The Newport 29 was quite unlike the large, gaff-rigged speedsters such as the New York 50 launched just a few years before. Those older designs were a derivation of Captain Nathanael Herreshoff’s behemoth America’s Cup defenders like Reliance in 1903, the largest AC boat ever built. These boats were long in the overhang, wet, with very tall rigs serviced by professional crews, and not without danger.
Dolphin and Mischief were boats designed for an amateur owner. They were originally gaff– or gunter-rigged, a rig preferred by Herreshoff for shorthanded sailing. Their graceful concave bow sections reflected Capt. Nat’s trip to Bermuda, where he saw the Bermuda fitted dinghy in Hamilton Harbor. The new design, the Newport 29, was conceived for a production run of four boats, and intended for shorthanded daysailing and racing.
The Twins had identical specifications ordered by the two mothers of two teenage sons in the fall of 1913. Mischief was purchased by Mrs. E .B Auchincloss of Newport. Oliver G. Jennings of Connecticut bought Dolphin. The price fully fitted was $3,900. During their construction, both boats had to coexist in the same Burnside Avenue production line in Bristol with the America’s Cup defender of their time, Resolute, a metal monster six times their size. But when they were finished, they went in opposite directions, Dolphin west to Stonington, Mischief south to the Chesapeake.
4 boats were built between 1912 and 1926.
Dolphin(hull 727) and Mischief(728) and Paddy, later Teaser(737). Comet(999) was lost in the hurricane of 1938 in Stonington, CT.
More on Dolphin And Mischief: The Herreshoff Twins here.
