20th century, the proa was one of the fastest sailing craft that existed. The proa design is still the basis for many boats involved in speed sailing. The first well-documented Western version of the proa was built in 1898 by Commodore Ralph Middleton Munroe of the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club. Yacht-design giant Nathanael Herreshoff, a friend of Munroe, may have also had an interest in the project. A small model of the Anson-Brett proa is collected at the Herreshoff Marine Museum in Rhode Island; its maker is uncertain. Over the following years, Munroe built several more. They were all destroyed by the mid-1930s, when a severe hurricane leveled Munroe's bayside boatshop. At least two of his designs were documented in articles in The Rudder, as was one by Robert B. Roosevelt. Small proas may have been brought back to the United States in the late 19th century, but documentation is sparse. Munroe and Roosevelt appeared to be the first two builders to adapt the proa to Western building techniques. Royal Mersey Yacht Club In 1860 a member of the Royal Mersey Yacht Club in England built a copy of a Micronesian proa. He used the traditional asymmetric hull, flat on the lee side, and a decked dugout ama. While no quantitative record was made of its speed, it was noted that the proa would run at speeds that would bury the bows of any other vessel. It carried three times the ratio of sail area to immersed midships section than the fastest yachts in the club and yet drew only . Munroe's 1898 proa Since Munroe had no direct experience with proas, all he had to work with was the widely distributed and incorrect plan drawing from about 1742, made during Admiral Lord Anson's circumnavigation of the globe. This drawing had been circulated in the press, for example in William Alden's articles in Harper's Magazine. (These were reprinted in a small book called The Canoe and the Flying Proa.) This proa was one of several either captured or seen under sail when Anson stopped at Tinian during a Pacific crossing. Brett, the draughtsman of the plan, is thought by some to have misinterpreted one key element, showing the mast fixed vertically in the center of the boat. This view as based on the fact that other Micronesian proa masts were raked end-to-end as the vessel shunted and the fact that