The moment she arrived in Cowes, in the early summer of 1851, her superiority in speed was conceded, and no British captain would consent to meet her; but finally a match was extemporized, open to all nations, for which a prize was offered in the form of a cup presented by the Royal Yacht Squadron—not by the Queen, as usually said. Fifteen yachts responded, but none showed what it could do, for there was little wind, and the cup was awarded to the America more in general acknowledgment of its excellence than because of any great performance there. Not much importance was attached to the incident, but the silver tankard was brought home and left to ornament Commodore Stevens’ drawing-room until 1857, when its owners dedicated it to the purpose of a perpetual challenge cup, in charge of the New York Yacht-Club, for international races under specified conditions. Fifteen years elapsed, however, before the first contestant appeared.
The America had differed prominently in shape from all her opponents at Cowes, by having fine hollowed bows and a wide stern, instead of the bluff bows and narrowing after part—the “cod’s head and mackerel’s tail” pattern—of English craft; she also had sails that hung very flat instead of bellying out under the wind as was the foreign style. In these directions British yachtsmen saw good, and tried to improve; but they would have nothing to do with center-boards, and clung to their cutter-rig. We, on the other hand, had gained ideas as to improving rig, especially in the schooners, and in the bestowal of ballast, outside and in.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY G. WEST & SON, SOUTHSEA, ENGLAND.
“GENESTA,” “TARA,” AND “IREX”—THE BRITISH TYPE OF CUTTER OF 1884-85.
“Galatea,” 1885, belonged to the same type.
At length, in 1870, an English schooner, the Cambria, came over to compete for the cup, and was pitted against a fleet of crack yachts off Sandy Hook; but again the wind was so light that the boats did little more than drift. The Englishman, nevertheless, was outdrifted by nine others, and the leader was the little sloop Magic, which became the custodian of the cup. The next year, however, another challenge was received, and the British keel-yacht Livonia appeared and was defeated by the American keel-schooner Sappho, which, under a new rule, had won her right to defend the cup by first beating in preparatory ocean races all other rivals for the honor. As this contest was between single representative yachts, tried in five races, and in all sorts of weather, it was a fair and conclusive measure of comparative qualities. The next yacht to come after the international cup was the Canadian Countess of Dufferin, which was promptly defeated by the Magic in 1876. Five years later another Canadian appeared, the Atalanta, differing from previous contestants in being a single-masted center-board yacht; but her rigging and finish were so bad that her excellent model could not save her from defeat (1881) at the hands of the elegant iron sloop Mischief which had been built especially for the race, and had won her foremost place through severe trial races, as before.
Up to this time, as Mr. W. P. Stephens tells us in “The Century” for August, 1893, whence many of the portraits of these racers have been taken, no pleasure-boats had been built except after the rule of thumb—some practical sailor whittled out a model according to his ideas, and the builder followed it.
Systematic designing was unknown, and ... one type of yacht was in general use, the wide, shoal center-board craft, with high trunk cabin, large open cockpit, ballast all inside (and of iron, or even slag and stone), and a heavy and clumsy wooden construction. Faulty in every way as this type has since been proved, in the absence of any different standard it was considered perfect, and open doubts were expressed of the patriotism if not the sanity of the few American yachtsmen who, about 1877, called into question the merits of the American center-board sloop, and pointed out the opposing qualities of the British cutter—her non-capsizability, due to the use of lead ballast outside of the hull; her speed in rough water; and the superiority of her rig both in proportions and in mechanical details.
A wordy warfare over these types raged for several years, gaining strength with the building of the first true English cutter, the Muriel, in New York in 1878, and bearing good fruit a year later in the launching of the Mischief, an American center-board sloop, but modified in accordance with the new theories. The plumb stem, the straight sheer, and higher free-board, with quite a shapely though short overhang, suggested the hull of the cutter, and though quite wide—nearly twenty feet on sixty-one feet water-line—she drew nearly six feet. Even with her sloop rig she was a marked departure from the older boats of her class, especially as she was built of iron in place of wood, and consequently carried her ballast, all lead, at a very low point.