Commuter Club

Who were the guys who ran those beautiful commuter yachts in the early 19th century? Chrysler, Gould, Vanderbilt, Morgan and others whose names we all recognize were men who didn’t need to punch a time clock, and who could afford a pleasant boat ride on the way to work, with breakfast served in the morning, cocktails on the way home.

However, they still wanted to go fast. In 1903, William K. Vanderbilt’s 153-foot Tarantula was called the fastest yacht in the world. Her triple steam turbines pushed her to 26 knots; each shaft required three propellers to absorb the horsepower of the engines. In 1915, Peter Rouss, heir to a departmentstore fortune, built Winchester IV, which was 225 feet long with 7,000 horsepower from turbine engines pushing her to 32 knots. Investment banker Otto Kahn’s Oheka II of 1927 (73 feet) carried triple 500-hp V-12 Maybach engines designed to power Zeppelins, the transoceanic airships of the day. Her speed? Reportedly 34 knots. She was built by Lurssen in Germany; legend says her design was the basis for the German navy’s Schnellboots of World War II.

Speeds like these were achieved 100 years ago by building the yachts narrow and light. Aphrodite

III was double-planked Philippine mahogany riveted to white oak frames, with scantlings that one boatbuilder working on her 2005 restoration said were more appropriate for a 28-footer. Even her deck hardware was hollow to save weight. And most commuter yachts had much less in the way of accommodations than typical yachts of similar size. Only the crew slept aboard; the owner slept in his waterfront estate in Oyster Bay. When Billy Joel conceived

Vendetta with minimal creature comforts, he was keeping to the commuter-yacht tradition. The only difference was, and it was an important one, the boat was strongly built to last for generations.