{"id":102870,"date":"2017-01-15T08:16:43","date_gmt":"2017-01-15T08:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=102870"},"modified":"2021-01-06T16:52:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T16:52:05","slug":"how-schooner-america-won-the-first-americas-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/americas-cup\/how-schooner-america-won-the-first-americas-cup-102870","title":{"rendered":"How the schooner America started the America’s Cup, and the mystery she left behind"},"content":"On 28 March, 1942, an unusually heavy snowfall smothered the New England countryside. At the height of the blizzard, the roof of a nondescript shed on the waterfront at Trumpy\u2019s Yard in Annapolis collapsed. The incident was scarcely newsworthy: America was at war and had other, far more pressing, matters on its mind.\r\n\r\nBut to historians of the America\u2019s Cup<\/a> it was a tragedy, for the shed was the final resting place of America<\/em>, a low, black schooner whose legacy has inspired controversy ever since. Nearly 75 years after one of the world\u2019s most celebrated yachts was crushed beneath tons of corrugated iron and snow, the myth of her invincibility still endures.\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dLUmCCxK5fY\r\n\r\nAmerica<\/em> was commissioned by a syndicate headed by Commodore John Cox Stevens of the New York Yacht Club specifically to take up a challenge proffered by Lord Wilton, of Grosvenor Square, London, commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, in a letter dated 22 February, 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition.\r\n\r\nGallery: Highlights from the Royal Yacht Squadron Bicentenary International Regatta<\/a>\r\n\r\nThe price agreed for her building was high \u2013 $30,000 \u2013 but extraordinary conditions were written into the contract. If she did not prove to be the fastest vessel in the United States the syndicate could refuse her. Moreover, if she were to prove unsuccessful in England, her builders would be obliged to take her back. Stevens, a wealthy man and notorious gambler, was taking no chances \u2013 he meant to cover his bets either way.\r\n\r\nShe was a gamble even on the drawing board, her underwater shape influenced by Englishman John Scott Russell\u2019s Wave Line theory, which aimed to produce a hull that offered least resistance to the water, concave bows replacing the rounded bows of the era.\r\n\r\nShe was rigged with flat-cut, machine-woven cotton sails. By contrast, most boats of the era set fuller, looser-footed flax sails, which needed dousing with water to make the luff set tight and hard. One observer described how from directly upwind of the yacht America<\/em>, the width of the mast could conceal the entire mainsail: \u2018not a particle of it was visible; there was no belly, and the gaff was exactly parallel with the boom.\u2019\r\n\r\nHer launch date was set for 1 April, but it was 18 June before she was finally ready to sail for England. In the meantime the astute Stevens had driven the price down to $20,000 after inconclusive trials against his own fully tuned-up 97ft sloop Maria<\/em>.\r\n\r\n \r\n

A legend is born<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nDuring the course of her Atlantic crossing, James Steers, older brother of her builder, George, was impressed with America<\/em> as she recorded several daily runs of 200 miles and one of 284. A week or so after setting sail from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, he wrote: \u2018She is the best sea boat that ever went out of the Hook.\u2019\r\n\r\nInside the Royal Yacht Squadron - we get a rare view of this most exclusive club<\/a>\r\n\r\nAfter a 20-day passage, the 13-strong crew arrived off Le Havre, where, on first sight, the harbour master reportedly described the black schooner as \u2018a wonder\u2019. America<\/em> spent three weeks refitting, having her masts restepped and her racing canvas carefully bent on, after which Stevens, who had taken the steamer to Le Havre, and his race crew sailed for Cowes.\r\n\r\nThe crack British cutter Laverock<\/em> found the much-heralded America<\/em> early on the morning of 1 August anchored in the Solent, near Cowes, and an informal race was arranged immediately. Stevens described the meeting at a dinner given in his honour at Astor House later that year: \u2018We let her go about 200 yards, and then started in her wake .\u00a0.\u00a0. Not a sound was heard, save perhaps the beating of our anxious hearts .\u00a0.\u00a0. The men were motionless as statues .\u00a0.\u00a0. The Captain was crouched down upon the floor of the cockpit, his seemingly unconscious hand upon the tiller...\u2019\r\n\r\nSeven miles later, America<\/em> had, allegedly, worked out a handy lead and the myth of her prowess gathered increased momentum. \u2018The crisis was past, and some dozen of deep-drawn sighs proved that the agony was over,\u2019 he added. News of her informal \u2018victory\u2019 spread like wildfire.