History of Catamarans
Catamaran looking watercraft were first developed by Polynesian people as far back as 1500BC. The first ones were mainly just two canoes held together with a wooden frame, sometimes they had sails on them as well. Although they sound simple they made long journeys and crossings easier.
Tamil people were the first to widely use these type of vessels as early as the 5th century. William Dampier was the first person to write about catamarans in English when he first encountered the Tamil people using these vessels in the 17th century when he circumnavigated the globe. The word catamaran comes from the Tamil language and from the word
(கட்டுமரம்), which is pronounced kattumaram which translated to English means 'logs bound together'.
William Petty was the first person to build a catamaran in Europe back in 1662. He felt the need to build one so he could reach higher speed with less wind on shallow water as well as only needing one crew member, but unfortunately this was not a commercial success since no one really believed in it being popular because it was so different.
An American built a cat of his owndesign and entered the regatta in New York on June 22 1876 and his boat did exceedingly well compared to its competitors, after that cats were banned from regular sail boat classes up until the 1970's.
In the mid 1960's a Californian surf board manufacturer ( Hobie Alder) produced the Hobie 14 which was a light weight catamarans dinghy type boat and two years later they produced the Hobie 16 which was very popular with over 100,000 units produced by 2016.
Australia is a big manufacturer of transport ferries and naval ships which are catamarans and from experience from Australia there are a lot of Cats for taking people out on sea tours, trips and so on. The two main companies which make cats for all around the world are Incat and Austal, and in fact Austal built the new fast ferry which Irish ferries run between Dublin and Holyhead (Dublin Swift).
Picture was sourced from https://www.niferry.co.uk/hw-visitors-westpac-express-austal-130/