop. For normal use under average conditions, three, four, and five men would be
plenty to put into the 12, 14, and 16- foot wherries respectively.
These would be fine boats in which to learn to row. The oars for them should be quite long, say seven feet for the 12-footer, eight for the 14-footer, and nine feet for the 16-footer. All three could certainly be rowed double-banked. The oarlocks should be sturdy and with fairly high horns. One type of oarlock to avoid like the plague is the North River type, which has a pin through oarlock and oar so that the oar cannot be feathered. These are an exercise in high frustration.
These wherries could all be rigged for sailing on a broad reach or running without great expense. Getting them to sail to windward would be more complicated, requiring a centerboard or lee- boards. The best rig to use in a craft of this type would probably be the sprit rig, which was employed in many American small working craft of this general type. A number of sprit rigs of the type that would be suitable for these wherries are described in some detail in the book, American Small Sailing Craft, by Howard I. Chapelle. Under sail, the wherry could be steered with a rudder mounted on the transom, or, more simply, with an oar working in an oarlock mounted on the top edge of the transom. The latter could also be used for sculling, an interesting and highly useful seamanlike exercise.
The above comments also apply to the 12-foot and 16-foot rowing wherries made of fiberglass. The caution regarding loading is the same.
The fiberglass boats have an advantage over the wooden ones in terms of
case of maintenance, but the compensating drawback is a certain loss in flexibility. For example, the installation of a sailing rig in the plastic boats would be more complex and costly because of the relative difficulty of attaching the necessary fittings to fiberglass as opposed to wood.
A further advantage of the fiberglass wherry is that she would be impervious to the alternate wetting and drying out that has to be endured by any ship’s boat. These fiberglass wherries can stand a fair bit of rough treatment without developing leaks, and the same cannot be said of the wooden boats.
The 16-foot fiberglass outboard wherry is also a good compromise design; she has a flat enough floor to have a good turn of speed under power, yet she is rounded enough at the bilge, especially forward, so that she should not pound much and would have a reasonably easy motion in harbor waves. In much of a chop she would have to be slowed down considerably to avoid throwing a lot of spray aboard.
The maximum allowable horsepower for an outboard for this craft given in NAVSHIPS 250-452, 35 horsepower,
strikes us as way too high. Such a motor would drive this craft at about 20 knots, and her hull is hardly suitable for such a speed. One would seldom need or want more than 10 horsepower in this craft. After all, she’s no Boston Whaler.
Again, the stated capacity of ten men is far too high.
The Punt
There used to be in the Navy three wooden punts, a 10-footer, 12-footer, and 14-footer. There was also a 14-foot fiberglass punt. These punts have been replaced by a 14-foot aluminum punt of similar design, but of lighter, and probably stronger, construction.
Somehow, the square-ended punt, a common working craft in many parts of the world, has gotten a bad name fof itself. True, it’s not a very fancy craft and there are certainly prettier boats around, but the punt has some distinct practical advantages. And the design of these Navy punts takes full advantage of the type.
Because of its flat bottom carried
right out to the ends of the boat, the punt has great stability, as small craft go. Designed to work alongside a larger vessel, its low freeboard lets its crew easily reach to the water’s edge or underwater if necessary and it can be moved and held in position relatively easily because of its small resistance to both wind and current.
It might be a useful exercise for the captain of every naval vessel periodically to embark with his first lieutenant in a punt and circle his ship at close range. Such a circumnavigation under oars could provide a good tour of inspection of vital parts of the vessel otherwise seldom seen.
The Motor Whaleboat
There are five similar 26-foot motor whaleboats, the Mark II, Mark V, Mark VII, Mark IX, and Mark X. The first of these is built of wood, and the others are of fiberglass reinforced plastic. The earlier models are being replaced by the Mark X.
