The Commencement Boats

From brokerage advertisements to cocktail-party boat talk, it’s a line of praise so often heard that it sometimes feels like rote hyperbole: "The Herreshoff 12½ is the best sailboat of its size ever designed." These diminutive yachts, measuring 12½'  on the waterline and 15' 10" overall, were introduced by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company (HMCo.) in 1914 as the Buzzards Bay Boys’ Boat. They were designed, as the name implies, for teaching the fundamentals of sailing and yachting to young men on the often-boisterous waters of Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts.

In the ensuing years, they proved to be equally effective at delivering the lessons of sailing to young women and adults, to be much more than a training boat, and to be suitable for waters beyond Buzzards Bay. “The 12½,” said Jon Wilson, who founded Wooden­Boat magazine in 1974, “is the ideal small boat.” Jon, and the community that grew up around this magazine, held this belief so dearly that, when he founded WoodenBoat School in 1981 as an extension of the magazine, “the 12½,” he said, “was the obvious first choice” as the core boat for the school’s sailing and seamanship program.

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