Bob Cleek

While Howard I. Chapelle wrote in an era when his position as an academic author and employee of the Smithsonian was accorded the respect it deserved, he was nonetheless quite controversial in some matters. 
 
The controversy for which he is most famous had to do with his correct assessment that the USS Constellation of 1797 and the USS Constellation of 1854 were entirely distinct ships, a dispute which festered for some time between Boston, with USS Constitution and Baltimore with USS Constellation, which promoters argued was one and the same with the 1797 frigate which had actually been broken up in 1853, the USS Constellation of 1854, built a year later, being the original Constellation's replacement.
 
Chapelle's drawings have been criticized for inaccuracies and a penchant for his substituting information when such was lacking. Given the nature of the work he was doing, and particularly the work of others he was directing during the WPA Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, these being out of work architects, engineers, and draftsmen who were not always conversant with naval architecture and marine engineering, those inaccuracies are understandable and not "controversial." Nobody disputes them.
 
Chapelle's writing style may seem pedantic, "harshly judgmental, and/or "arrogant," to today's reader, but at the risk of being accused of the same (as has happened before ) Chapelle's prose style was entirely appropriate in its time. It is only fairly recently that an ethic of "political correctness" has our diluted our academic literary style, resulting in what one might call the "Little League Syndrome" where "everybody wins a prize," and God help anybody who's heard to say that the losing team lost because they played poorly! What today's readers would consider arrogance in dismissing the work of a predecessor with the comment that they "were not educated" was taken as an authoritative assessment by Chapelle at the time of its writing. Chapelle wasn't alone in his forthrightness and candor. Most commentators of the time were similarly unrestrained in their criticism when they found cause to express it. L.F. Herreshoff was famous for his curmudgeonly, and often quire humorous, prose on the subject of yachts and yachting. In Chapelle's day, the uneducated would never have disputed the pronouncements of the educated, affording them the respect due their degrees, but not so today when "everybody has a right to their own opinion" and the internet provides a platform for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to peddle their wares to the gullible and most feel socially constrained to stand mute when confronted with stupidity.
 
You can get a good sense of Chapelle's "straight from the shoulder" style from his articles Ship Models That Should be Built (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org) and Ship Models That Should Not be Built, (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org) which are available in the forum's "Articles Database" (under "More" in the top of the page menu.) Just imagine what sort of reception you'd get in this forum if you expressed Chapelle's opinion that:
 
"There are enough Flying Clouds, Constitutions, racing fishermen, and imaginary galleons God knows, and there is surely some type of boat or vessel that will interest a modeler that has not yet been modeled. But, if you are not interested in accurate models and desire to build stuff of a level of truthfulness of a Hollywood movie "Pirate Ship" or "Spanish Galleon" forget I brought the matter up."
 
 They'd scratch your eyes out for sure. 

While Howard I. Chapelle wrote in an era when his position as an academic author and employee of the Smithsonian was accorded the respect it deserved, he was nonetheless quite controversial in some matters. 
 
The controversy for which he is most famous had to do with his correct assessment that the USS Constellation of 1797 and the USS Constellation of 1854 were entirely distinct ships, a dispute which festered for some time between Boston, with USS Constitution and Baltimore with USS Constellation, which promoters argued was one and the same with the 1797 frigate which had actually been broken up in 1853, the USS Constellation of 1854, built a year later, being the original Constellation's replacement.
 
Chapelle's drawings have been criticized for inaccuracies and a penchant for his substituting information when such was lacking. Given the nature of the work he was doing, and particularly the work of others he was directing during the WPA Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, these being out of work architects, engineers, and draftsmen who were not always conversant with naval architecture and marine engineering, those inaccuracies are understandable and not "controversial." Nobody disputes them.
 
Chapelle's writing style may seem pedantic, "harshly judgmental, and/or "arrogant," to today's reader, but at the risk of being accused of the same (as has happened before ) Chapelle's prose style was entirely appropriate in its time. It is only fairly recently that an ethic of "political correctness" has our diluted our academic literary style, resulting in what one might call the "Little League Syndrome" where "everybody wins a prize," and God help anybody who's heard to say that the losing team lost because they played poorly! What today's readers would consider arrogance in dismissing the work of a predecessor with the comment that they "were not educated" was taken as an authoritative assessment by Chapelle at the time of its writing. Chapelle wasn't alone in his forthrightness and candor. Most commentators of the time were similarly unrestrained in their criticism when they found cause to express it. L.F. Herreshoff was famous for his curmudgeonly, and often quire humorous, prose on the subject of yachts and yachting. In Chapelle's day, the uneducated would never have disputed the pronouncements of the educated, affording them the respect due their degrees, but not so today when "everybody has a right to their own opinion" and the internet provides a platform for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to peddle their wares to the gullible and most feel socially constrained to stand mute when confronted with stupidity.
 