Some Thoughts on Ships’ Boats in the Navy 235
These whaleboats might better be called lifeboats, for that is their primary function, and they more closely resemble the traditional ship’s lifeboat than the much finer lined rowing and sailing craft used in the days of sail as boats from which to harpoon and lance leviathans. Be that as it may, the 26-foot motor whaleboat is a favorite among ships’ boats, and well she might be. Well-behaved, seaworthy, and easy to handle, she can be put to a great variety of uses. In fact many motor whaleboats that have been retired out of the Navy may be seen in wide varieties of civilian garb (some have tall masts and boilerplate keels for sailing, while others have sprouted so much deckhouse as to be virtually floating condominiums) in harbors around the world. Actually, if converted in some less extreme way, the Navy motor whaleboat can make an admirable civilian workboat or pleasure craft.
One design change that makes good sense in the later modifications of the whaleboat is moving the steering station forward, close to the engine. The coxswain of any power boat should be able ro control his engine directly. This modification also eliminates the some-
what unseamanlike practice encountered in many of the older whaleboats in which a canopy was placed over the aftet cockpit, thus necessitating a short tiller, and, in turn, forcing the coxswain to stand up on the after deck to steer. The boats so rigged had liferails aft, to be sure, but it’s really safer to put the coxswain well into the boat.
A less sensible design change in the fiberglass whaleboats is the removal of the skeg. It is true that this change allows the boat to turn on her heel mote quickly, but this unnecessary feature is achieved at the expense of removing strength for the rudder post and protection for the propeller.
Because these boats make only seven knots wide open, the usual practice is to run them that way all the time. A more seamanlike idea is to ease the throttle back considerably until the boat is making something like six knots, and it is surprising how much the power can be reduced without losing more than a knot of speed. Suddenly the whaleboat is converted from a straining, vibrating, wave-making bull to an easy-moving quiet, docile doe. And if the run in to the fleet landing is, say, two miles, that extra knot will get you less than an extra three minutes of liberty.
The Motor Launch
The traditional wooden Navy motof launch came in five sizes: the 26-footet. 30-footer, 36-footer, 40-footer, and 50- footer. The last of them has now gone out of service, but for years these craft were the workhorses of the Fleet, carrying men back and forth to their vessels with great reliability, if not comfort, and performing well in any reasonable weather unless overloaded. And again, the versatility and all-around usefulness of the motor launch design is attested to by the large number of conversions of surplus motor launches to various civilian uses.
These launches were very heavily built and would stand some real abuse. Occasionally they got it; who among us can’t recall at least one sickening crunch shortly after the engineer missed the coxswain’s bell signal? The coxswain should have had his own clutch and throttle, of course, as is the case in th£
Some Thoughts on Ships’ Boats in the Navy 237
more modern designs of craft of this general type. There is no objection here to the coxswain standing up on the after deck to handle his vessel; such a position gave him excellent visibility, and in the launches, with their broad transoms, he had plenty of space, by comparison with the double-ended stern of the whaleboat, which gave him a rather narrow perch. Moreover, the motion of the launch in rough water was rather slow and steady, whereas that of the corky whaleboat could be quick and sharp.
One wonders why the adm; table underwater stern profile of the 36-footer hasn’t used on the other versions. The deadwood enclosing the propeller shaft and the strut supporting the lower end °f the rudder post give a strength and protection to those vulnerable parts that *ould be sorely missed in the other launches were they inadvertently to take 'he bottom aft.
Utility Boat________________
The utility boats are the modern counterparts of the motor launches. There are six sizes, the 18-footer, the ^-footer, the 26-footer, the 33-footer, ^0-footer, and 50-footer. The 18- and ^-footers are built of fiberglass only, while the last four sizes have both wood a"d fiberglass versions. The 22- and 26- T°ot sizes are being phased out, as are aH the wooden boats. The 18-footer is a new, strengthened version similar to 'he Boston Whaler.
It is interesting and instructive to compare the old motor launch against new utility boat. The difference
The many thwarts running across 'hese launches may look like an archaic carry-over from the days of big rowing 'utters, but their arrangement served a practical purpose not to be seen in the newer personnel boats. When the launch was heading into wind and sea, 'hat was when she would throw spray °n the liberty party, and the men sitting °n the thwarts would have their backs '° it. Under calmer conditions, they could face forward and see where they’re going. Of course the spray could be, and often was, kept out of the boat by the Use of canvas coverings stretched over a pipe framework.
most immediately apparent to a sailor running the two boats would be that the utility boat is faster. Comparing the 40-footers, for example, the utility boat will make 11 knots, while the motor launch will only do 8.
