1^4 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Atia. 1896 
EL HEIRIE. 
Through the kindness of her designer, owner and skipper^ 
Mr. Clinton H. Crane, we are enabled to present to our read- 
ers one of the notable yachts of the year, a craft that in spite 
of her exceptionally small size is worth every consideration 
from practical yachtsmen as the embodiment in practical 
and usefal shape of certain new principles. The history of 
El Heirie's success in the Seawanhaka trial races over other 
yachts of both normal and extreme form, as well as her sub-- 
sequent defeat by a craft of similar form to herself, but of 
greater power, is too new to need to be recounted here ; it 
has all appeared in our pages within the past two months, 
and we need only concern ourselves with the yacht herself. 
El Heirie was designed by Mr. Crane expressly for the Sea- 
wanhaka 0. Y. C. international races, the design being com- 
pleted in the winter and placed in the hands of the Lawley 
& Son Co., of South Boston. It his selection of the very pe- 
culiar form shown in the design Mr. Crane was influenced 
by the various reports published last season of the phenom- 
enal speed of the 15-footer Question. Instead, however, of 
resting content with the mere copying of the external features 
of this odd craft, Mr. Crane has evidently gone much fur- 
ther; he has studied thoroughly the underlying principles of 
the scow type, as embodied in Question, and has applied 
them in a way of his own to produce a much faster craft. 
The leading dimensions of El Heirie are as follows; the 
original design was made on a basis of 14ft. 6in. l.w.l., and 
the yacht as officially measured was 14t't. Sin. ; for the sake 
of comparison with other designs in the same class, the de- 
sign has been redrawn on a basis of 15ft. l.w.l., or about Jin. 
greater draft than appropriate to her measured length. The 
displacement is consequently a little greater than tnat of the 
yacht in racing trim. 
Length over all 23ft. 
l.w.l 15ft. 
Overhang, bow 4ft. 9in. 
stern 3ft. Sin. 
Beam, extreme 5ft. 6in. 
l.w.l 5ft. 
Draft, hull 5iin. 
with board 5ft. 
Freeboard 8f in. 
Displacement. ., 9871bs. 
Sail area 240sq. ft. 
A.t first sight the relationship of El Heirie to the sco iv type 
is not closely apparent; the form is rounded throughout, with 
no approach to a flat side or angular bilge. The sheer is per- 
fectly straight, but this in itself is not an essential feature of 
the design. A look at the waterlines, especially forward, 
will show, however, the radical difference between her'and 
such a craft, for instance, as Ethelwynn. On the same 
length of waterline, 15ft. , Ethelwynn has a length on the 
load waterline plane along the middle buttock line of but 10ft. ; 
El Heirie has at the same point a length of 13ft. 5in. 
In the normal type of vessel, Ethelwynn, Gloriana, Volun- 
teer, Minerva, America, all more or less of the Y type of 
section, the load waterline as measured at rest in smooth 
water represents a great length for the size of the yacht; 
this is so even in the modern Herreshoff type with an exces- 
sive area of load water plane. When one of these vessels is 
heeled to the average sailing angle, the waterline actually 
shortens forward, though gaining something aft by the long 
full counter. The middle waterline, the distance measiired 
in practically all measurement rules, is very long in compari- 
son with the area of load waterline plane, and also with the 
longitudinal element of that plane at the quarter beam of the 
vessel or along the middle buttock line. 
In El Heirie, and to a still greater extent in Glencairn, the 
measured waterline is reduced to a minimum as compared 
with the size of the yacht and the area of the l.w.l. plane by 
the cutting away of the rib or V represented by the stem and 
keel of an ordinary vessel, and the adoption of the flat scow 
bottom carried right up to the stemhead. That such a form 
necessitates a waterline that is but an ellipse, with other 
lines that no designer would accept as capable of high speed, 
is a fact that must be discussed later; the main point is that 
this peculiar variation of the scow form permits such a suc- 
cessful evasion of waterline length as has never been 
achieved before. 
This idea of cheating the waterline measurement has 
always been most alluring to the racing yachtsman and 
over-keen designer, and an amount of work has been wasted 
on it that would have produced excellent results if applied 
in more reasonable channels of investigation. All sorts of 
devices have been tried, from the crude and clumsy ones of 
sawing square notches in the stem and counter up to others 
that, while less effectual, at least show some little ingenuity. 
A great deal of utter nonsense was written when Gloriana 
first appeared over the way in which her designer had 
chtated the waterline measurement by providing her with 
long ends far out of water; but it is to-day generally recog- 
nized that the evasion of length possible on a yacht of this 
kind, more or less of the V type, is very small indeed. In 
the same line of so-called improvement are the recent un- 
successful attempts to build one hull on top of another, the 
one to fool the measurer, the other to carry sail and develop 
speed. 
In all yachts of the normal type the designer works on the 
assumption that the hull is to be sailed as nearly upright as 
possible, that the true l.w.l. plane of the yacht when under 
way in a race shall coincide as closely as possible with the 
l.w.l. plane of the design. In the scow type, including El 
Heirie and Glencairn, a very different principle is involved. 
It is never expected or desired that the yacht when under 
sail shall have the same lines indicated by a model, but the 
designer starts out in a very different manner. While the 
design is made, as a matter of conventionality and conveni- 
ence, in the ordinary upright position, the designer assumes 
from the start that the yacht is to do her best work to wind- 
ward and reaching in a very different position, heeled 
intentionally to a good angle, and with an immersed form 
that bears no relation whatever to the form when at anchor. 
In the case of El Heirie the effective sailing angle is prob- 
ably somewhere near that indicated by the line a b, or with 
deck j ust awash and center of keel about at the surface of 
the water. In this position there is still displacement enough 
in the hard round bilge; the immersed portion of the hull 
becomes of the canoe form, with a beam of but 3ft. and a 
depth of but 7io. ; and, what is still more important, the 
length on the new waterline is as great or even greater than 
that upon the measured waterline. 
Long, narrow, shoal and of very easy form, this portion of 
the hull has all the speed elements of the canoe; but like the 
canoe, it lacks power. This however is supplied, just as in 
the canoe, by mechanical means entirely outside* of the 
natural stability of the hull itself. The weather bilge and 
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