Our Sporting Conscience

IN the third race of the fourteenth classic contest for the America’s Cup, recently concluded, drama swept twice across the sparkling sea. First, Shamrock V’s main halliard parted and cost the Irish challenger the day’s race. Second, Enterprise tacked to clear the disabled yacht, sagged off her course, and appeared to be heading back to harbor. It seemed in that dramatic moment that her afterguard, refusing to take the race by default, was going home. But romantic appearances were deceptive. The defender of the worldfamous yachting trophy was merely easing her sails and rigging of their tremendous racing strains. Immediately the tensions had been lessened Enterprise came hard on the wind again and sailed alone around the course to clinch the victory.

Thereafter from spectators and from those who only read the news arose a groaning chorus of lamentation. We, America, had let slip a golden opportunity. We had failed to make the beau geste that would ensure future friendly relations between the United States and Britain. We could have thrown the race (which would n’t have cost us anything, because Enterprise was the better boat) and demonstrated what sportsmen Americans really are. In short, it was a crying shame that the defender had sailed on to hollow victory.

Let me say at once that these popular strictures on the sportsmanship of Enterprise’s afterguard are unjust.

Harold S. Vanderbilt, skipper and manager of the syndicate which owns the defender, was required to continue the one-sided race both by his obligations to his associates and by his club’s agreement with the challenger. Although nothing in the race conditions precluded his throwing the race, he would, by defaulting, have established a precedent from which anything farcical might in future have arisen. Moreover, the gesture of withdrawing after Shamrock’s accident could only have been truly sporting in the event that the challenger, having won three legs on the Cup, had been at that moment dangerously embarked on the fourth decisive race. As matters stood, with Shamrock hopelessly outclassed, default by Enterprise would merely have prolonged the agony.

Then why introduce the incident at all? To indicate in the most striking manner possible that after sixty years of defense of the America’s Cup our sportsmanship is at last a positive quantity. At the risk of quixoticism we like to give the other man a chance. That we have not always liked to, and that sportsmanship was not spontaneously induced in the pure air of America, will be shown in the following analysis of the Cup’s defense.

I

This Cup, it can hardly be forgotten, was won by the famous schooner yacht America in 1851 in a handicap race against British yachts around the Isle of Wight. It is pertinent to remark here for its bearing on a future point that the course led the racers eastward around the Nab lightship and thence around the Wight, keeping the island on the starboard hand. America, coming down on the lightship, was running wing and wing (a ticklish point of steering) and, with four English boats keeping her from getting through, did not pass around the lightship, but left it on her port hand.

The day after the race she was protested on the ground that she should have passed outside the lightship, leaving it to starboard. The protest was disallowed and America was granted the Squadron Hundred Guinea trophy when it was proved to the satisfaction of the regatta committee that she had not been specifically instructed to leave the lightship to starboard.

Complete details of this epochmaking race are lost to history or else locked in the vaults of the Royal Yacht Squadron, but it seems from geographical evidence that the committee was magnanimous to a fault in dismissing the protest. The Nab lightship lay (it has been replaced by a tower) three miles east of the Isle of Wight. As the owners of the America did not appreciate the necessity of leaving it to starboard (that is, passing around it) they were under no obligation to go anywhere near it. They might have left it a hundred yards to port, or one mile, or, by skirting the eastern shore of the island, nearly three miles to port, and gained a decided superiority over their competitors, who knew from past experience that the ship was to be left to starboard. Yet the America bore down on the mark in close competition with her fellows exactly as if her owners had understood the instructions, and at the last moment cut it to port. I do not give this episode as an instance of American lack of fair play, but as a precedent in the official treatment of a foreigner which we later bent to our own ends.

