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 Photo date: 1891. Name spelled "Vamose" on negative. |
 Photo date: Aug. 5, 1892. |
Vamoose was a 112-foot mark steam yacht built 1891 by Herreshoff Manufacturing Co. for William Randolf Hearst. It was timed at 27 mph in a trial.Photograph #2 was probably the October 1892 Columbus Naval Parade. About the Parade: http://www.homepage.mac.com/rswinter/DirectTestimony/Pages/46.html
Page 249 of the January 1893 Tribune Almanac and Political Record noted under the heading "Steam Yacht Records" that "In 1891 Mr. Hearst's Vamoose ran over a measured mile off Milton Point in 2 m. 36½(?)s."
Octave Chanute wrote in a letter to Louis-Pierre Mouillard on 28 October 1891 "...very much attention is paid at present in America to the shape of ships. On the Great Lakes a new whale-back type ship is being built, and on the Hudson river two yachts of a different type have been built, the "Norwood" and the "Vamoose" which have extraordinary speeds. Therefore, as the idea for something new has taken hold, I believe that we shall find somebody to try out your model. I am sending you all the information I could get on this subject." (Published at http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/inventors/i/Chanute/library/Chanute_Mouillard/1891.html )
The Oswego Daily Times, Feb 22, 1893 , page 6 , column 3 and 4, in an article titled "FASTEST YACHT AFLOAT / W.B. Coggswell is Building a Great Boat--To Be Completed This Spring" mentions that "A steam yacht with a speed of thirty miles an hour is being completed for W. B. Coggswell... From the design it is understood Mr. Cogswell's yacht will be able to beat either the Norwood or the Vamoose, the fastest steam yachts afloat. ..." (See http://www.hhpl.on.ca/GreatLakes/Scripts/News/Article.asp?ID=14155 )
In the book Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis author Charles B. Davis writes "In December, 1896, Richard and Frederic Remington, the artist, were commissioned by the New York Journal to visit Cuba which was then at war with Spain. It was their intention to go from Key West in the Vamoose, a very fast but frail steam-launch, and to make a landing at some uninhabited point on the Cuban coast." The book includes a letter from Davis titled "way to Key West. December 19, 1896." in which he writes: "DEAR MOTHER: I hope you won't be cross with me for going off and not letting you know, but I thought it was better to do it that way as there was such delay in our getting started. I am going to Cuba by way of Key West with Frederic Remington and Michaelson, a correspondent who has been there for six months. We are to be taken by the Vamoose the fastest steam yacht made to Santa Clara province where the Cubans will meet us and take us to Gomez."
(Thanks to John Kohnen!)
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