THE AMERICA CUP.
NO one need be much surprised that the series of races for the America Cup results in a victory for the New York cutter. America has twice startled the world by a sudden and successful advance in designing ships. On each occasion
the fact was presented with a dramatic effect which will never be forgotten on this side of the Atlantic. The famous schooner `America,' which entered the Solent in 1851, changed the principles of yacht-building. Ericsson in 1862 produced the Monitor,' and within the year every British dockyard was working night and day at constructing a new navy driven by steam, and built of iron and steel. The force of brain which produced this double achievement can scarcely be over- rated. The industry of naval construction is so ancient and so vast that it has no secrets, the difficulties and the directions of possible progress are so well known that they are the common problems of the profession. In the annals of the fleets of nations it is almost impossible to mark any distinct point of departure in new design due to the enterprise of individuals. The evolution of the ship is like that of animals. The " secondary creations " by which Sir Richard Owen desired to account for unaccountable species are rare and notable exceptions. In the case of the Monitor,' the human creative force was stimulated by an extraordinary national crisis. Ericsson also owed something to the re- serve of new knowledge and new material which the steel and steam age had accumulated. The possible ironclad ' Monitor' existed in the foundries and engine - works of the Federal States. Ericsson, an engineer and inventor, but also an ex-naval officer, combined the new forces in a new engine of war, which took the form of a ship, partly because at that moment a new and indestructible form of ship was a pressing national necessity. The " international " contest with the 'Merrimac ' in the Charleston River was a dramatic, but not a necessary, evidence of success. The Monitor' was the result of genius working in a hurry for a special occasion. Had there been no War of Secession, the `Monitor' would have been evolved in dae course, as the possibilities of new material and new forces became apparent to the mechanical designer. The builder of the America' perhaps deserves even more credit for genius, because be worked with the old forces and the old materials. She was a schooner of 200 tons, built at New York by David Steers. Steers was a naturalised American, having been burn at Dartmouth, in Devonshire, and first made a reputation as a builder of sailing-craft by the speed of the pilot-cutters which were launched from his yard. The English yachtsmen kept to the old models, reproducing more or less the type of the cutters and schooners which had become famous as light craft in the Royal Navy. The New York de- signer built a vessel which was obviously a new depar- ture. "If she is all right, then we are all wrong," was Lord Anglesey's remark, when the Am erica,' owned by Com- modore Stevens, anchored off Cowes, and challenged any yacht afloat to race on level terms, for any sum not exceeding £10,000. The vessel was described as very low, with raking masts, a roomy hull, 100 ft. of extreme length, and 23 ft. beam. Her sails were of stout cotton, instead of heavy canvas, and her rigging was without a superfluous rope. But she was an admirable sea-boat, a comfortable yacht as well as a " racing-machine." When coming up the Channel she met and beat one of the largest and fastest English cutters, and she was soon entered for a decisive race for a cup given by the Royal Yacht Squadron, open to yachts of all nations. The course was round the Isle of Wight. Fifteen English yachts competed against her, eight cutters and seven schooners, and the America' beat the best, the Aurora,' by 17 min. The cup so won was presented by the joint owners of the America' to the New York Yacht Club, to be a perpetual international challenge trophy, open to all the world, for yachts of from 30 tons to 300 tons measure- ment, the challengers to be yacht clubs and not yacht owners as individuals. This stipulation was made to secure the representative character of future races. In all subse- quent efforts to recapture and defend the Cup, this end has been secured. Each competing vessel has been regarded as the embodiment of English and American designers' skill at the date of trial ; and if the success of the latter has not been of so startling a character in the later as in the earlier races, the New Yorkers have more than held their own, and in the construction of their latest vessels have been able to command the services of inventors of the highest calibre. The brothers Herreshoff, the builders of the Vigilant' and 'Defender,' are not less celebrated as engineers than as designers of ships, and the astonishing faculty by which one of this gifted family maintains his position among the leaders of his profession, after the loss of eyesight, is one of the marvels of modern mechanical ability.
Though every new English yacht built after the race of 1851 was " Americanised," the first efforts to recapture the Cup were singularly unsuccessful. The New England designers always kept ahead of the copyists. In 1870 the Cambria,' a schooner of 180 tons, raced and beat Mr. Gordon Bennett's schooner Dauntless' across the Atlantic, though the difference in time between these two sailing yachts was only 1 h. 17 min. in making the run from Queenstown to Sandy Hook. Fifteen American schooners entered against the Cambria' for the Cup, and seven came in before her. The fourth of these was the old America,' then twenty-one years old. She had been used for cruising in the Mediterranean, had won a race open to all comers from European yacht clubs, and ended her days as a sound trading-vessel, after being sold by her yachting owner. The Livonia,' a large schooner of 280 tons, was then built with the express design of winning back the Cup. The New-Yorkers made terms by which they might nominate different vessels for each race, the prize to be awarded to the winner of four courses out of seven. They thus were able to choose a boat suited for the weather on each separate day, and placed the Livonia' at a disadvantage. She lost, only winning one race out of five. This was only a year after the defeat of the ' Cambria.' It was not till 1885 that an English yacht showed such marked superiority over its rivals at home that the idea of another effort to win back the Cup took form. The late Sir Richard Sutton's yacht,' Genesta,' was the fastest boat afloat in European waters. She was a 90 ton cutter, built at Glasgow. To meet her the New York Yacht Club employed Mr. Burgess, of Boston, to build the Puritan.' Mr. Burgess was an admirable yacht-designer. But the limits of existing constructive ability were almost reached, whether on the American or English side of the Atlantic. The ' Genesta' in the deciding race was only beaten by two minutes and a few seconds ; and both the Cape May Cup, and the Brenton Reef Cup, were won by her from the New York Yacht Club, and brought back to England. A larger English cutter, the Galatea,' was beaten by the 'Mayflower' in the next season, and the ' Thistle,' designed by Mr. G. L. Watson for a " syndicate of Scotch yacht-owners," lost to the Volunteer,' built by Mr. Burgess, in the Jubilee year.
These defeats, and the growing taste for small yacht racing, in which the owner could direct the sailing and navigation of his own vessel, tended to discourage the owner- ship of large expensive yachts of dimensions suitable for international yacht-racing. It was the German Emperor who gave a new impetus to the building of big cutters by buying the Thistle,' and racing her under her new name, the `Meteor.' The Prince of Wales ordered the Britannia,' and Lord Dunraven the Valkyrie,'—' Valkyrie II.,' which did battle and lost to the ' Vigilant' at Sandy Hook in 1894. The ' Vigilant' then crossed to England, and proved to be inferior to the Britannia ' on the results of races sailed on various English and Scotch waters. Thus the powers of the rival designers—the Herreshoffs on the one side and Mr. Watson on the other—are shown to be very nearly matched. The recent series of races, in which Mr. Watson's Valkyrie III.' met the latest Herresholl boat, was probably the fairest contest, in respect to the means enjoyed by the designers of both vessels to produce something as nearly perfect as possible for their purpose, which has yet taken place. But there are signs that even the yachting world is growing tired of a system of racing which requires a new vessel to be built each year, and puts this specially designed racing-machine into the hands of a specially trained crew for exhibition contests. Yachting and yacht-designing should lead to something more practical. If higher speeds are to be gained from a new design of hull, it will probably be the result of a radical change, such as that of the " skimming-dish" boat, to travel on the surface, with an intervening air-space between parts of the bottom and the water. If seamanship is to be learnt in yachting, it is in the small, handy boat, sailed and managed by the owner, and not in the over-manned, first-class racing cutter.
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