The Squadron trophy, subsequently to be known as the America’s Cup, was brought triumphantly home, and in 1857 was deeded in trust to the New York Yacht Club by the surviving owners of the America as a perpetual challenge trophy for ‘friendly competition between foreign countries.’ Our Civil War intervened and the first friendly competition for the Cup did not occur until 1870, when one James Ashbury of the Royal Thames Yacht Club challenged with his schooner Cambria. The tone of his challenge was anything but friendly, and the manner in which we edited it and permitted Cambria to try for the Cup was of like texture. Swords were halfway out of their scabbards before, during, and after the race, in which we successfully defended the trophy.

Ashbury virtually demanded that we sail the race under English rules. We naturally refused, and when it became apparent that the terms of a match could not be arranged by ‘mutual consent’ we fell back upon a clause in the deed of gift which offered the challenger the right to compete for the Cup against the entire New York Yacht Club fleet in its annual regatta. The challenger protested that to pit one boat against many was unfair. We countered that in this way the Cup was originally won, the America competing against fourteen British yachts. Our statement was true enough, but had nothing to do with the dispute. America raced against a fleet each yacht of which was striving for individual possession of a prize. Cambria raced against a fleet of twenty-three Americans, all striving their mightiest to keep the lone challenger from winning the prize. Cambria was thus beaten at the start and was lucky indeed to finish in tenth position.

Although it seems strange that such an unequal contest should have been entered into either by challenger or by defenders, it must be remembered that in those aggressive days fair play was in an embryonic state. Racing by amateurs for cash prizes was an accepted thing, and in the small classes, I am told, it was not considered impolite to cut a competitor’s halliards with a sickle (carried for that purpose) if you were lucky enough to come near him. Even within the memory of presentday racing skippers sand ballast was surreptitiously dumped overboard to lighten ship, and crew members accidentally fell in and swam ashore when the weather fell soft.

That Ashbury did not feel that he had been too outrageously used was evidenced by his second challenge the following year. But he did take a positive stand against racing one vessel against America. So vehement was his protest that the New York Yacht Club laid it before the surviving donor of the Cup, George L. Schuyler, to learn whether we might, with due regard to our tenure of the trophy and our holy obligation to keep it at all costs, pit a single boat against the challenger. In a sportsmanlike statement, so full and so logical that in the light of modern standards it seems naïve, Schuyler wrote that a match race, as called for in the deed of gift, was a race between two vessels and that we might therefore with entire propriety select only one defender to race against the challenger.

By this decision, which aroused vigorous public protest, American sportsmanship developed sufficiently to be visible to the naked eye. But it was still a small, pale embryo. When Ashbury sailed over in his new schooner Livonia he found that, while we were willing to make a match race of the second contest, we were formidably prepared to match any one of four boats against his. We had one boat for light weather, another for heavy weather, and two more for use in case of accident to either of the two regulars. Livonia, needless to say, had only herself for all varieties of weather and accident.

In a friendly atmosphere heavily charged with the most amazing ultimatums from both challenger and defending club, the series of four out of seven races commenced, with Livonia pitted against our light-weather boat, Columbia. The weather was light, and Columbia won. In a freshening breeze she also won the second race, but under circumstances presently to be related which can only be called discreditable.

Livonia, however, won the third heat in hard weather, because, despite our warlike preparedness in number of boats, the condition of the navy was below even a peace-time standard. One yacht was in dry dock, another had torn her sails beyond hope of quick repair, and the third, the selection for the day, was damaged while actually towing to the line. It was suggested that Magic, winner of the previous year’s free-for-all, be drafted in the emergency, and Ashbury acquiesced. But the race committee, with a noble sense of justice, handed down the decision that we must stick to our original four. In this exigency we had to fall back again on Columbia, which had been strained by her two victories and whose paid crew had been celebrating. Against such initial handicaps and with subsequent damage to Columbia’s steering gear and rigging, not even our unconquerable American enthusiasm could prevail, and Livonia won by fifteen minutes.

Although Columbia’s crew’, having sailed three straight races, were rated as heroes by the sportsmen of the day, they were not put to the supreme test of meeting Livonia a fourth time. Sappho, our heavy-weather boat, was ready for that contest. Sailed in a spanking breeze, the race went to Sappho by an ample margin.