You can get a good sense of Chapelle's "straight from the shoulder" style from his articles Ship Models That Should be Built (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org) and Ship Models That Should Not be Built, (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org) which are available in the forum's "Articles Database" (under "More" in the top of the page menu.) Just imagine what sort of reception you'd get in this forum if you expressed Chapelle's opinion that:
 
"There are enough Flying Clouds, Constitutions, racing fishermen, and imaginary galleons God knows, and there is surely some type of boat or vessel that will interest a modeler that has not yet been modeled. But, if you are not interested in accurate models and desire to build stuff of a level of truthfulness of a Hollywood movie "Pirate Ship" or "Spanish Galleon" forget I brought the matter up."
 
 They'd scratch your eyes out for sure. 

It has nothing at all to do with Howard Chapelle. It was just a follow-up to your insightful "segue" comment that " Too many manufactures of kits grab a concept (no matter how wrong it is) and make a product.   That product then becomes what many buyers will believe was the real thing." Sometimes thread-drift leads to unexpected flashes of brilliance. And sometimes not. In this instance, I thought your observation was spot on.  

We do tend to wander a bit in discussions.  My apologies for continuing the "off topic" part but it seemed to fit the topic.  Chapelle was right on many things. I have his books that have been well thumbed.   His not following conventional wisdom has been a blessing. 

It has nothing at all to do with Howard Chapelle. It was just a follow-up to your insightful "segue" comment that " Too many manufactures of kits grab a concept (no matter how wrong it is) and make a product.   That product then becomes what many buyers will believe was the real thing." Sometimes thread-drift leads to unexpected flashes of brilliance. And sometimes not. In this instance, I thought your observation was spot on.  

It has nothing at all to do with Howard Chapelle. It was just a follow-up to your insightful "segue" comment that " Too many manufactures of kits grab a concept (no matter how wrong it is) and make a product.   That product then becomes what many buyers will believe was the real thing." Sometimes thread-drift leads to unexpected flashes of brilliance. And sometimes not. In this instance, I thought your observation was spot on.  

While I am in agreement  with the sentiment, what does this have to do with Howard Chappelle?    
 

Would it be a valuable service to create, post, and maintain such a list so that modelers could be encouraged to avoid purchasing such kits?  Perhaps add "lack of accuracy" warnings to the forum kit database if it comes to pass.  It certainly makes sense to ostracize counterfeit ship kits. Are kits of "counterfeit" ships all that much different? 

An elegant model. Well done! Thanks for sharing it.

Would it be a valuable service to create, post, and maintain such a list so that modelers could be encouraged to avoid purchasing such kits?  Perhaps add "lack of accuracy" warnings to the forum kit database if it comes to pass.  It certainly makes sense to ostracize counterfeit ship kits. Are kits of "counterfeit" ships all that much different? 

SaltyNinja, considering your interest in West Coast fishing boats, you may want to contact someone at the San Francisco Model Yacht Club .(https://sfmyc.org/) There are a number of radio-control modelers there who have built a miniature fleet of Monterey fishing boats:
 

 

Would it be a valuable service to create, post, and maintain such a list so that modelers could be encouraged to avoid purchasing such kits?  Perhaps add "lack of accuracy" warnings to the forum kit database if it comes to pass.  It certainly makes sense to ostracize counterfeit ship kits. Are kits of "counterfeit" ships all that much different? 

SaltyNinja, considering your interest in West Coast fishing boats, you may want to contact someone at the San Francisco Model Yacht Club .(https://sfmyc.org/) There are a number of radio-control modelers there who have built a miniature fleet of Monterey fishing boats:
 

 

While Howard I. Chapelle wrote in an era when his position as an academic author and employee of the Smithsonian was accorded the respect it deserved, he was nonetheless quite controversial in some matters. 
 