\r\n\r\nThe story of the Laverock<\/em> race is often given as the first evidence of America<\/em>\u2019s invincibility and, indeed, those who might ordinarily have engaged in a little flutter over the Yankee schooner shied away. In those days huge sums were wagered on yacht racing. In one 224-mile Channel race some \u00a350,000 changed hands.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nHowever, the report in the weekly sporting paper Bell\u2019s Life<\/em>, on 3 August stated that Laverock<\/em> \u2018held her own\u2019 and pointed out that she was towing her longboat. Despite being a proven sea boat, America<\/em> had failed to impress against the Maria<\/em> and now, according to some reports, against the Laverock<\/em>. Stevens himself may well have been worried about his yacht\u2019s performance, for when he did challenge the Squadron it was to be a schooners-only race, no handicaps, over an offshore course and in over six knots of wind. There were no takers.\r\n\r\nHe then made it known that he was willing to race anyone, but the stake was to be an outrageous 10,000 guineas, more than double the cost of her building. Not surprisingly there was again no response.\r\n\r\nFor two weeks America<\/em> lay at Cowes, sails furled. Hopes of a race with Joseph Weld\u2019s Alarm<\/em>, for a purse of $5,000, came to naught and the British press, sensing a good story, were scathing. The Times<\/em> wrote: \u2018The effect produced by her apparition off West Cowes among yachtsmen seems to have been completely paralysing .\u00a0.\u00a0. It could not be imagined that the English would allow an illustrious stranger to boast that he has flung down the gauntlet to England and had been unable to find a taker.\u2019\u2019\r\n\r\nEventually George Robert Stephenson, son of the railway engineer, offered to race his unremarkable 100-ton Titania<\/em> over a 20-mile windward-leeward course for \u00a3100. The date was fixed for 28 August, but he was upstaged by the Royal Yacht Squadron, which, stung by the criticism in the press, finally took the plunge. The race, 53 miles around the Isle of Wight, was scheduled for 22 August and the prize was to be a 27-inch cup made of 134 ounces of silver, worth \u00a3100 (some say guineas), paid for by the membership.\r\n

The race<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nOn the morning of the race, a south-westerly wind prevailed, aided by a strengthening east-going tide. Betting was heavily in favour of the Yankee schooner.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nAfter a poor start, America<\/em> lay 5th behind Beatrice<\/em>, Aurora<\/em>, Volante<\/em> and Arrow<\/em> at No Man\u2019s Buoy and needed to make up ground. Opinions differ over what happened next, but what is known for sure is that America<\/em>\u2019s local pilot, Mr Underwood, set the black schooner on a fast reach, close inshore, for Bembridge Ledge, missing out the Nab light vessel located to the east of Bembridge. There had been nothing in the rules of the race about leaving the light vessel to starboard.\r\n\r\nOne historian, A.E. Reynolds Brown, in a slim pamphlet entitled The Phoney Fame of the Yacht America and the America Cup<\/em>, published in 1980, states that all the yachts except America<\/em> headed for the Nab light vessel, permitting the Yankee crew to jump into a big lead, more than an hour ahead of the fleet. This version is hotly disputed, however, with others claiming that as many as six other competitors also cut inside the Nab.\r\n\r\nFrom Bembridge to St Catherine\u2019s the fleet was hard on the wind, bucking a strong tide. At Sandown, the 62ft cutter, Wildfire<\/em> was level, though ineligible for the race as she used moveable ballast. At Dunnose, according to America<\/em>\u2019s log, the 57ft cutter, Aurora<\/em> may also have caught up.\r\n\r\nAt this point in the race, America<\/em>\u2019s two greatest threats, Mr Joseph Weld\u2019s 193-ton cutter Alarm<\/em> and Mr Chamberlayne\u2019s 84-ton cutter Arrow<\/em> retired early, the former going to the help of the latter, hard aground off Ventnor. Then Volante<\/em> and Freak<\/em> collided off the same point (one account even puts these two ahead of the America<\/em> when the collision occurred), which left Aurora<\/em> as the only first class yacht still racing.\r\n\r\nAt St Catherine\u2019s lighthouse, the most southerly point of the island, Wildfire<\/em>, according to The Times<\/em>, was three miles ahead of the fleet and was not overhauled until Freshwater Bay. Observers at St Catherine\u2019s had timed Aurora<\/em> just ten minutes astern at that point with Wildfire<\/em> leading America<\/em> by 14 minutes.\r\n\r\nAt the Needles, one famous account reads: \u2018For an hour after America<\/em> passed the Needles we kept the Channel in view and there was no appearance of a second yacht\u2019. Yet by the time America<\/em> finished off Cowes, Aurora<\/em> was just eight minutes behind. What no one mentioned was that Wildfire<\/em> with her gang below decks shifting two or three tons of ballast after each tack, may well have beaten them all, however, her finishing time was not officially recorded.\r\n