The fifth race was run over the inside course starting in the Narrows of New York Harbor, and we had Palmer, our second light-weather boat, groomed and waiting at the line. But the wind freshened before the start and Sappho was again sent away, justifying our generalship by winning handsomely in a strong October westerly.

This concluded a series from which Ashbury departed vowing that if he ever challenged again he would bring a lawyer with him. By certain claims and actions the challenger had succeeded in making himself ridiculous before he left these shores; but that he required more than ordinary sporting spirit to cope with our yachtsmen was proved by the circumstances of the second race, above referred to as discreditable.

It was a leeward and windward race, the outer mark being stationed twenty miles seaward of Sandy Hook lightship. No definite instructions having been laid down for rounding this mark, the owner of Columbia boarded the committee boat just prior to the start to ask which way he must turn it. He was told that he might turn it as he pleased. As we interpret sportsmanship nowadays it thereupon became, if not the duty, at least the moral obligation of the committee to give the same oral permission to Livonia. This was not done,

Livonia got away in the lead, reached the stakeboat first, and, in accordance with British custom in cases where definite instructions are lacking, rounded it to starboard. To do so meant jibing around. To jibe in the sea that was running, and with the big topsails she was carrying, meant losing time and windward position while she flattened in her sheets for the reach home. As the British boat was being set down to leeward in this manœuvre, the American defender came along, hardened her sheets before she reached the mark, and luffed around, leaving it to port. With both boats straightened out for the close reach back, their positions were reversed. The American led from that moment and subsequently won.

The owner of the British boat promptly protested, claiming the race on the score that Columbia had rounded contrary to sailing instructions. In this assertion he did not quite stick to the facts. The regatta committee no less promptly disallowed the protest, claiming that the printed regulations for the course left the matter of turning the stake optional. Again truth was slighted. In our search for evidences of early American sportsmanship it is proper to ask why, if the sailing instructions left the matter of turning the stake optional, the owner of Columbia had to row over to the committee specifically to inquire whether he might round it either way.

But this claim of the committee was tacitly abandoned in its formal report on the protest written the same day, when it related that since the inauguration of the club it had been the settled rule that the manner of turning a mark was optional unless specified to the contrary. And ‘as far as it is known to your committee the same rule holds good in England now. It can be stated with certainty, however, that such was the rule when the America won the cup in 1851.’ Whereupon the committee proved its rectitude by delving nineteen years into the past to quote the dismissed protest in the case of the America and the Nab lightship.

Let us briefly review these two cases to see if there really was any similarity between them. America was the visiting yacht. In the absence of specific instructions which were commonly known to her competitors, she cut a mark and left it to port. By so doing she gained something, though it may have been very little. She was protested and the protest was magnanimously disallowed. . . . Livonia was the visiting yacht. In the absence of specific instructions which had been given orally to her competitor, she rounded a mark to starboard and lost heavily by so doing. She protested Columbia and her protest was disallowed.

In short, the two cases were not parallel. In order to justify the committee’s ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ standard of sportsmanship we can only assume that it lacked two very important senses — the sense of fair play and a sense of the ridiculous.

II

Yet the struggling spirit of American sportsmanship did not quite expire under this hard usage. England had had enough contact with it to leave us severely alone for fourteen long years; but in 1876, only five years after the Ashbury fiasco, Canada stepped forward with a challenge from the Royal Canadian Yacht Club of Toronto. It was accepted, and when the rival yachts came to the starting line for a two-out-of-three match it was seen that we had retained only one boat to defend the Cup. By so much we had advanced, though even that little had not been without a struggle. In response to the challenger’s ingenuous question as to whether he should have to race against one boat, or one of four, or a whole fleet, we told him that ‘a yacht’ would be on hand to sail each race of the match. (At least we have not lacked a sense of dignity.) Later we unbent, and in the face of much popular opposition the defending club, by a vote of eleven to five, agreed to race only one yacht throughout the series. That one, as it proved, was enough, and the challenger was soundly trounced in two straight races.