The controversy for which he is most famous had to do with his correct assessment that the USS Constellation of 1797 and the USS Constellation of 1854 were entirely distinct ships, a dispute which festered for some time between Boston, with USS Constitution and Baltimore with USS Constellation, which promoters argued was one and the same with the 1797 frigate which had actually been broken up in 1853, the USS Constellation of 1854, built a year later, being the original Constellation's replacement.
 
Chapelle's drawings have been criticized for inaccuracies and a penchant for his substituting information when such was lacking. Given the nature of the work he was doing, and particularly the work of others he was directing during the WPA Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, these being out of work architects, engineers, and draftsmen who were not always conversant with naval architecture and marine engineering, those inaccuracies are understandable and not "controversial." Nobody disputes them.
 
Chapelle's writing style may seem pedantic, "harshly judgmental, and/or "arrogant," to today's reader, but at the risk of being accused of the same (as has happened before ) Chapelle's prose style was entirely appropriate in its time. It is only fairly recently that an ethic of "political correctness" has our diluted our academic literary style, resulting in what one might call the "Little League Syndrome" where "everybody wins a prize," and God help anybody who's heard to say that the losing team lost because they played poorly! What today's readers would consider arrogance in dismissing the work of a predecessor with the comment that they "were not educated" was taken as an authoritative assessment by Chapelle at the time of its writing. Chapelle wasn't alone in his forthrightness and candor. Most commentators of the time were similarly unrestrained in their criticism when they found cause to express it. L.F. Herreshoff was famous for his curmudgeonly, and often quire humorous, prose on the subject of yachts and yachting. In Chapelle's day, the uneducated would never have disputed the pronouncements of the educated, affording them the respect due their degrees, but not so today when "everybody has a right to their own opinion" and the internet provides a platform for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to peddle their wares to the gullible and most feel socially constrained to stand mute when confronted with stupidity.
 
You can get a good sense of Chapelle's "straight from the shoulder" style from his articles Ship Models That Should be Built (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org) and Ship Models That Should Not be Built, (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org) which are available in the forum's "Articles Database" (under "More" in the top of the page menu.) Just imagine what sort of reception you'd get in this forum if you expressed Chapelle's opinion that:
 
"There are enough Flying Clouds, Constitutions, racing fishermen, and imaginary galleons God knows, and there is surely some type of boat or vessel that will interest a modeler that has not yet been modeled. But, if you are not interested in accurate models and desire to build stuff of a level of truthfulness of a Hollywood movie "Pirate Ship" or "Spanish Galleon" forget I brought the matter up."
 
 They'd scratch your eyes out for sure. 

While Howard I. Chapelle wrote in an era when his position as an academic author and employee of the Smithsonian was accorded the respect it deserved, he was nonetheless quite controversial in some matters. 
 
The controversy for which he is most famous had to do with his correct assessment that the USS Constellation of 1797 and the USS Constellation of 1854 were entirely distinct ships, a dispute which festered for some time between Boston, with USS Constitution and Baltimore with USS Constellation, which promoters argued was one and the same with the 1797 frigate which had actually been broken up in 1853, the USS Constellation of 1854, built a year later, being the original Constellation's replacement.
 
Chapelle's drawings have been criticized for inaccuracies and a penchant for his substituting information when such was lacking. Given the nature of the work he was doing, and particularly the work of others he was directing during the WPA Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, these being out of work architects, engineers, and draftsmen who were not always conversant with naval architecture and marine engineering, those inaccuracies are understandable and not "controversial." Nobody disputes them.
 
Chapelle's writing style may seem pedantic, "harshly judgmental, and/or "arrogant," to today's reader, but at the risk of being accused of the same (as has happened before ) Chapelle's prose style was entirely appropriate in its time. It is only fairly recently that an ethic of "political correctness" has our diluted our academic literary style, resulting in what one might call the "Little League Syndrome" where "everybody wins a prize," and God help anybody who's heard to say that the losing team lost because they played poorly! What today's readers would consider arrogance in dismissing the work of a predecessor with the comment that they "were not educated" was taken as an authoritative assessment by Chapelle at the time of its writing. Chapelle wasn't alone in his forthrightness and candor. Most commentators of the time were similarly unrestrained in their criticism when they found cause to express it. L.F. Herreshoff was famous for his curmudgeonly, and often quire humorous, prose on the subject of yachts and yachting. In Chapelle's day, the uneducated would never have disputed the pronouncements of the educated, affording them the respect due their degrees, but not so today when "everybody has a right to their own opinion" and the internet provides a platform for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to peddle their wares to the gullible and most feel socially constrained to stand mute when confronted with stupidity.
 
