Nathanael Greene Herreshoff (March 18, 1848 – June 2, 1938) was an American naval architect, mechanical engineer, and yacht design innovator.

At the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he oversaw operation of the Corliss Stationary Engine, a 40-foot-tall (12 m), 1,400-horsepower (1,000 kW) dynamo that powered the exhibition's machinery.

[5] In 1885, Stiletto, a wooden torpedo boat with a length of 94 feet, 31 tons of displacement and a speed of 18.2 knots was launched at the Herreshoff Manufacturing Co. as a private speculation.

It was purchased for the United States Navy under an Act of Congress dated 3 March 1887, and entered service in July 1887, attached to the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport Rhode Island.

After a safety valve opened to release over-pressure, Herreshoff closed it so the boat could achieve its anticipated maximum speed.

His designs ranged from the 12½, a 16-foot (12½ foot waterline) sailboat for training the children of yachtsmen,[9] to the 144-foot America's Cup Reliance, with a sail area of 16,000 square feet.

[11] The 123-foot Defender featured steel-framing, bronze plating up to the waterline and aluminum topsides to achieve a lighter and faster boat.

This combination of materials had been pioneered in the French fresh-water racing yacht Vendenesse, which had been described in a New York Times article and caught the attention of the Vanderbilt Americacup syndicate.

[9] In the 1942 the shipyard built wooden hull APc-1-class small coastal transports to support the World War II demand for ships.

Wee Win was very successful racing on the Solent,[17] leading to several follow-up orders from British Yachtswomen and Yachtsmen.