Where the word comes from
Catamaran is a word from the Tamil kattumaram, usually explained as meaning tied wood or tied logs. It first described a simple raft of logs lashed together, used for fishing and for working through the surf along the coasts of southern India and Sri Lanka. English writers began to use the word in the seventeenth century, and the English navigator and writer William Dampier is often cited for describing such craft in the 1690s.
The meaning later widened. Today a catamaran is any vessel with two parallel hulls joined by a deck or crossbeams, though the Indian craft that gave the name were not twin-hulled boats at all. This is a useful reminder that the name and the idea have different histories.
Polynesian double canoes
The twin-hull idea is much older in the Pacific. Austronesian-speaking peoples developed double canoes, two hulls held together by crossbeams, and used them for long voyages. Large double canoes could carry people, food, plants and animals over great distances, and they were stable platforms for a sail.
Such craft were central to Polynesian voyaging, which settled islands across the Pacific. Twin hulls had practical advantages. The two hulls resist capsize, the platform between them can carry cargo and passengers, and a pair of slender hulls can be paddled or sailed efficiently. Societies across Polynesia built double canoes, with details varying between island groups. They differed from the outrigger, which uses a single main hull stabilised by a smaller float, a related solution used by the outrigger canoe.
European explorers in the eighteenth century described large double canoes in Tahiti, Tonga and Hawaii. Accounts from the voyages of Captain Cook mention them, and written observations of this kind later informed Europeans who wanted to understand the craft. Many of the large canoes were lost as island societies changed after contact, though the tradition was revived in the twentieth century in voyaging projects, particularly in Hawaii, and they are now recognised as sophisticated craft.
Early European experiments
The first European designer to build a twin-hulled vessel with any recorded success was probably Sir William Petty, an English scientist and economist. In the 1660s he built experimental double-hulled ships. His first vessel, built in 1662, is reported to have sailed well and to have outpaced the Dublin packet. A later, larger ship called Experiment was lost in the Bay of Biscay in 1664, reportedly with all hands. The details come from limited sources, so it is best to treat them cautiously, but the broad outline is well accepted: the idea was tested and the result was discouraging.
After Petty the double hull remained a curiosity for a long time. Shipbuilders of the sailing-ship era were reluctant to use a form that lacked precedent and was hard to judge from experience. Hull strength between two hulls was an engineering difficulty, since the connecting structure had to bear heavy loads in waves.
The nineteenth century
In the nineteenth century there were several further attempts. Twin-hulled steamers were built for ferry service, and some succeeded in service. The best-known sailing example in the United States was a catamaran called Amaryllis, designed by Nathanael Herreshoff and launched in 1876. She is said to have been very fast, and her performance reportedly caused alarm among owners of conventional boats. Some sources suggest that catamarans were then excluded from certain races, though the extent of any formal ban is uncertain and varied by club.
Whatever the case, the catamaran entered yachting history as a boat that could beat conventional designs, and that reputation would return. Herreshoff produced other catamarans, and the idea was revisited by other designers in Britain and the United States, although the twin hull remained a minority interest into the 1900s.
From curiosity to a serious design
Several things were needed for the catamaran to become more than an oddity. Strong lightweight materials such as marine plywood and later fibreglass allowed designers to build wide, light structures. Better understanding of aerodynamics supported more efficient sail plans, and lessons from aircraft design improved ideas about strength and weight.
In the years after the Second World War, designers in Hawaii, Britain and elsewhere began to produce practical catamarans. One well-known early example in Hawaii was Manu Kai, built in the late 1940s by Woody Brown and Alfred Kumalae. Experience with Pacific craft influenced the design thinking. Soon afterward, small catamarans designed for sailing and racing appeared in several countries. The beach-launched sporting boats and the record-breaking ocean racers came later, building on this postwar groundwork.
A simple idea with a long past
The catamaran combines two ideas that arose in different places. In the Pacific, twin hulls carried people over open ocean for generations. On the Indian coast, lashed logs gave a name to a family of craft. Europe was largely a latecomer, trying out the form in the seventeenth century and then returning to it repeatedly before the technology and the demand arrived.