You should say "Endeavor II *is* steel" although none her hull is
original.


Jeff Morris wrote:
I thought the Endeavor II was scrapped shortly after its defeat in '37.
It was the first Endeavor that was rebuilt at great cost.


You're right, I was wrong again... must be something in the coffee. I
thought it was Endeavor 2 that was rescued, but it was Endeavor 1.


Having thought about it for a minute or so, IIRC Ranger was also built
of steel. Herreshoff had been building boats with steel frames and
lighter material for decades before, but I think the then-new
technique of welding hull plating allowed lighter all-steel construction.


Except that Donal's link tells us Ranger was flush-riveted.


About 38 years ago a group of us young fools checked out a Starling
Burgess designed, Herreshoff built (1926?) M-class yacht, Prestige, that
was for sale for under $2000. It was in sad shape - stripped out
completely. The lead keel was long gone (melted for bullets in WWII)
and replaced with concrete. The mast, once the worlds tallest aluminum
mast, was replaced with two telephone poles. We hauled it for a survey,
but the report was that too many of the steel frames were rusted out,
and it would have cost a fortune to make her seaworthy. Fortunately, we
had the sense to pass on the deal!


You could have gone ahead and laminated in sister frames, or gone to
night school and learned to weld.

It would have been horribly expensive anyway, think what a suit of sails
for this boat would have cost.

Some years later, I met a couple who had bought her and were living
aboard. They had dreams of long distance cruising but were realizing
the impossibility of resurrecting the old beauty. About 5 years after
that (1979?) I found the yacht aground on Spectacle Island in Boston
Harbor. It laid there, abandoned, for a season.


Did anybody ever restore it?

A long time ago, a friend and I were given an old (1930s) 6-meter. We
rebuilt it with a variety of less-expensive composites and put the rig
off a T-10 on it. Cool boat, I saw it for sale on Yachtworld a few
months ago.

The M-Class is a variation on the J-class, though somewhat smaller. It
was used as a "club racer" in the late 20's through the 50's.


Yes, all the Universal Rule classes had letter designations.. the "O"
and "P" class was smaller than M, the "I" class (don't know if any were
ever built) were larger than the J-class.

Like the 6, 8, and 12-Meters, they were mostly used for round-the-bouys
racing but even the little ones tended to have at least rudimentary
cabins and were cruised in by some. I spent a couple of week long
cruises on my 6-Meter including some time singlehanding.



There's a description of the M-class here. There's a picture of the
Prestige is about a third of the way down.
http://www.universalrule.com/page1/body.html


I think this guy is glorifying the class and the rule. A modern M could
in no way keep up with a sled and would be too much of a leadmine to be
really "seaworthy." It'd be a really pretty boat though. Both the
Universal Rule and the Int'l Rule (used for the meter classes) tend to
produce very heavy boats.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King