June 25, 1898.] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
821 
notable and most successful vessels, first of all the 
schooner America. Fast, seaworthy and staunch in 
iDuild, she excelled all of her fellows ; hut they all shared 
in a lesser degree these admirable characteristics. They 
were built for actual service in cruising, the keel type 
originally predominating, and as a class in default of 
much actual racing, the early yachts and their cousins, 
the New York pilot boats, were noted for the speed, 
whether in smooth water or at sea, alongside of the com- 
rtiercial vessels of the day. Though starting thus auspi- 
ciously with America and her mates and the winning of 
the first great international race in 1851, the progress 
of j'-achting in the next twenty years was by no means 
phenomenal, and in fact its condition in 1873 showed 
little or no advance in the very important branches of 
design and construction oA'^er 1848. 
The sport as a whole had prospered; though through 
the 50S its growth was slow, and just when better things 
were promised it was nearly extinguished by the Re- 
bellion. _ The end of the war, however, witnessed the in- 
auguration of one of the great eras in American yacht- 
ing, that of the big schooners. Between 1864 and 1873 were 
built such noted yachts as Sappho, Palrner, Resolute, 
Henrietta, Tidal Wave, Magic, Fleetwing, Columbia, 
Wanderer, Dreadnaught, Dauntless, Vesta, Idler and 
Alarm. Even though some could lay little claim to dis- 
tinction save in the matter of size, the fleet, numbering 
some thirty odd vessels of from 100 to over 300 tons, was an 
imposing one, and under the conditions of yacht racing 
in those days large fields of starters were the rule, and 
even the slower yachts were accustomed to race in the 
hopes of some lucky chance. Schooner racing, and in 
vessels of large tonnage, was the one great feature of 
yachting in the 76s; at the other end of the scale Was the 
sandbagger, either cat-rigged or jib and mainsail, and 
the little centerboard sloop yacht of the Gowanus and 
Penny Bridge type, but the sloop rig was still second 
to the schooner in the larger classes, and no one ever 
imagined that the day would come when the huge 
single-sticker Maria would be dwarfed by a Vigilant or 
Defender of the same rig. The fleet by this time had 
increased to about 500 yachts registered in the lists of the 
day, and there were thirty clubs in the United States, 
with the Royal Canadian Y. C. in Toronto and the Royal 
Halifax in Halifax. The number of races sailed in 1873, 
as officially recorded, was sixty-four. The spott was 
firmly established and popular; it had the active support 
of such wealthy and prominent patrons of sport in gen- 
eral as Bennett, Douglas, the Lorillards, Osgood and 
Osborne, besides others who w^ere distinctively yachts- 
men; and at the other end were numerous owners of 
small racing craft, who sailed constantly in the regular 
regattas and also in private matches for large prizes. 
The weak point of American yachting in 1873 was the 
technical side, relating to the designing and building. 
The fleet, both large and small, showed a marked retro- 
gression from the daj'' of Steers and the America. The keel 
boat had disappeared save for a dozen of the largest 
schooners, such as Sappho, Dauntless, Fleetwing and 
Dreadnaught, and the centerboards, which made up 
almost the entire yacht fleet, were practically of one 
type, large as M^ell as small. Assuming that it was ne- 
cessary or desirable to confine the whole designing of 
a nation to one single type, it would ptobably have been 
impossible to have devised a worse one than that which 
was distinctively the national type of American yacht in 
1873. Its characteristics were excessive beam for length, 
very light draft and depth of hold, light displacement, 
inside ballast of stone, slag or possibly pig and scrap 
iron, little or not overhangs and an excessive sail plan, 
with a weak and faulty construction. In the smallest 
yachts, the open sandbag catboats and jib and mainsail 
boats, sailed by experts who could swim ashore in case 
of the frequent capsize, the type was bad enough; it he- 
tame seriously dangerous Avhen enlarged into the cabin 
sloop of 40 to 70ft. waterline, and infinitely worse when 
further enlarged to make the typical centerboard schoon- 
er, with a draft of 6ft. on a waterline of upward of lOOft. 
