Show BUILDING A COP DEFENDER Wonderful Work by Blind John B Herreshoff HIS MARVELOUS MEMORY MOST ACUTE IS HIS SENSE OF TOUCH N An Extraordinary Feat His Method o Planning Hoiv lIe Works Accomplishing I Ac-complishing More In a Day Than Many Others Would in a Montu Written for The Herald Much has been written deep has been the speculation and varied has been the guessing about the new cup defenderthe yacht which is being built to race against the English challenger chal-lenger for the timehonored Americas cup The wonders of the Herreshoffs of Bristol R I the men who have designed de-signed and are constructing the craft ihave been elaborately described but absolutely nothing has been said or written about the most unique and wonderful feature of the whole enterprise enter-prise This last is John Brown Herreshoff II famous today and for the last generation gener-ation in New England as the blind ship fIIk I JOHN w UERIlESIIOFli builder Nat Herreshoff who has just recovered from a dangerous illness is the man most spoken of in the newspapers news-papers in connection with the new beat He is popularly regarded as the designer and the head and front of all the sucE r mous concern but the real head of It to t miliar wui H h i0b is the blind man John B is the president of the Herreshoff company and hs younger brother Nathaniel is the general superintendent su-perintendent The latter attends to all the outside work and the actual supervision of the men But most of the head work and the preliminary planning is done by the elder man He lays the foundation and lines out the < skeleton structure for the others to put < together and fill in The average day spent bv John Herreshoff Is unlike that or any other man who is at the head of a great business institution Being stone blind it seems an impossibility that he could aUend to such intricate tiatters as yacht designing and machinary making mak-ing Every figure and calculation he must carry in his head Writing is of no service to him as he cannot read Of course he has men about him to do work of that character but he only E employs them for clerical purposes He has probably the most retentive memory of any man in the world and as he is not annoyed by seeing anything of an interrupting character his powers of concentration are wonderful won-derful An incident which happened I I In the latter part of the seventies illustrates illus-trates his pecuiar mental machinery perfectly An Extraordinary Kent While working in the Bristol shop one day he received a telegram asking ask-ing him to come to New York at a certain cer-tain time to meet representatives of a South American government The telegram was from the New York con II sul of the government and when Mr Herreshoff reached the latters office at the appointed time he was informed j that three torpedo boats of a novel design de-sign were wanted These boats were to be built in sections so they could TT easiy be shipped on the deck of a steamer to their destination Several other unusual conditions w re attached at-tached to the proposition and then Mr Herreshoff was asked how much be would build them fur I must have time to think it over he said How much time About twenty minutes Then this man simply sat still and thought He carefully considered the plans and specifications of the boats the cost of material the time it would take his men to build the mechanical possibilities of building them in I sections sec-tions as desired These and a dozen other features of the proposition were gone over As soon as one part was duly considered he madea mental note of the result and took up the next j finally totalling up the various Items At the expiration o f the twenty minutes min-utes He had hisanswar ready andJUri was In the affirmative The boats vere 1 o J 0 t constructed and shipped as ordered This reads lik2 a feat of legerdemain but similar ones are executed day after day in the Bristol shop Mr Herreshoff has not ben blind all of his life The trouble came on gradually gradu-ally when he was about 16 years of age A film slowly came over his eyes and the quiet shaded streets of sleepy Bristol grew fainter and fainter until they faded away completely But he had already acquired a love of building build-Ing of boats and the water In the old days Bristol was something of a seaport sea-port town but now the docks are decayed de-cayed and the old hulks of former queens of the deep lie rotting at their sides The only signs of maritime life at the place are the bustling shops of the Herreshoffs Until the last few years the concern has mainly been identified with the building of wonderfully fast steam craft notably the torpedo boat Srilet to which created a furore in naval circles cir-cles the world over ten years ago by her marvelous speed It was deemed an experiment when the brothers took up the building of sailing craft But it was in this very work that the blind man gained fame forty years ago He Vas a Boy Designer Friends say that when a small boy as soon as he was trusted with a pocket pock-et knife he whittled out miniature yachts and boats of all styles At the age of 15 he built a goodsized catboat for sailing on the bay and its lines were so full of power and speed that it won all the scrub races of the day That boat gave the young designer a local fame which is now only bounded by the circle of the earth All that he had seen prior to his affliction af-fliction he can summon up before him and his memory in this respect down to the minutest detail is most remarkable remark-able From a description he can setup set-up himself a most intricate piece of machinery and explain its workings ant defects It was he who invented the coil boiler as appliel to extraordi nlrily fast steam vessels lie attends I solely to the making ol contracts for steam craft and only a week ago was in Washington consulting with officials of the navy department concerning the construction of new torpedo boats lIon He Works Mr Herreshoff is at the shops every morning when he is at home before S oclock He goes to a stand in the outer out-er office without any assistance and I hangs his hat and coat on theIr accustomed ac-customed pegs Without a seconds hesitation he walks some distance to his desk takes out a bunch of keys selects se-lects the right one in a flash and throws open the desk Its many pigeon pig-eon holes are filled with papers and documents of all kinds and although he has never seen one he can pick out any particular paper he may want simply through memory and his sense of touch which has ben developed to a truly wonderful degree A secretary reads all the mornings mail to him and when each letter has been gone over Mr Herreshoff dictates the answer He is kept minutely informed in-formed of all the doings in the yard and in this way he keeps a perfect picture pic-ture in his mind of the workings of the whole vast establishment Ills 3IctIiocl of Plmmlng Mr Herreshoffs method of planning inventions is unique Sometimes for half a day he sits at his desk with his head resting on his hands thinking Great problems in mathematics he can work out in this way and wonderful devices in mechanics are evolved without with-out the aid of secretary pen or paper All the models of vessels to be built are submitted to him His brother Nat invariably has a tiny model made on the lines to be pursued in the construction con-struction of a new craft and this model mod-el is given to the elder brother If the work is of extreme importance like the building of a cup defender the elder eld-er Herreshoff sometimes sits for days rubbing his hands lightly over the model thus getting a perfect picture of the lines of the boat in his mind Many changes suggest themselves to him and he works them out with mathematical precision to show their correctness A few inches more of depth at a certain point may mean the added power of several hundred square feet of canvas or the alteration of an angle even the fraction of a degree may reduce the friction so that the speed of the craft is accelerated without with-out injuring its heavy weather capa cities Mr Herreshoff as the noon hour comes around goes to the hat stand and although there may be half a dozen hats and coats hanging upon it he picks his own without a fumble and goes off to his lunch In the afternoon after-noon he often goes down to the boat slip where the boats are built anu seemingly watches the progress of the work If a stranger is about he kindly kind-ly explains all the work and tells more about the boat in five minutes than the layman could understand in five weeks by simply looking at it I This blind man with his i wonderful = 1i1 1111 1 ii 1jiinjjiiLti J I I = = Jill i t twJ I Ui 1 0 SHI HKTUIESHOFF WORK mental powers and his acute sense of touch accomplishes more in a day than many men do in a month He never refers to his affliction he seems to have forgotten it He is close to 60 years of ae now and so perfectly has accustomed himself to work with I oiit seeing that some of his friendssay that he has converted his misfortunes into an advantage |