You can get a good sense of Chapelle's "straight from the shoulder" style from his articles Ship Models That Should be Built (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org) and Ship Models That Should Not be Built, (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org) which are available in the forum's "Articles Database" (under "More" in the top of the page menu.) Just imagine what sort of reception you'd get in this forum if you expressed Chapelle's opinion that:
 
"There are enough Flying Clouds, Constitutions, racing fishermen, and imaginary galleons God knows, and there is surely some type of boat or vessel that will interest a modeler that has not yet been modeled. But, if you are not interested in accurate models and desire to build stuff of a level of truthfulness of a Hollywood movie "Pirate Ship" or "Spanish Galleon" forget I brought the matter up."
 
 They'd scratch your eyes out for sure. 

This segues into the model world a lot.  Too many manufactures of kits grab a concept (no matter how wrong it is) and make a product.   That product then becomes what many buyers will believe was the real thing.   The Constellation is just one of many... such as the kits that have been around for decades of the Vasa and never updated nor barely resemble the ship.  There's plenty more but the list would be very long.

Chapelle also documented and drew plans for the lateen rigged fishing boats built by Italian immigrants.  These used to used to sail from San Francisco.

SaltyNinja, considering your interest in West Coast fishing boats, you may want to contact someone at the San Francisco Model Yacht Club .(https://sfmyc.org/) There are a number of radio-control modelers there who have built a miniature fleet of Monterey fishing boats:
 

 

While Howard I. Chapelle wrote in an era when his position as an academic author and employee of the Smithsonian was accorded the respect it deserved, he was nonetheless quite controversial in some matters. 
 
The controversy for which he is most famous had to do with his correct assessment that the USS Constellation of 1797 and the USS Constellation of 1854 were entirely distinct ships, a dispute which festered for some time between Boston, with USS Constitution and Baltimore with USS Constellation, which promoters argued was one and the same with the 1797 frigate which had actually been broken up in 1853, the USS Constellation of 1854, built a year later, being the original Constellation's replacement.
 
Chapelle's drawings have been criticized for inaccuracies and a penchant for his substituting information when such was lacking. Given the nature of the work he was doing, and particularly the work of others he was directing during the WPA Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, these being out of work architects, engineers, and draftsmen who were not always conversant with naval architecture and marine engineering, those inaccuracies are understandable and not "controversial." Nobody disputes them.
 
Chapelle's writing style may seem pedantic, "harshly judgmental, and/or "arrogant," to today's reader, but at the risk of being accused of the same (as has happened before ) Chapelle's prose style was entirely appropriate in its time. It is only fairly recently that an ethic of "political correctness" has our diluted our academic literary style, resulting in what one might call the "Little League Syndrome" where "everybody wins a prize," and God help anybody who's heard to say that the losing team lost because they played poorly! What today's readers would consider arrogance in dismissing the work of a predecessor with the comment that they "were not educated" was taken as an authoritative assessment by Chapelle at the time of its writing. Chapelle wasn't alone in his forthrightness and candor. Most commentators of the time were similarly unrestrained in their criticism when they found cause to express it. L.F. Herreshoff was famous for his curmudgeonly, and often quire humorous, prose on the subject of yachts and yachting. In Chapelle's day, the uneducated would never have disputed the pronouncements of the educated, affording them the respect due their degrees, but not so today when "everybody has a right to their own opinion" and the internet provides a platform for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to peddle their wares to the gullible and most feel socially constrained to stand mute when confronted with stupidity.
 
You can get a good sense of Chapelle's "straight from the shoulder" style from his articles Ship Models That Should be Built (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org) and Ship Models That Should Not be Built, (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org) which are available in the forum's "Articles Database" (under "More" in the top of the page menu.) Just imagine what sort of reception you'd get in this forum if you expressed Chapelle's opinion that:
 
"There are enough Flying Clouds, Constitutions, racing fishermen, and imaginary galleons God knows, and there is surely some type of boat or vessel that will interest a modeler that has not yet been modeled. But, if you are not interested in accurate models and desire to build stuff of a level of truthfulness of a Hollywood movie "Pirate Ship" or "Spanish Galleon" forget I brought the matter up."
 
