AMERICA CUP RACE

Taranaki Daily News, 13 September 1934, Page 11

AMERICA CUP RACE

THE ENDEAVOUR’S CHANCES WHY BRITAIN HAS FAILED. NOT BECAUSE OF THE HULL. Sassenachs will probably regard it as odd that although the America Cup was not lost by a Clyde yacht and the latest challenger for its possession has been designed by an Englishman and built in an English yard, nobody more heartily or more sincerely wishes the Endeavour success than the average Clydesidex-, writes Robert Maclntyre in the Manchester Guardian. At Largs and elsewhere on the Firth where experts abound, they are, of course, mildly critical of the challenger’s form and particularly of her rig, but on the river sides where oceangoing ships are built and along the shore road beyond the Tail of the Bank the only serious complaint seems to be that Charles Nicholson is not a Scot and Camper and Nicholson’s a Scottish yard. Clydesiders of high or low degree, however, really and truly desire the latest challenger to succeed. Why that should be so, after the many failures of Clydedesigned and Clyde-built yachts, may not be easy for Southerners to understand. Having seen—so to say—the Genesta defeated in 1885, the Galatea in 1886, the Thistle in 1887, the Valkyrie 11. in 1893, the Valkyrie 111. in 1895, the Shamrock 11. in 1901, and the Shamrock Ilf. in 1903, they ought, it might be argued, to be “fed up” with America Cup races. The truth is that they are not. Seven times have they seen their dreams of success fade, yet in a month or two after each defeat they were as buoyantly hopeful as ever of—to quote Sir Thomas Lipton—“lifting the cup.” Until she crossed the Atlantic nearly every challenger of my time has been a “wonder ship” which could not by any possibility lose. She was built in a shed from which the public (including newspaper representatives) were by rigidly enforced regulations excluded. Sometimes private detectives were posted hear the sheds to see that none but authorised persons approached. . JEALOUS GUARDIAN. George Lennox Watson, who designed the Valkyries and the second Shamrock, was, perhaps, the most jealous guardian of a challenger’s secrets, but William Fife junr., who was responsible for the forms of the first and third Shamrocks, was not a bad second. That a useful purpose was served by denying reporters a sight of the yachts was, of course, a delusion; it would not have made the slightest difference to the defenders plans even if photographs of the challengers had been sent to New York in advance of the launches.

The first challenger to be launched in the presence of a company which included reporters was the Shamrock 11. We were, indeed, invited to go over and under the yacht before she left the ways, and I recall with some degree of shame that comparatively few of her secrets were discovered by us. Sir Thomas Lipton, you may remember, used to tell the world that when he opened his first shop in Main Street, Anderston, Glasgow, he slept every night under the counter. Standing under the long after overhand of the Shamrock 11. I said to him that he "would have no difficulty’ in sleeping under that counter.” The little joke being greatly to his liking he hurried on to try it on other guests. I heard him tell it to the old Marquis of Dufferin, on whom, apparently, it was lost, no doubt because the noble lord never had a shop with a counter under which he was obliged to deep. Sir Thomas Lipton, unlike some selfmade men who achieve social success, liked to talk about his early struggles, even to .joke about them. When I told him once that an eminent shipbuilder had described him to me as “the great ham-and-egg panjandrum” he was greatly amused. Once I suggested he ought to have “Lipton’s Orphan”—you remember the familiar figure of pig which used to be a feature of his advertisements—in his racing flag instead of a four-leafed shamrock, and he enjoyed the joke. His sense of humour was not, however, very pronounced during a race, as his professional advisers occasionally found to their discomfiture. THE BOATS THAT FAILED. The Thistle was the first challenger to carry my hopes and fears across the Atlantic, but from Harry Hom, the famous yachting correspondent of the Times and the Field, I heard plenty about the earlier failures. Horn sailed in the schooner Livonia, which was challenger in 187 L From what he told me I gathered that in the early races, as in ; the later 'ones, the challengers’’ owners and the crews generally held that the conditions rather than the hull designs and sail plans decided the issues. Looking back, I incline reluctantly to the view that the challengers invariably failed because they were the slower boats. Americans have never hesitated to spend money on hull material, rigging, and canvas, and their crews have been trained so thoroughly that their handling of sails has been, as a rule, perfect. In the later races' challengers have, admitted, not been “starved”; nothing regarded as essential has been omitted on the score of economy. But the cup has generally been defended by syndicates against challengers owned by individuals, and that, it will be agreed, makes a difference. It was suggested once to Charles Barr, the Scot who sailed the • Columbia, that he had greatly improved as a helmsman during his stay in America. “A very ordinary man,” he replied, “can win with a good boat; whereas even a genius must fail with a bad one.” The truth is there in a nutshell, and most of our own professionals have not been blind to it. To date we have lost because we had the slower boats. NOT THE HULL. ; That challengers have not always lost because of their hull forms the Shamrock V. seemed to suggest, but rigging plans and canvas that sets well being factors of speed, we have no right to complain if the advantage of our good hulls has been lost. Yachtsmen everywhere in these islands hope that the lessons of all the early failures have been seriously studied by the owner, designers, and builders of the Endeavour. Williams, the challenger’s professional skipper, has a high tradition to maintain, for many famous skippers have gone on this adventure before him, including John Carter, of Rowhedge, in the Genesta, James Barr, of Gourock, in the Thistle, William Cranfield, of Rowhedge, in the Valkyrie 11., and Valkyrie 111., Archie Hogarth, of Port Bannatyne, in the Shamrock 1., Edward Sycamore, of Brightlingsea, in the Shamrock 11., and Robert Wringe, of Brightlingsea, in the Shamrock 111. All of these were brilliant sailing masters during the great days of British yachting—the early nineties of the old century—and it was not their fault that the cup remained in the possession of the New York Yacht Club.