sloops and the so-called Newport Thirties, which were 42 feet over-all and 

 30 feet on the waterline. Among the owners of these boats were a number 

 of men who were to become well known in the yacht-racing world, as they 

 were in other fields: W. S. Douglas, W. Butler Duncan, H. B, Duryea, 

 Ralph N. Ellis, W. S. Gould, J. B. McDonough, E. D. Morgan, James A. 

 Stillman, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Harry Payne Whitney. The owners and 

 racers of the first North Haven dinghies were not so well known, though 

 their names should be enshrined in somebody's yachting Hall of Fame. 

 Among them should be Miss Ellen Hayward, later to become Mrs. Henry 

 Wheeler, winner in 1887 of the first cfficial race held by the first one-design 

 class of which we have any record. It took a long time for women to take 

 a leading place in some of the great yachting centers. Not so at North 

 Haven! Other pioneers among these early North Haven dinghy owners and 

 racers were Dr. C. G. Weld, Alfred Bowditch, Tucker Deland, and Charles 

 K. Cobb. 



One of the earliest of all one-design classes has an unusually appropriate 

 name which all who have studied Latin will recognize: Idem. The first 

 boats were built about 1897-98 by the St. Lawrence Boat Company. Ac- 

 cording to George K. Earle IV (writing on April 13, 1962), eleven boats 

 were built; all are still in existence and six or seven actively race every 

 summer on St. Regis Lake in the Adirondacks, New York. They are gaff- 

 rigged centerboarders 32 feet long. (For the benefit of those who have 

 forgotten their Latin, Idem means Same.) 



After 1900 one-design classes multiplied rapidly, most of them large boats 

 by present one-design standards. Perhaps the best-known boats in these 

 early one-design classes were the New York Thirties, like the Newport 

 Thirties designed and built by Herreshoff. At the time the Thirties began 

 racing they were the smallest yachts permitted to fly the burgee of the 

 New York Yacht Club. 



Smaller one-design classes soon spread like an epidemic and in 1911 the 

 Star class came into being, to become perhaps the best known of all one- 

 design classes, with fleets in many parts of the world. Some of these early 

 one-design classes grew so fast that it took a while for the rules and regu- 

 lations to catch up with their racing activities. The late Commodore George 

 W. Elder, in his delightfully written Forty Years among the Stars,"* gives 

 an example of the irregularity of these regulations. The story was told by 

 George ("Pop") Corry, an almost legendary character in the early days of 

 the Star class. The event occurred before 1907, when the Bug one-design 

 class, predecessor of the Stars, made its appearance. 



* Published in 1955 by Schanen and Jacque, Port Washington, V^isconsin. 

 14 INTRODUCTION 



