The Last Days of the Schooner America
by David Gendell
Lyons Press—296 pages: $34.95
In the world of nautical libraries, much has been written about the most famous yacht ever built. Her name was America. I myself have drunk from this Niagara of commentary. Yet now in a new work by author David Gendell – is a text of flawless prose with an eye to the sheer physical beauty and excitement of the great vessel. Gendell’s gripping narrative extends to the Annapolis, Md. boatyard where in 1944 the schooner, by then a rotting hulk, literally disintegrated under the weight of age and weather. But for this reader the heart of his tale lies squarely in the revolutionary concept and birth of a yacht that in 1851 would beat the best of Britain’s sailing fraternity in the first America’s Cup race, a 53-mile course around the country’s Isle of Wight.
The Last Days of the Schooner America is the story of a gambler, a naval architect, the boat itself and what would become the most celebrated ocean race in yachting history. John Cox Stevens, first commodore of the fledgling New York Yacht Club, was the gambler. Stevens was in the market for a new and radical hull. He and a consortium of like-minded punters commissioned a talented, young shipwright, George Steers, to design a 100-foot schooner with a concave clipper entry, clean run aft and dramatically raked masts flying gaff-headed sails. Lacking paper plans, the schooner’s shape emerged at a New York shipyard from the wooden model Steers had carved. In Gendell’s telling, as the yacht took form on the stocks, an invitation arrived from England to join the Royal Yacht Squadron’s summer races. On May 31, 1851, America slid down the ways and in mid-June –floating “powerful and muscular” – sailed for England.
“Less than sixteen weeks after her launch,” the author writes, “America soundly defeated fourteen of England’s finest racing yachts” in a clockwise match in light winds around the English Channel venue. I would have added a few more particulars. The big black schooner, with a local pilot aboard, was last away at 10 a.m. and crossed the finish line at Cowes, midway along the island’s north coast, at 8:47 p.m.; yet with the bulk of the field far behind, a much smaller rival, the English cutter Aurora, was nearly able to catch her. Aurora came in second eight minutes later. There were no time allowances.
As Gendell makes clear, America’s victory was based on “advanced sailmaking, clever rigging, and flawless boat handling … but above all else, the hull shape created by George Steers.” The schooner was, of course, a sporting venture. But as Stevens and his partners struggled to find moneyed competitors willing to sail against them, they decided in the end to sell.
In the next 90-odd years, the iconic vessel went through multiple owners. She ended her days at the Annapolis boatyard, where as Gendell tells us, America “was hauled for the final time.” For the author, this barely remembered bit of maritime real estate is hallowed ground, a site now marked, he writes, by an elegy of “open space, a dumpster, and a parking lot.”