Although we had now defended the Cup on merit alone without benefit of casuists or of rear-guard interference, sportsmanship suffered a severe setback following Canada’s second challenge in 1881. The second challenger, like the first, flew the colors of an inland lake club, though in this case it was the Bay of Quinte Yacht Club. She was late in building, and to get here in time for the match was dismasted, careened, and conveyed to New York via the Erie Canal. Late in building, this Canadian yacht was also late in sailing, and gave the defender almost no opposition. Again we had won on merit alone.

But the spectacle of a challenger attacking us through the back door, so to speak, was too much for an alarmed sportocracy. Early in the winter following the second Canadian contest the New York Yacht Club gave the America’s Cup back to George L. Schuyler, the sole surviving original owner, and from him received it again with a new deed of gift. It has frequently been asked whether the club, having originally received the Cup in trust, had any right to give it back and whether Schuyler, not being the legal heir of the other owners of the America, had the power to reconvey it with a new deed. But that is splitting hairs, and, like James Ashbury, we should need a lawyer to decide the point.

The important facts are that by the new deed of gift the Cup was open for contest only by a foreign club having ‘an ocean water-course on the sea or on an arm of the sea (or one which combines both)’ and that ‘vessels intending to compete for this Cup must proceed under sail on their own bottoms to the port where the contest is to take place.’ By these two clauses we perpetually removed the menace of challenges from Canadian lake clubs and confounded their knavish tricks of sluicing yachts at us through inland waterways. The new deed was hailed as a great advance in yachtsmanship, in that it prevented the construction of challengers too light to race in the open sea. That it did not prevent us from building defenders so light as to be useless after a few months of highly selective racing was sufficiently proved in the nineties and nineteen-hundreds. Confident, in 1881, that our rear-guard defense of the Cup was adequate against future assault, we turned our faces seaward and hoped for another challenge from England, far, far across the stormy waters. It came in 1885, and with it a new but short-lived era in sportsmanship.

III

Sir Richard Sutton, on behalf of the Royal Yacht Squadron, challenged with his cutter Genesta and was met at the starting line by the Boston sloop Puritan. This is more than a mere figure of speech. Through innocent miscalculation of distances Puritan fouled Genesta a few moments after the preparatory signal and broke the challenger’s bowsprit off short. The Cup committee immediately and properly disqualified the defender (for the fault had been only hers) and the challenger was informed that if she sailed over the forty-mile course and finished within the time limit of seven hours the day’s race would be hers.

This stipulation of the race committee did not usher in the new era of sportsmanship, as we should have awarded the British yacht the race without the forty-mile string. So, at least, thought an American friend of Sir Richard’s aboard Genesta, who questioned the possibility of completing the course in seven hours without a bowsprit. Our committee was engaged in explaining to this traitor how a spinnaker pole could be rigged to replace the bowsprit when Sir Richard cut the explanation short. He declined to take the race by default. Here, at last, was real sportsmanship that anyone could recognize. The committee gladly and quickly accepted Sir Richard’s generous refusal, and the Cup was still untarnished by alien hands. Upon the completion of repairs the match was started afresh and was won by Puritan in two straight races.

Sir Richard’s action so touched the warm heart of America that the very pinnacle of good feeling in international yachting was reached the next year. Lieutenant William Henn, representing the Royal Northern Yacht Club, brought over his cutter Galatea and was decisively defeated by a second Boston yacht, the Mayflower. No fouls and no recriminations marred the contest, and after a year’s stay in this country Lieutenant Henn and his wife sailed back to England leaving a host of friends behind them.