This increase in speed has been gained by giving the utility boat a wider, flatter hull than that of the motor launch and by giving her a bigger engine. Again comparing the 40-footers, the utility boat is ten inches wider, she has a flatter floor, and her engine is rated at 1$ horsepower, whereas that of the motor launch is but 60 horsepower.
It is interesting, too, to see what the three knots’ additional speed has cost in terms of fuel consumption and hence, range. The utility boat carries 120 gallons of fuel to last her 110 miles at full power, while the motor launch needs but 80 gallons to run 150 miles at full power.
With these design changes the Navy has kept up with the times, for, of course, exactly the same kinds of changes have occurred in modern civilian powerboats designed for both work and pleasure.
It is perhaps a question worth asking, however, whether these design trends represent progress. Which craft is mote cost-effective, the utility boat, using 1 165-horse diesel and 120 gallons of fuel to run 110 miles at 11 knots, or the motor launch, using a 60-horse diesel and 80 gallons of fuel to run 150 miles at 8 knots? The question cannot be answered merely by simple arithmetic- One must know the value of the extra speed. How will the time saved in transit be used by crew and passengers? How important to the ship served is the slightly more timely delivery of her boat’s cargo? What percentage of the time will the 11-knot boat be able to run at 11 knots, and how much will she be slowed to 8 knots or less by wave conditions? These same questions would also be pertinent to the 8-knot boat- Our seat-of-the-pants guess is that a truly objective analysis of this question would conclude that the slower and more economical ship’s boat would givC the better service for the resources expended. Of course the smaller engine may no longer be stocked by the Navy- The 26-foot wooden utility boat ha> a particularly able and seakindly look to
her hull design, especially when compared against her fiberglass counterpart in the same size. Because of the different shape of the bow of the wooden boat, she would certainly be much drier when punching into a head sea than would her plastic opposite number. The spray canopy on the latter boat should be mighty useful.
The Motorboat
The 35-foot and 40-foot motorboats were for years the captains’ gigs and admirals’ barges of the Navy. Whether painted with gray topsides with the name of the ship whose captain was carried in gleaming chrome letters on the bow, or painted with black sides with a flag officer’s silvery stars on the bow, these boats, with their distinctive white canopies with the round portholes, their flags snapping, their coxswain, bow hook and stern hook stiffly erect at their stations, certainly seemed the most dashing ships’ boats in the Fleet. When dressed up with turksheads and other ornamental knots and fringes crated with whiteline by an imaginative boatswain’s mate, these little vessels were really something special. It’s a bit sad that none of the 40-footers and only a handful of the 35-footers are still in service.
Some Thoughts on Ships' Boats in the Navy 239
The motorboats are well designed, being very easily driven at moderate speeds with moderate power, thanks to their long, narrow hulls. They are also reasonably dry for their size. Their one fault might be that they are a bit tender and roll rather easily. A bit more hardness in the bilges would have stabilized the roll somewhat.
The Personnel Boat
The personnel boats bring to ships’ boats the fast, planing hull. The inventory consists of a fiberglass 26-footer that is the fastest of the group at 21 knots; five 28-footers, a plywood, V-bot- tom version, a fiberglass-covered aluminum or wood framed round-bottomed version, and another plywood, V-bot- tomed version with three different deckhouse arrangements; a 33-footer built of fiberglass; and four 40-footers, two plywood, V-bottomed boats with slightly
different after deckhouses, and two fiberglass, round-bottomed boats, one of which has twin engines. The design5 that have survived as fittest are the 26- footer, the 33-footer, and the 40-footer, Mark IV, the single-engine fiberglass boat.