Into the history books<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nFollowing America<\/em>\u2019s victory Stevens made no strenuous effort to seek further competition, crying off on several occasions with various excuses. He must have been relieved that the one match he could not duck, a friendly match with Titania<\/em>, was against a schooner regarded by all expert opinion as being out of her league.\r\n\r\nStevens was keen to sell her, but there was no rush to buy at his inflated price. When a gullible punter appeared in the shape of 39-year-old army officer John de Blaquiere, fourth Baron of Ardkill, a man with little sailing experience, Stevens could not believe his luck. He took the money \u2013 \u00a35,000 \u2013 and ran. After taking all expenses into account, Stevens had made a modest profit on his adventure. America<\/em> had emerged from her ordeal with her reputation intact, though hardly tested.\r\n\r\nIn 1852 she raced for the Queen\u2019s Cup and was beaten by Mosquito<\/em>, a 60ft cutter built in 1848. Alarm<\/em> and Arrow<\/em> were to do the same. In her last race under Blaquiere\u2019s ownership she trounced Sverige<\/em>, built expressly to challenge her, but only after the Swedish schooner, leading by nine minutes after 20 miles, carried away her main gaff.\r\n\r\nBlaquiere sold her in 1853 and by 1861 she was owned by a Mr Decie and renamed Camilla<\/em>, having undergone repairs for rotting timbers and had her masts cropped. At Cowes that year she was beaten by the 20-year-old Alarm<\/em>, lengthened and newly converted to schooner rig. She then won a race off Plymouth, and sailed to the West Indies.\r\n\r\nA year later, under the name Memphis<\/em>, she appeared under the Confederate flag in Savannah as a blockade-runner, then in April 1862 the US gunboat Ottawa<\/em> discovered her scuttled in St John\u2019s River, her hull full of augur holes. She was refloated and handed over to the Annapolis Naval Academy.\r\n\r\nSix years later, crewed by midshipmen from the Academy, she was among the fleet of the America\u2019s Cup\u2019s first defenders, finishing fourth, in front of James Ashbury\u2019s Cambria<\/em>. In 1876 she finished 19 minutes ahead of a hopelessly outclassed Canadian challenger.\r\n\r\nHer last appearance on a course that bore her name was during the Vigilant\/Valkyrie<\/em> matches in 1893 when she took a party of sightseers to watch the action off Sandy Hook. She lay in Boston Harbour from 1900 until 1916 and in 1920 very nearly ended up as a Portuguese trader in the Cape Verde Islands.\r\n\r\nBy the late 1930s, as the clouds of war were gathering, she was appreciated as a national treasure and efforts were made to raise the funds to restore her. They failed and on the night of 28 March, 1942, she was lost to the elements forever.\r\n

A myth of speed<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nIn the 20 years following her \u2018triumph\u2019 off Cowes she had sailed only six races. On this scant evidence her reputation is based. There is no doubt that she was a superb sea boat, but it is as an inshore racer that her reputation must be judged. Many subjective comments were made about her prowess, mostly by non-expert members of the press.\r\n\r\nYacht designers conspicuously failed to follow her lead. Yachts were modified to resemble her, but none proved conspicuously fast. The Wave Line theory, important as it was in understanding hull form and wave resistance, was not the sole answer to speed. And some yachts even reverted to \u2018baggy\u2019 flax sails.\r\n\r\nCommodore Stevens was fortunate to have come home in profit with his reputation intact. By giving in to the urge to race Laverock<\/em> that summer morning in 1851, and ruining the possibility of a surprise victory, historians say he may have kissed goodbye to a fortune in potential prize money. More likely he discovered America<\/em>\u2019s Achilles heel and, like the good gambler he was, sought to cover it up by setting an absurdly high stake, which he guessed rightly that no one would cover. With the help of a sympathetic British press, always eager to chastise their own, America<\/em> laid the firm foundations of the myth of speed that survives to this day.\r\n