 They'd scratch your eyes out for sure. 

SaltyNinja, considering your interest in West Coast fishing boats, you may want to contact someone at the San Francisco Model Yacht Club .(https://sfmyc.org/) There are a number of radio-control modelers there who have built a miniature fleet of Monterey fishing boats:
 

 

SaltyNinja, considering your interest in West Coast fishing boats, you may want to contact someone at the San Francisco Model Yacht Club .(https://sfmyc.org/) There are a number of radio-control modelers there who have built a miniature fleet of Monterey fishing boats:
 

 

While Howard I. Chapelle wrote in an era when his position as an academic author and employee of the Smithsonian was accorded the respect it deserved, he was nonetheless quite controversial in some matters. 
 
The controversy for which he is most famous had to do with his correct assessment that the USS Constellation of 1797 and the USS Constellation of 1854 were entirely distinct ships, a dispute which festered for some time between Boston, with USS Constitution and Baltimore with USS Constellation, which promoters argued was one and the same with the 1797 frigate which had actually been broken up in 1853, the USS Constellation of 1854, built a year later, being the original Constellation's replacement.
 
Chapelle's drawings have been criticized for inaccuracies and a penchant for his substituting information when such was lacking. Given the nature of the work he was doing, and particularly the work of others he was directing during the WPA Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, these being out of work architects, engineers, and draftsmen who were not always conversant with naval architecture and marine engineering, those inaccuracies are understandable and not "controversial." Nobody disputes them.
 
Chapelle's writing style may seem pedantic, "harshly judgmental, and/or "arrogant," to today's reader, but at the risk of being accused of the same (as has happened before ) Chapelle's prose style was entirely appropriate in its time. It is only fairly recently that an ethic of "political correctness" has our diluted our academic literary style, resulting in what one might call the "Little League Syndrome" where "everybody wins a prize," and God help anybody who's heard to say that the losing team lost because they played poorly! What today's readers would consider arrogance in dismissing the work of a predecessor with the comment that they "were not educated" was taken as an authoritative assessment by Chapelle at the time of its writing. Chapelle wasn't alone in his forthrightness and candor. Most commentators of the time were similarly unrestrained in their criticism when they found cause to express it. L.F. Herreshoff was famous for his curmudgeonly, and often quire humorous, prose on the subject of yachts and yachting. In Chapelle's day, the uneducated would never have disputed the pronouncements of the educated, affording them the respect due their degrees, but not so today when "everybody has a right to their own opinion" and the internet provides a platform for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to peddle their wares to the gullible and most feel socially constrained to stand mute when confronted with stupidity.
 
You can get a good sense of Chapelle's "straight from the shoulder" style from his articles Ship Models That Should be Built (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org) and Ship Models That Should Not be Built, (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org) which are available in the forum's "Articles Database" (under "More" in the top of the page menu.) Just imagine what sort of reception you'd get in this forum if you expressed Chapelle's opinion that:
 
"There are enough Flying Clouds, Constitutions, racing fishermen, and imaginary galleons God knows, and there is surely some type of boat or vessel that will interest a modeler that has not yet been modeled. But, if you are not interested in accurate models and desire to build stuff of a level of truthfulness of a Hollywood movie "Pirate Ship" or "Spanish Galleon" forget I brought the matter up."
 
 They'd scratch your eyes out for sure. 

SaltyNinja, considering your interest in West Coast fishing boats, you may want to contact someone at the San Francisco Model Yacht Club .(https://sfmyc.org/) There are a number of radio-control modelers there who have built a miniature fleet of Monterey fishing boats:
 

 

While Howard I. Chapelle wrote in an era when his position as an academic author and employee of the Smithsonian was accorded the respect it deserved, he was nonetheless quite controversial in some matters. 
 
The controversy for which he is most famous had to do with his correct assessment that the USS Constellation of 1797 and the USS Constellation of 1854 were entirely distinct ships, a dispute which festered for some time between Boston, with USS Constitution and Baltimore with USS Constellation, which promoters argued was one and the same with the 1797 frigate which had actually been broken up in 1853, the USS Constellation of 1854, built a year later, being the original Constellation's replacement.
 