As was largely the case in all branches of naval work, 
there was at that day in yachting nothing of the nature 
of systematic designing. The builders, with whom the 
designs originated in the form of crude models, were 
men of limited education, with no practical training out- 
side the ordinary routine of the building yard. They were 
one and all wedded to one single theory of design em- 
bodied in the typical craft above outlined. In essentials 
a new yacht, large or small, was like the old ones, the 
whole range of experiment being limited to a varying of 
the extremes of beam, light draft and sail area. The 
construction of the day was as stereotyped as the model, 
practically the sail boat construction adapted to the 
yacht, with flat plank keel, light floors, and inadequate 
bracing and fastening. 
As a class, the builders, the sole arbiters of design, 
were prejudiced in favor of their own pet ideas, and 
ignorant alike of the principles of systematic designing 
and of the progress made in their trade in other parts of 
the world. There were a few of unquestioned genius, 
though hampered by the lack of a technical education, 
like Capt. Bob Fish, and some were more uniformly suc- 
cessful in their work than others, whose fame perhaps 
rested on one particular craft, which they were never 
after able to equal. But there was conspicuously no one 
who could claim to be a worthy successor of George 
Steers; and the science of naval design as then represent- 
ed by yachting was on a far lower plane than in the 
days of the yacht America, the pilot boat Mary Taylor, 
the American clipper ship, and other nautical triumphs 
of which Americans are justly proud. Through her fast 
ocean passages and successful international races the 
big schooner Sappho, as rebuilt by Capt. Bob Fish, did 
much to sustain in foreign waters the fame of the 
schooner America, but she stood very far above the 
standard of the fleet of the day as a whole. 
In the important matters of organization and co-opera- 
tion among clubs, yachting was far behind other soorts. 
There was no semblance of union between the different 
clubs; not infrequently even harmony was lacking. Each 
looked out for itself as best it could, and there was no 
organized attempt on the part of the clubs or of in- 
dividual yachtsmen to advance the orogress of the sport-. 
The racing was limited to the old-fashioned "regatta." 
frequently a closed race and held without regard to simi- 
lar events of other clubs, Though large fleets tiirned 
out for these events, they were comparatively few in num- 
ber, each club holding an "annual regatta" early in the 
season and perhaps a "fall regatta" as well. Regular 
series of open races throughout the season were few, 
and the best racing was found in the special races, 
sweepstakes or private matches, such as were frequently 
sailed. The merits of a yacht were determined rather 
by a few notable victories over large fleets than by the 
tabulated record of a large number of races through the 
season against yachts of her own class. The absolute 
independence of the yacht clubs resulted in universal 
confusion in the matter of rules, and also In a generally 
poor standard of yachting legislation and racing usasre. 
Each club had its own rule of measurement, and while 
the majority were based on the single factor of length 
there was a wide difference in the details of the rule, 
so that no two clubs had the same method. Some 
measured the waterline only, some the over all length 
only, while more combined the two in varying pro- 
nortions of one-half, one-third or one-fifth of the over- 
hang added to the waterline. The New York Y. C. at this 
time, imtuediately following two international contests 
with British yachts of large displacement, had found it 
cxoedient to adopt the "cubic contents" rule, practi- 
cally the actual bulk of the vessel, including top_ sides. 
Even where the measurement rule was the same in two 
clubs, the class limits were probably dift'erent, so that 
there were serious obstacles in the way of open and 
interclub races. 
In the matter of the sailing rules of the road and 
general racing methods, starting, timiner, etc.. there was 
as little uniformity as in measurement. Each club had its 
own rules, changed at will without notice to others, and 
often in deference to mere local considerations; so that, 
in addition to the lack of uniformity, the rules in them- 
selves were very defective. 
The yachting literature of the day calls for little notice; 
there were no American works on yachting; in fact, there 
were very few English. The best of these by far, Mr. 
P. R. Marett's- "Yacht Building." was published here in 
1872 by the New York branch of the London publishers, 
and in 1870 a copy of an earlier edition had been brought 
over by Mr. Robert Center. Mr. Center was one of the 
party on the schooner Fleetwing in the great ocean race 
from New York to Cowes in December, 1866. afterward 
spending several years abroad. In 1871. at his sugges- 
tion, and with Marett's book as an aid, Mr. A. Gary 
Smith undertook the making^ of a design on paper, in 
place of the block model then in universal use. as the first 
step to the construction of a keel cutter, the famous 
Vindex. The yachtsman of 1873 deoended for his yacht- 
ing news upon the daily papers, mainly the leading New 
York papers, several of which had yachting reporters 
of ability and experience. In the way of periodicals, the 
old Aquatic Monthly boasted of a yachting department, 
sandwiched in with its archery, horse racing, croquet, 
billiards, etc. 