The personnel boats are to the motorboats as the utility boats are to the motor launches, in that the personnel boats bring modern powerboat design to the same tasks given the motor- boats, just as the utility boats do for the motor launches. Again, the same questions about the value, usefulness, and cost of additional speed may be asked. And here it must be remembered that it is not unusual for sea conditions to force a boat with a planing capability to slow down below her minimum planing speed. At such slower speeds, these planing personnel boats become wet and uncomfortable compared to boats designed for speeds of 10 knots or less.
One wonders about the wisdom of the design of Navy personnel boats following the design styles of civilian pleasure craft of comparable size. The civilian boat designer and manufacturer is less fortunate than his Navy counterpart; the civilian has to worry about style trends as they may influence sale- ability, and he may end up with a boat that is less practical and seaworthy than he would like it to be. The Navy need not follow these style changes, of course, since it only has to be concerned with practical, seaworthy boats.
The coxswains of all these personnel boats should certainly have in mind the large square-footages of window area carried by their craft. These big windows, seen so often in pleasure boats because that is what the market appea15 to demand, seem to be an unnecessary hazard for naval craft.
of
is very small compared to the chance
The twin-engine 40-foot personnel boat had the added engine to bring hef horsepower up to 500 in order to obtain her desired speed of 18 knots. A highly valuable by-product was the considerable increase in reliability of the propulsion system gained by the addition of the second engine. The chance of two engines breaking down on the same run
one engine breaking down on a given run. It may well be that instead °‘
.'./ [/(I >
Ujfa Fox 17-footer, "an admirable design for a ship’s boat for training and Creation in today’s Navy.” The area of the mainsail is 120 square feet, that of the M 40 square feet.
spending considerable money to achieve 'ncreased speed in Navy ships’ boats, some additional money should be spent t0 increase reliability greatly by instal- ^*ng two relatively small engines in a k°at instead of one medium-sized or *arge engine.
The Dinghy
The dinghy is a 9-foot fiberglass boat Aat may be rowed or sailed. When r°wed single-handed, the oarsman "'ould sit amidships; with two men a^oard, the oarsman would sit forward lr>d the passenger would be in the stern.
The rig is a sliding gunter rig, which achieves a rather tall, efficient sail, yet ^as a mast short enough to stow easily inside the boat.
One of the purposes of this dinghy ls recreation, and one might add the non-mutually-exclusive purpose of shiphandling training. The man who can handle a small boat like this one under °ats and sail has automatically had to h'arn some sound, basic lessons about (he stability and turning characteristics (T a vessel, and he experiences more Samples of pace and distance in an
afternoon than does a destroyer captain in a month.
It has always been a rare naval officer who could handle small boats really well. The cause is nothing but lack of experience, of course. We recall being shocked on one occasion seeing a normally ramrod-straight four-striper bending to the sculling oar of his dory. Such scenes are fortunately becoming a bit less rare in today’s Navy thanks to the tremendous growth in numbers of small pleasure craft in the United States. Probably a larger percentage than ever before of young officers entering the Navy nowadays have had at least some experience with small craft. Dinghies such as this one aboard ship would encourage previously landlocked officers to learn some boating (and thus shiphandling) skills and would foster the continuation of such learning by officers already exposed to small boats. Nor would any of this activity have a harmful effect on morale.
One might, in fact, take this idea of carrying small craft for training and recreation a bit further. About 35 years ago, the late Uffa Fox, the noted English naval architect who designed droppable lifeboats for the RAF during World War
II, designed a 17-foot dinghy aimed at sail training for the British merchant service. The accompanying plans are Mr. Fox’ drawings of this craft. She would probably weigh about 1,200 pounds. The boat would carry three to four men, could be rowed doublebanked in a calm or light air, and would provide safe but quite fast sailing under most harbor conditions. When reefed down and with the weight of a crew of three or four aboard, she should stand up to a strong breeze in protected water without much problem. In case of an error of judgment with regard to stability, she has ample air tanks to float herself and her crew and enable them to drop the sail, right the boat, bail her out, and proceed. Such craft could provide their crews with plenty of valuable experience on the water, to say nothing of the fun involved in exploring new harbors or informally racing ship’s boat against ship’s boat. In our opinion, this would be an admirable design for a ship’s boat for training and recreation in today’s Navy.