Chapelle's drawings have been criticized for inaccuracies and a penchant for his substituting information when such was lacking. Given the nature of the work he was doing, and particularly the work of others he was directing during the WPA Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, these being out of work architects, engineers, and draftsmen who were not always conversant with naval architecture and marine engineering, those inaccuracies are understandable and not "controversial." Nobody disputes them.
 
Chapelle's writing style may seem pedantic, "harshly judgmental, and/or "arrogant," to today's reader, but at the risk of being accused of the same (as has happened before ) Chapelle's prose style was entirely appropriate in its time. It is only fairly recently that an ethic of "political correctness" has our diluted our academic literary style, resulting in what one might call the "Little League Syndrome" where "everybody wins a prize," and God help anybody who's heard to say that the losing team lost because they played poorly! What today's readers would consider arrogance in dismissing the work of a predecessor with the comment that they "were not educated" was taken as an authoritative assessment by Chapelle at the time of its writing. Chapelle wasn't alone in his forthrightness and candor. Most commentators of the time were similarly unrestrained in their criticism when they found cause to express it. L.F. Herreshoff was famous for his curmudgeonly, and often quire humorous, prose on the subject of yachts and yachting. In Chapelle's day, the uneducated would never have disputed the pronouncements of the educated, affording them the respect due their degrees, but not so today when "everybody has a right to their own opinion" and the internet provides a platform for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to peddle their wares to the gullible and most feel socially constrained to stand mute when confronted with stupidity.
 
You can get a good sense of Chapelle's "straight from the shoulder" style from his articles Ship Models That Should be Built (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org) and Ship Models That Should Not be Built, (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org) which are available in the forum's "Articles Database" (under "More" in the top of the page menu.) Just imagine what sort of reception you'd get in this forum if you expressed Chapelle's opinion that:
 
"There are enough Flying Clouds, Constitutions, racing fishermen, and imaginary galleons God knows, and there is surely some type of boat or vessel that will interest a modeler that has not yet been modeled. But, if you are not interested in accurate models and desire to build stuff of a level of truthfulness of a Hollywood movie "Pirate Ship" or "Spanish Galleon" forget I brought the matter up."
 
 They'd scratch your eyes out for sure. 

Several somewhat unconnected thoughts:
 
There is no American maritime history researcher that even comes close to Chapelle.  He spearheaded the documentation of local American Sailing craft large and small.  He realized and followed up on the fact that the Royal Navy had in its archives dozens of drawings for captured American sailing ships.  He was an excellent draftsman and produced hundreds of drawings.  Even with his interpretations and reconstructions models built from these drawings are more accurate than 90% of those built from mass market European POB kits. And, regarding USF Constellation he was 100% right!
 
I would not consider him to have been uneducated.  While he was not a graduate of one of the “Big Three” Naval Architecture Programs (MIT, University of Michigan or Webb Institute) and might not have been qualified to design the SS United States, I believe that he had completed the Westlawn Correspondence Naval Architecture Course.  His writings indicate clearly that he understood sailing vessel design; a subject not taught at the University of Michigan when I was a student there in the1960’s.  Sailing yacht design was considered to be an art, not a science.
 
Any Naval Architect will tell you that the basis for any ship design, full size or model is an accurate set of hull lines.  Chapelle’s drawings were based on old drawings or half models, so he often had to correct for distortion in his source materials.  Furthermore, no two Naval Architects will produce exactly the same lines drawing from the same input data. This happens because of “fairing.”  In plotting curves, there will always be points that don’t line up or don’t match in all three dimensions.  The drafter must, therefore, adjust his drawing to produce a fair surface and no two drafters will do this the same way 100% of the time.  How many different “original” lines drawings exist for the Yacht America and which on reflects the actual vessel.
 
L. Francis Herreshoff was not particularly well educated in the traditional sense.  He was Dyslexic and his father, MIT educated Nathaniel Herreshoff, sent him to a local Agricultural School with the idea that he would manage a farm that the family owned.  Instead of completing the program he effectively ran away from home and got a job as a draftsman with W. Starling Burgess. He learned yacht design on the job.  In fact Nathaniel Herreshoff was not a Naval Architect.  His degree from MIT was in mechanical engineering. Olin Stevens also was not a University educated Naval Architect and has written that late in his career had trouble understanding the new CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics ).  
 
Roger