THE ORIGINS OF THE
RAINBOW FLEET
By Michael R. Harrison
very August, as part of Nantucket Race Week, the little catboats of the island’s beloved Rainbow Fleet raise their colorful sails and parade around Brant Point, weather permitting. This island tradition dates to the 1920s, and grew out of efforts by the leaders of the Nantucket Yacht Club to find a suitable boat for children and teenagers to learn to sail in. Originally, a catboat was any boat with a “cat rig,” that is, a single mast well forward supporting a single gaff-headed sail. Over time, this rig became associated with beamy, shoal-bottomed centerboard boats designed to operate in the windy, choppy, and shallow waters of such places as Lower New York Bay, Massachusetts Bay, and Nantucket Sound. The catboat is, historically, the quintessential Nantucket boat after the whaleboat. Although not exclusive to the island, the catboat was the dominant sailboat in the local fishing fleet and the quintessential party boat for summer visitors from the 1860s to the 1920s. Enormous catboats up to 40 feet long developed, able to profitably fish in Nantucket Sound or carry dozens of passengers on pleasure trips around the harbor. Smaller catboats designed for racing developed from these large workboats, particularly in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Many other boat types have sailed at Nantucket, but the catboat alone represents island’s dual roles as a place of hard work and carefree play. Pleasure boating was well established as a feature of
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HISTORIC NANTUCKET / FALL 2018
the Nantucket summer scene long before the Nantucket Yacht Club was founded in 1906. Immediately the club organized races where the members could pit their catboats, knockabouts, and other recreational craft against each other. Because different boats have different performance characteristics, a system of handicapping was used for certain races to make the competition fairer, and boats of similar rigs or designs were raced only against each other. Before long, the yacht club, like many other clubs across the country, sought to encourage members to invest in boats all built to the same design, to make racing fairer and eliminate the need for handicapping. The first step in this direction came in 1910, when a committee of the club commissioned 25-year-old B. Karl Sharp (1884–1962) to design a 13-foot catboat for members’ use as a “one-design” racing boat. Sharp was a lifelong island summer resident and a son of Dr. Benjamin Sharp (1858–1915), a gifted zoologist and sailor who contributed extensively to the cultural life of Nantucket.
Above: “The Rainbow Fleet, outward bound, Nantucket, Mass.” Postcard by H. Marshall Gardiner, from a staged photograph taken in 1929. Helen Sherman recalled many years later that he image was planned by Austin Strong. The boats were towed around the Brant Point by the Nantucket Yacht Club’s motor launch. Note the dead calm water. NHA COLLECTIONS PC-BrantPoint-47