Building the Mosquito Fleet: The U.S. Navy's First Torpedo Boats (RI) Review

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(More customer reviews)The building of the Mosquito fleet began with a blind man and his mechanically minded brother. These two men, John Brown and Nathanael Greene Herreshoff both boat lovers began their careers when John Brown was commissioned to build a yacht for Thomas Clapham. John Brown would dictate the design to his brother who would then turn the drawings into a model. John would then go over the model with his hands to feel for defects and actually design the full size boat based upon his minds eye and his touch. Thus the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company was born, a name synonymous with many a successful America's Cup defender.
Building the Mosquito fleet was a most enjoyable book to read. It's filled from cover to cover with original black and white photos, drawings, and first hand accounts. The pictures truly add a touch of class to this work and allow the reader to fully understand what took place during the building process. The picture of the 1893 Herreshoff steam engine on page 11 shows the simplicity yet durability of design and the side bar states that it?s still in operation 109 years later. As you traverse your way through this book you will also appreciate the amount of research that the author put forth and it shows in his well-organized Bibliography. One story to note is of Ens. Irving V. Gillis and his capture of a Spanish Schwartzkopf torpedo in 1898. The story is fascinating and after reading you can actually go to the Naval War College Museum, at Newport's Naval Education and Training Center and ask to see the very same torpedo.
As it stands, this is a well written and researched work on the United States Navy's First Torpedo Boats and the author has done a beautiful job in putting the material together in such an interesting manner. I highly recommend this book to fellow enthusiasts and Naval Buffs alike.

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In 1877, the U.S. Navy purchased the fast steam yacht Stiletto from the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company of Bristol, Rhode Island, for "automobile" torpedo experiments in Narragansett Bay. The submarine service was in its infancy, and interest in the self-propelled torpedo as an undersea weapon flourished. Herreshoff's fast, steam-powered boats were the first of the delivery platforms accepted by the U.S. Navy Department for experiments at the Newport Naval Torpedo Station and service during the Spanish-American War. Dating from the Civil War, the torpedo station on Goat Island in Newport Harbor was the first torpedo armory in the United States, specializing in research, development, and manufacture.Building the Mosquito Fleet: The U.S. Navy's First Torpedo Boats traces the important and often dramatic history of the involvement between the U.S. Navy and the Herreshoff brothers' marine yards over a period of more than thirty years. It is a story of enterprise, naval development, and marine manufacturing during a time of experimentation and evolution.Included are dramatic stories of the men who built and tested these dangerous new vessels. This fascinating volume preserves under one cover a concise history of the torpedo boats built by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company. It describes design and construction innovations introduced by the Herreshoffs and traces the events that led the major navies of the world to take notice of the Herreshoffs' work.