The ef?orts of the yachting writers of the day, both 
professionals and amateurs, who wrote over the nom de 
plumes of Devoted Yachtsman and similar terms, were 
directed almost exclusively to the indiscriminate lauda- 
tion of the American centerboard type and of the sloop 
rig. Such thin gs as the broad discussion of technical 
matters pertaining to yachting, intelligent and unpreju- 
diced criticism, and suggestions for improvement, were 
practically unknown. Where all was already perfect 
what room could exist for either? The proverbially dis- 
putatious proclivities of all j^achtsmen found vent in 
discussions as to the value of half an inch of dead rise, 
more or less, as a vital factor of design, or in disputes 
over the merits of one individual builder over another. So 
far as the actual work of reporting the races was con- 
cerned, on the part of the leading papers it was well 
done, b}^ able and experienced yachting reporters, but 
these gentlemen had no inclination to Avander into the 
field of free criticism, and if they had done so their work 
would have been condemned both by their superiors in 
the office and the yachting public for which they wrote. 
In the rather important detail of an annual Yacht List, 
Neils Olsen, the present veteran superintendent of the 
New York Y. C, then compiled and published a small, 
but very complete and accurate, list of yachts, clubs, 
races, etc. 
It must be confessed that the period in which Forest 
AND Stream began its existence was the dullest and 
least productive in the history of American yachting. 
For about ten years there was practically no material 
progress in design, in spite of the large amount of ocean 
cruising, ocean racing and international racing in Amer- 
ican and British waters. Following the great ocean 
race of 1866, the three yachts which competed returned 
to this side of the Atlantic. Sappho, Dauntless, Meteor, 
Enchantress made repeated passages back and forth, 
competing in races in English waters. Dauntless and 
Cambria sailed an ocean race from Queenstown to New 
York, and many international races were sailed on this 
side, for the America Cup, the Bennett cups and other 
trophies, by the British yachts Cambria and Livonia, and 
the American fleet. In spite of the grand scale on which 
j^acht racing was conducted, in j-achts of great size and 
imposing apoearance, for stakes of great A^alue, and with 
strong international rivalr}'. the course of design was 
actually backward instead of forward. 
Sa'^nho. whose career really dates from her rebuild- 
ing in 1869, as she was a failure when built in 1867, stands 
as the best yacht of this era of the great schooners, but 
she was exceptional rather than typical; the real repre- 
sentatives of the American model of this period were 
Tidal Wave (long known from the marked peculiarities 
of her design as "the snake with a toad in her belly," 
built in 1870) and Mohawk, built in 1875, whose cap- 
size and sinking in New York Bay in sight of the club 
house in the following year resulted in the drowning of 
her owner. Com. Garner, his wife and several friends. 
Mohawk, with her draft of but 6ft. on a waterline of 
I2ift., was neither an accident nor an exception, but the 
natural and legitimate product of the theories of yacht 
design then universally accepted in this country by own- 
ers, builders and 5^achtsmen iDoth amateur and profession- 
al. She was a typical centerboard "skimming dish," as 
were the smallest catboats, the sloops, small and large, 
and most of the vessels of her own rig. The story of 
over a century of yachting is plainly told in the two 
words America— Mohawk; £t retrogressjori from the re- 
cognized principles of good design, which brought honor 
and triumph, to baseless fallacies and inexcusable ignor- 
ance, bringing disgrace and death. 
