THE AMERICA CUP.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 39, 8 June 1914, Page 4

THE AMERICA CUP.

In connection with the trials of Sir T. Lipton’s latest challenger for the America Cup, it is said that one of the most interesting features of the Shamrock IV., the new boat, is her centreboard, inasmuch as she will be the first British challenger for the America Cup so fitted. The centreboard has never found much favor with yachtsmen in America, at least for big vessels, one of the chief objections against it being the interference with internal accommodation. American designers adhered to it, so far as the cup defenders were concerned, until the. contest in 1893. All the HerreshofT defenders since that date have been fixed keel boats. The return of the centreboard is said by yachting authorities to be due to the fact that under the universal rule of measurement to which the contesting boats'are being built for the forthcoming races excessive draught is penalised, while under the deed of gift which governs cup contests a centreboard is not adopted by Herreshoff and Nicholson. Shamrock IV. is of composite construction. Her planking is of mahogany. All previous Shamrocks were of metal construction throughout. Mr Nicholson stated his reason for reverting to the wood skin for his vessel. In the first place, had she been built of metal throughout there would have been the difficulty of riveting. The rivet heads have to be counter-sunk flush on the outside to give a perfectly smooth surface, and with plates so thin as they necessarily must be, there would I be considerable difficulty in making the rivets hold. The loosening of rivets was a constant source of trouble in cnnection with the construction of Shamrock 11. Then there was the buckling to take into consideration. With the hammering up of the rivets there was almost bound to be some expansion of the thin plates which induces the buckling between the frames. Taking all these considerations into account, Mr Nicholson believed that the lines of his vessel would be more I truly preserved in a wood skin, in I which there is also more resistance ! than in metal. The making of tlie , mast must in itself have been a great j work. Two masts were to have been ready by the time the boat was launch, ed, for, as Mr Nicholson observed, “we almost expect the loss of a mast as one of the incidents in the tuning up of an American Cup competitor.” The masts were to have been the biggest spars of that description ever built.