The Cup contest of 1887, when a third Boston boat, Volunteer, defended against Thistle, a Scottish challenger, did not pass off quite as smoothly as the preceding one, as our democracy objected to Thistle’s having been built behind closed doors. This secrecy was dictated by the failure of the syndicated challengers to attain beforehand an understanding restricting the size of the boats. A clause in the deed stipulated that a challenge, accompanied by a customhouse certificate of measurement, must be presented six months before the day of the proposed race. The challengers determined to derive what advantage they could from this clause and have their vessel well under way before her dimensions were published, thus leaving us only six months in which to design, build, and tune up a defender.

Already considerably roused by this secrecy, our indignation rose to white heat when Thistle arrived in New York, was measured, and found to be nearly seventeen inches over her designated waterline length. Although it is difficult and frequently impossible to foretell that a boat will float to her designed waterline, and although this extra length worked to Thistle’s disadvantage in increased time allowance, our yachtsmen knew that we had become the victims of skullduggery. The Cup committee almost refused to allow her to race, and was only pacified when George L. Schuyler, still surviving, ruled in Thistle’s favor.

The ensuing match was uninteresting, as the Boston yacht from the thriceinspired pencil of Edward Burgess was much more than the equal of the challenger. Fair racing tactics were employed by both sides, and this, the seventh, contest for the America’s Cup might not figure at all in the evolution of sportsmanship if it had not been for a curious aftermath. Directly following the conclusion of the match a member of the Thistle party, one Charles Sweet, submitted a tender for a new challenge. Almost immediately after the receipt of this communication the defending club altered its deed of gift a second time, obtaining Mr. Schuyler’s signature to a document which has been characterized as ‘a mixture of bad sportsmanship, bad law, and bad English.’ At the meeting which accepted the new instrument for the defense of the Cup, Mr. Sweet’s challenge was rejected as not conforming to the deed of gift. This was tactless, as the club did not explicitly name the second deed or the third.

It was even worse than tactless. Mr. Sweet, a Scotchman then having business in and living in New York, was half owner of the 53-foot imported cutter Clara, which had never been beaten in its many races against local boats in American waters. Clara was a product of the designing genius of Will Fife of Fairlie, Scotland. It was thought by many yachtsmen that Fife could be as successful with a 70-footer as he had been with the 53-footer, whereas the ability of Edward Burgess to design unbeatable 85-footers was generally acknowledged. Sweet’s challenge was for a 70-footer. Critics said quite openly that we were afraid of losing the treasured Cup.

They said more when the ramifications of the new deed were admitted to the light of day. Experience had shown that it was difficult to lift the trophy. British yachtsmen now said that certain clauses of the new deed made it absolutely impossible. Chief among the offensive clauses was one hinting that the questionable practice of building behind closed doors must be abandoned. In actuality it required the principal dimensions of the challenging vessel to be given not six but ten months in advance, these dimensions being ‘length on load waterline, beam at load waterline, and extreme beam, and draught of water, which dimensions shall not be exceeded.’ Declaring that the stipulations of this clause would give America ample time and information to build a yacht to defeat any challenger, the principal yacht clubs of Europe vowed that they would never challenge under such an outrageous document.

With offended dignity we pointed to a clause of this highly complicated deed reading, ‘The club challenging for the Cup and the club holding the same may, by mutual consent, make any arrangement satisfactory to both as to the dates, courses, number of trials, rules, and sailing regulations, and any and all other conditions of the match, in which case, also, the ten months’ notice may be waived.’

If this extraordinary clause concluded with the word ‘match,’ and if the entire deed consisted only of this abbreviated sentence, it could not then be called extraordinary. It would be such a simple, comprehensive document as gentlemen and sportsmen might meet under for the arrangement of terms. But the ‘mutual consent’ clause is not a twentieth part of a document bristling with ‘musts’ and ‘shalls’ and arbitrary rules.

