The boat was designed in 1913−14 in the village of
Osterville,
Cape Cod,
Massachusetts, for a group of sailors from the Wianno Yacht Club. They requested Horace Manley Crosby to design a sailboat for racing on Nantucket Sound. Manley Crosby was a member of the Crosby family, noted for building the famous Crosby
catboats. Fourteen boats were delivered and raced that summer. Those fourteen boats were No. 1
Dione, No. 2
Wendy, No. 3
Telemark, No. 4
A.P.H., No. 5
Commy, No. 6
Snookums, No. 7
Bob White, No. 8
Sea Dog, No. 9
Marie, No. 10
Qui Vive, No. 11
Fantasy, No. 12
Whistle Wing, No. 13
Maxixe, and No. 14
Ethyl. All but two of these original boats have been lost. No. 7 now known as
Tirza is in Osterville MA and No. 11
Fantasy is in the collections of Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, CT. All the other original boats have been lost due to deterioration, fires, or hurricanes. See the book,
The Senior, privately published in 1989 for the boat's 75th anniversary, for more information on the history of the class. That history was adapted from the article "Warriors of Wianno". The book also contains several articles and photos by Wianno Senior owners and sailors. At about the same time,
Wooden Boat magazine published two articles on the Wianno Senior as part of the boat's 75th anniversary. The first, "The Wianno Senior", describes the boat's history and construction and includes several photos. Page 66 shows a photo of the most famous Wianno Senior sailor, President
Jack Kennedy, who kept his boat,
Victura (hull no. 94, built in 1932), at the family compound in
Hyannisport, Massachusetts. Today, it is on display at the
John F. Kennedy Library in the
Dorchester neighborhood of
Boston. The second article in that issue of
Wooden Boat is by Jack Fallon. That article provides a short tutorial,
Tuning Up with Jack Fallon, on how to sail a Wianno Senior. Jack won the Scudder Cup, the annual class championship, a record nine times between the Cup's establishment in 1949 and 1976. == Production ==