The whole history of American yachting as chron- 
icled in the Forest and Stream is a lengthy one^ and 
can only be outlined in its more prominent points. Going 
back a little further than its birth, the year T871 brought 
a shock to all truly patriotic yachtsmen in the shape of 
various heretical ideas imported from England by the 
late Robert Center. This gentleman, to the horror even 
of his friends, .started in to violate all proprieties by build- 
ing a yacht after models and methods directly opposed 
to those then held sacred by all true Americans. The 
case looked bad enough at the outset, when it was first 
known that, in place of the conventional skimming disb 
model, Mr. Center . actually contemplated a cutter, a 
keel boat, of great depth, withotit a centerboard, and 
with the full cutter rig. It was worse, however, when 
Mr. Center, with singiflar perversity, refused to place 
himself completely in the hands of some inspired builder 
who would whittle a model representing the outside sur- 
face of the frames, and announced that the yacht would 
be built entirely from a design on paper, made in all jts 
details before the construction was commenced. l.he 
final revelation capped the climax; instead of nice, light, 
soft wood, loosely nailed together, the yacht was actually 
to be built of hard, heavy iron in all of her parts save 
the deck, the keel being made specially thick to serve as 
ballast It was only natural that the average professional 
builder and boat sailor should declare that it was im- 
possible to build a vessel without a block model, and thaC 
an iron hull would never float; but this display of ignor- 
ance was by no means confined to this class; yachts- 
men who by education and intelligence _ should have 
known far better were loud in the exploitation of the 
^^lif hfs^new work Mr. Center found an able and willing 
coadjutor in Mr. A. Gary Smith, then a yacht builder 
after the accepted metliods of the day, but also a marine 
Eirtist With Marett's book as a guide, following its in- 
structions in the designing and the calculation of the 
elements, and taking as a basis for the P^posed yacht 
the lines there published of the famous. Musquito the 
fi St American cutter, Vindex was designed, and she 
was finally built and successfully launched at the yard 
Jf Reanv"^ Son & Archbold. Chester Pa., afterward 
Roach's Shipyard. Somehow or other Vindex Jloat, 
and not onlv that, but she was fast as ^yell. and an ad- 
mirable sea boat, ks Mr. Center proved m a whole win- 
ters cruising of? shore in company with the New York 
nilot boats and in many races. . ,. , 
^ When vindex was built the fin^e-stick ng, the typic^ 
sloon except in her case, was ust beginning to rival the 
schooi!?r in popularity, and by 1876 the s oop of from 
fs to 70ft waterline was quite as distinctive a feature 
if American yachting as the large schooner. The sloop 
Gr^S Sas hint as far back as 1868, but the class grew 
with Vilion. 1872J Arrow, 1874; Fanny and Hildegarde,. 
'^In this latter year occurred the third international 
r.ce for the ?merica Cup, with the Canadian challenger, 
Countess of Dufferin, schooner, notable chiefly as mark- 
So- the last contest o the schooners for this great trophy 
and the SowLg popularity among racing men of the 
Th'e vea"r° 878 S notable as marking the beginning of a 
its ed>torial for^e wa. tren^^^ 
the late C. f • .-'^^"^"^^"^■•.^ , -^pr and keen d sputant, a 
strong convictions, a ^e^^y to yachting 
draftsman of exceptional ability, and de^otecl to y^ B 
c\'Llf ' T'^erere'suSestionraf -tre^achts of 
Z darSumS Sdi^^Gr^e^-l^nny^ we^ 
other than perfect was at hrs «iet ^^t^;/^^^"!^°Sefinite 
all American Journals and when it of 
arraignment on the part of f/J^^iJ^^'^^.d canvasing 
the proportions, ballasting, positive abuse, 
When the first general charges of the inefficiency of the 
skimming dish tvpe took the form of a discussion o 
defink^^ principles of design, Mr. Kunhardt's technical 
elic tioifand'knowledge^f naval architecture and d 
signing placed him at an overwhelming advantage over 
a? of his opponents, the ablest of. them failmg. to reply 
fn Wnd and bein- forced to resort to mere epithet and 
ridktili-a style^of warfare not entirely unknown m 
vachting journalism at the present day. 
The q^uestion which presented itself at the ^J^^.J^Y 
serious one for an American journal devoted o the ad- 
vancement of American sport, involving nothing less 
h^i the severe and almost wholesale condemnation of 
nea Iv all the d\ of a sport in which the nation had 
won international honors. After a careful siirvey of 
the entire situation and the weighing of the many im- 
portant technical points involved, it was determined that 
the future policy of the Forest and Stream should be 
to approve or condemn solely by the standards of the 
recoSiized truths of naval architecture and the broad 
irSles of fair pky, as established by the best usage 
of yachtsmen and other sportsmen. 