Nevertheless, this is the clause under which matches have been arranged since 1887, for Mr. Schuyler lived his life and the deed cannot be changed again. When we were afraid of losing the Cup to 70-footers, ‘mutual consent’ was impossible of attainment. But when, a few years later, our sporting ethics were thought to have fallen into disrepute and we were frantically anxious to receive a challenge from anybody, we agreed to race under the terms of the old deed. We did provide on that occasion (and I include mention of the provision because of the defiant quaintness of the accompanying phraseology) that, if the challenging club won, the Cup would be held under the terms of the new deed, ‘inasmuch as this Club believes it to be in the interest of all parties, and the terms of which are distinct, fair, and sportsmanlike.’

Specifically, the New York Yacht Club rejected the Sweet challenge of 1887 and Lord Dunraven’s challenge for 70-footers in 1889; and in 1893, after Dunraven had persuaded or bulldozed the Royal Yacht Squadron into backing a new challenge, we accepted a contest with the 85-footer Valkyrie II. We threw overboard the ten-months clause except as it applied to waterline length, and, instead of the two-in-three match demanded by the new deed of gift, submitted to a series of three out of five races.

IV

American sportsmanship — no, the qualifying adjective is unnecessary. Sportsmanship reached its absolute nadir in the sphere of yachting during the Dunraven period. The first match of 1893 (Valkyrie II—Vigilant) passed with only minor acrimony, but the second match of 1895 (Valkyrie IIIDefender) flared up in a conflagration of charges and counter charges which did not die down until Lord Dunraven had resigned his honorary membership in the New York Yacht Club and had been concurrently expelled by that indignant body. The challenger, of a belligerent and suspicious nature, accused the defender of having shifted ballast between races in the dead of night. Inexcusable delay in the remeasurement of the defending yacht gave color to Dunraven’s accusation that he had been defrauded, and the club was obliged to retain such legal and nautical lights as the Honorable Joseph H. Choate and Captain Alfred T. Mahan, U.S.N., to prove in Star Chamber proceedings that Dunraven was wrong.

Wrong he certainly was, and it was most unfortunate that the club should have had to draft a long resolution beginning, ‘The Earl of Dunraven, an honorary member of the club, has publicly charged foul play on the part of the Defender,’and ending, ‘Lord Dunraven, by this course, has forfeited the high esteem which led to his election as an honorary member of this club, therefore Resolved, that the privileges of honorary membership heretofore extended to the Earl of Dunraven are hereby withdrawn, and that his name be removed from the list of honorary members of the club.’ The necessity for passing this resolution was the more painful because less than twenty-five years before, at the conclusion of the Ashbury fiasco, the club had been obliged to write, ‘Whereas, inasmuch as Commodore Ashbury has charged the New York Yacht Club with sharp practice and unfair and unsportsmanlike conduct in their dealings with him, Resolved, that they cannot with any respect compete for the cups which were deposited with Commodore Bennett by Commodore Ashbury, to be sailed for by the yachts of the New York Yacht Club, and that the secretary be instructed to return the cups to Commodore Ashbury.’

The Dunraven affair threw American sportsmanship into such bold relief that from that time to this no member of the Royal Yacht Squadron (the organization which bears the same relation to English yachting that the New York club bears to American yachting) has challenged for the Cup. While the smoke of the Dunraven controversy still poisoned the atmosphere a challenge was received from a minor English club, but this was withdrawn a few days after its acceptance. Since that day Sir Thomas Lipton, representing the Royal Ulster Yacht Club, has been the only challenger for the world’s major sporting trophy.

Since the formation of Sir Thomas’s laudable habit and since the turn of the century we have little by little improved our standards of sportsmanship. The objectionable ten-months clause has never been insisted upon except as it relates to the challenger’s waterline length. The next clause in the deed of gift, that stipulating that the challenger must sail from her country of origin to the scene of the races, has been lightened to permit her to be towed by her convoying vessel. Dunraven complained with justice that he was so hampered by sight-seeing vessels as to be unable to sail his course, and we have amended our laws to give revenue cutters full power to patrol the races. Our defender of 1903, Reliance, was so extremely light and speedy that an ocean-going yacht had no chance in racing against her, and we now build defenders which are as strong and seaworthy as our challengers.