America<\/em> \u2013 the design<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nAmerica<\/em> (pictured below in 1901 with a much reduced rig) was designed by George Steers, superintendent of the mould loft at the yard of New York\u2019s leading shipbuilder, William H. Brown, at the foot of 12th Street on the East River.\r\n\r\n\"America\"\r\n\r\nWith a hollow entry and carrying her maximum beam of 22ft well aft, America<\/em> measured 101ft 9in overall on a waterline length of 90ft 3in. By the standards of the day she was a stripped out racing machine, able to carry only the barest provisions.\r\n\r\nAmerica<\/em> was designed to the principles of Scott Russell\u2019s Wave Line theory, first employed in the steamer Wave in 1835, and espoused by the American John Griffiths under whom Steers worked. Russell described America<\/em> as \u2018a pure wave line vessel\u2019 and revelled in the acclaim.\r\n\r\nInfluential at the time, this theory was not universally accepted. British Naval Architect Dixon Kemp, founder of Lloyds of London and the Royal Yachting Association, said the America was the only Wave Line yacht that got a reputation for speed. By 1880, Russell\u2019s theory had been partially discredited.\r\n\r\nA variety of woods were used in her construction: the frames, braced by iron diagonals, were of white oak, locust, cedar, chestnut and hackmatack; her planking, copper fastened, was of 3in white oak; her decks were of yellow pine and her coamings of mahogany. She carried 61 tons of iron ballast, two thirds of it under the mainmast. On her steeply raked 79ft 6in foremast and 81ft mainmast she carried a simple rig: jib, foresail and mainsail, totalling 5,263 square feet made of cotton duck material.","excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 28 March, 1942, an unusually heavy snowfall smothered the New England countryside. At the height of the blizzard, the roof of a nondescript shed on the waterfront at Trumpy\u2019s Yard in Annapolis collapsed. The incident was scarcely newsworthy: America was at war and had other, far more pressing, matters on its mind. But to historians of the America\u2019s Cup it was a tragedy, for the shed was the final resting place of America, a low, black schooner whose legacy has inspired controversy ever since. Nearly 75 years after one of the world\u2019s most celebrated yachts was crushed beneath tons of corrugated iron and snow, the myth of her invincibility still endures. America was commissioned by a syndicate headed by Commodore John Cox Stevens of the New York Yacht Club specifically to take up a challenge proffered by Lord Wilton, of Grosvenor Square, London, commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, in a letter dated 22 February, 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition. Gallery: Highlights from the Royal Yacht Squadron Bicentenary International Regatta The price agreed for her building was high \u2013 $30,000 \u2013 but extraordinary conditions were written into the contract. If she did not prove to be the fastest vessel in the United States the syndicate could refuse her. Moreover, if she were to prove unsuccessful in England, her builders would be obliged to take her back. Stevens, a wealthy man and notorious gambler, was taking no chances \u2013 he meant to cover his bets either way. She was a gamble even on the drawing board, her underwater shape influenced by Englishman John Scott Russell\u2019s Wave Line theory, which aimed to produce a hull that offered least resistance to the water, concave bows replacing the rounded bows of the era. She was rigged with flat-cut, machine-woven cotton sails. By contrast, most boats of the era set fuller, looser-footed flax sails, which needed dousing with water to make the luff set tight and hard. One observer described how from directly upwind of the yacht America, the width of the mast could conceal the entire mainsail: \u2018not a particle of it was visible; there was no belly, and the gaff was exactly parallel with the boom.\u2019 Her launch date was set for 1 April, but it was 18 June before she was finally ready to sail for England. In the meantime the astute Stevens had driven the price down to $20,000 after inconclusive trials against his own fully tuned-up 97ft sloop Maria.   A legend is born During the course of her Atlantic crossing, James Steers, older brother of her builder, George, was impressed with America as she recorded several daily runs of 200 miles and one of 284. A week or so after setting sail from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, he wrote: \u2018She is the best sea boat that ever went out of the Hook.\u2019 Inside the Royal Yacht Squadron – we get a rare view of this most exclusive club After a 20-day passage, the 13-strong crew arrived off …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":447,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[687],"tags":[],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102870"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/447"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102870"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129184,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102870\/revisions\/129184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102870"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=102870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}