EMERALD is one of the five identical stock tenders that went to the navy in 1918. This boat and a twin named RESOLUTE subsequently spent some 60 years in Oyster Bay as member-carrying launches for the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club.  

27 boats were built to this same model between 1911 and 1939, ranging in length from 23’4″ to 39’10”. This is a great example of Captain Nat’s ability to manipulate a hull design, and the flexibility afforded by his particular design methods using half models and his offset reading machine. There are many similar cases across the design archive, where a single model resulted in a number of unique vessels of varying length, breadth and draft, and not necessarily scaled uniformly up or down across all dimensions! This plasticity in his design approach rarely compromised performance – another testament to Captain Nat’s extraordinary talents as a naval architect.

EMERALD and the other four  identical tenders commissioned at the same time in 1918 were intended to be tenders for destroyers in World War I. The story is that the Herreshoff design was the winning selection in a U.S. Navy competition. However when told by the Navy that his design was to be built in a number of shipyards across the country he withdrew the design from the competition, insisting that only the Herreshoff Manufacturing Co. will build a Herreshoff design.
Five vessels were completed on speculation by the first of May 1917. They were equipped with 4-cylinder ‘Speedway’ Model K gasoline engines of four inch bore and four and a half inch stroke. The U.S. Navy purchased one and the other four were placed in storage.

Eventually one was used as a tender for the America’s Cup Defender RESOLUTE (it’s namesake), two were used as tenders for ARA, a 165′ Herreshoff built power yacht, and the disposition of the fifth is unrecorded. Later, EMERALD and RESOLUTE came into the possession of the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club, Oyster Bay, NY where they were used as club launches. In December 1981, EMERALD was donated to the Herreshoff Marine Museum where thanks to the support of the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club, the 1772 Fund, and the Baker Fund she was restored in 2000-2003. RESOLUTE is also in a museum today, having been donated to the Mystic Seaport Museum of Mystic, CT.