Not all of these betterments in racing conditions have come spontaneously, and some indeed have been marked by extreme reluctance. In 1912, for instance, Sir Thomas submitted his fourth formal challenge and made it conditional upon our building a defender to conform with the Universal rule of yacht design. This sensible rule had been promulgated by ourselves to bar unseaworthy freaks from yacht racing. In the years intervening, from 1905, virtually all American racing yachts had been built to it. But in 1912 we were, perhaps, a little tired of receiving challenges from Sir Thomas and from no one else, and we rejected his proposal, declining to be bound by our own rule. The next year good Sir Thomas obliged with an unconditional challenge and we accepted, graciously informing him that we would build to the Universal rule. Little by little, as has been implied, we were becoming human.

Owing to the World War, the match originating in 1913 was not sailed until 1920; and then, with conditions fairer for the challenger than they had ever been, Shamrock IV, sailing against Resolute, came within one race of taking the trophy home. But it is well to recall, in the light of what happened to Shamrock V’s main halliard in the 1930 races, that the same accident to Resolute gave the challenger the edge in 1920. Shamrock IV did not transcend the rules by throwing the race which mishap had given her. She accepted it and won the second race on her own ability. But she lost the next three to the speedy Resolute.

V

In grouping certain facts in the foregoing I have recounted nothing that the student of American yachting cannot find in the various histories of the sport — Stone’s, Stephens’s, Thompson’s, and Coffin’s. The general public, not sufficiently interested to consult these authorities, remembers only that there has been something, shall I say, grasping in our defense of the blue ribbon of the seas. The public’s emotional reaction to half-known truths has been the devout hope that Sir Thomas Lipton, multiple challenger for the trophy, will take it home before he dies. It is well, therefore, that these truths should be assembled to illustrate the slow growth of an American sporting spirit.

And it is nothing short of refreshing to relate that the 1930 match was marked by unquestionable fairness from beginning to end. A young controlling element in the defending club, truly representative of the modern American ideal of sportsmanship, led the way in generosity in laying down the conditions for the match. These conditions included the construction of the racers to Lloyd’s scantling rules (as a result of which Enterprise could sail to England and there race as effectively as she did at home); the sailing of the match over an open, currentless course which is as fair to the stranger as to the captain possessed of local knowledge; and a series consisting of four out of seven races, wherein virtually nothing is left to luck and everything to yacht efficiency and skill in handling.

The tone of the racing was also admirable. On her arrival in American waters Shamrock V was offered Resolute, ex-defender, as trial horse against which to tune to racing efficiency. The owners, the designers, the afterguards, and the paid crews of the international contenders mingled in friendliness before the races started, and with no recriminations along the way were still friends when the series ended. After the match American and British yachting representatives met and, with an eye to the next challenge and a reduction of expense, barred the below-deck contrivances and the light-weight mast which had been so effective in giving Enterprise the edge over her opponent. The criticism that these contrivances should have been barred before rather than after the match may be met with the rejoinder that clever naval architects are always one or two inventions ahead of the rule makers.

A further criticism — and one which is fairly general among the American admirers of Sir Thomas — is that our policy of selecting a defender from several candidates foredooms the challenger to defeat. Perhaps this criticism is just, though I hold to the belief that a challenger in throwing down the gauntlet says, in effect, ‘Here is my yacht, which I consider better than anything you can bring against her. Beat her if you can.’ Perhaps one day the rising cost of Cup defense will so alter our ideas of sportsmanship that the present practice of building several potential defenders will seem outmoded and outrageous.

In all events we can now, after the fourteenth defense of the Cup, replace it in its vault with every feeling of satisfaction. We Americans have always been seamen, and whenever the starting whistle blew and the sealawyering ceased we have outsailed the challengers. After sixty years of painful evolution we have at last become sportsmen. We may say for once that the Cup is honestly ours. In future may we never say less.