522 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 25, 1898. 
Starting on this basis, Mr. Kunhardt advocated a sys- 
tem of procedure which involved a complete revolution 
in American 3rachting methods. First came the recogni- 
tion of the educated naval architect and specialist in 
yacht designing, working from exact drawings and cal- 
culations, in place of the builder with his rough block 
model. In place of the work of creating the design or 
model, which he had previously monopolized, the builder 
was left to concentrate his efforts upon the one subject 
of construction, changing his methods to produce a 
stronger and lighter as well as a more durable craft. In 
the details of design a material lessening of the beam 
and increase of draft were advocated, with the adoption of 
the keel in place of the centerboard wherever the draft 
of water permitted, and above all the abandonment of in- 
side ballast, slag, stones and scrap, in favor of the lead 
keel. The necessity for safety, seaworthiness, and ab- 
solute immunity from capsizing was insisted upon above 
all other qualities of a yacht. The rig came in for quite 
as general a criticism as the hull, a smaller and more 
compact sail plan was advocated, with shorter lower 
mast, longer topmast fitted to house, longer gafif,_ pole 
bowsprit in place of the built-in stick of timber with its 
toy jibboom, neater and stronger ironwork, stronger 
blocks and rigging, the double headrig of staysail and 
jib in place of one big jib, heavier canvas, and greater 
skill in making and care in bending and handling sails. 
The proposed changes were not limited to the yacht 
alone; better and in particular uniform rules for meas- 
urement, classification and sailing were called for. Co- 
rinthian handling was earnestly advocated, with the 
establishment of the English method of building strictly 
to class, without time allowance, and of starting races 
from the gun instead of the then common interval of 
15 minutes in which to cross the line. Though then 
very far from its realization, the scheme of a national 
union of yachtsmen, already formulated by a few, found 
its most earnest advocate in the Forest and STTiE.\M. 
All of these things are now so much matters of course 
that the younger generation of yachtsmen will find it 
difficult to realize that anything dil?erent ever existed, 
or that the great majority of American yachtsmen were 
bitterly opposed to them; but such, however, was the 
case for many years— the Forest and Stream standing 
alone among the journals of the day, both sporting and 
daily, in its advocacy of them. _ 
The first practical application of the cutter idea, after 
Vindex and her sister, the wide cutter Volante, designed 
by Mr. Center in 1877, was in 1878. when Mr. James 
Stillman, a well-known New York yachtsman, built from 
the designs of- John Harvey, the English designer, the 
lo-ton cutter Muriel; a vacht whose extreme proportions, 
of narrow beam and great draft, rivaled in inverse ratio 
the excessive beam and limited draft of the American 
sloop. In the fall of 1879 the keel was laid for what 
proved a famous craft, the sloop Mischief. Designed by 
Mr. A. Cary Smith for Mr. J. R. Busk, of New York, she 
was a centerboard sloop, but in many important respects 
an improvement on the existing yachts of her clas.s, and 
a convincing argument of the truth of the new ideas. 
With beam reduced and draft increased to a moderate 
degree she showed a marked advance in form, more dis- 
placement, a fuller and abler section, less hollow to the 
forward waterlines, and less of a hard knuckle m the 
quarter with a higher freeboard and straighter sheerlme. 
Her hull was of iron, and though the rig was distinctive- 
ly of the sloop type, it included rnany improved details, 
both on proportion and construction. 
The success of this "compromise,", as the term then 
ran was clinched in her second season by her selecticm, 
after a series of trial races, as the representative of the 
New York Y. C. in the defense of the America Cup for 
the fourth time, the first race for the single-stick rig and 
the first in which the defender consented to meet the 
challenger on equal terms so far as the selection of one 
defending yacht to sail the entire series of races was con- 
cerned. Following her victory over the older wooden 
sloops in the trial races. Mischief easily defeated the 
challenger, the sloop Atalanta, of Canada. ^ , , , 
In 1880 Mr. M. Roosevelt Schuyler, one of the leaders 
of the cutter movement, had built from his own design 
the little cutter Yolande, of five tons, and m 1881 the re- 
volt against the old order of things assum_ed serious 
proportions. In the fall of that year Mr. James Coates 
a prominent member of the yacht racing fraternity ot 
the Clyde sent over on the deck of an Anchor Lmer the 
lo-ton cutter Madge, designed by Mr. Watson, the crack 
of her class. She came out in charge of her skipper, 
Capt. Duncan, who practically had entire charge of her 
races, in the absence of her owner. The result of seven 
races at New York and Newport, against the three best 
American sloops that could be selected (six wins for 
Madge) placed the sloop and cutter controversy on an 
entirely new basis. , , , , ■ c r,.,, 
Ihe same year witnessed the laimchmp- of the hist 
large American cutter, Oriva, designed by Mr. Harvey 
for the late C. Smith Lee. Not only was she narrow, 
deep ana fast, but her Corinthian owner disdained the 
services of professional skinper and crew and steered 
her himself, with a crew of amateurs picked from the 
Seawanhaka-Corinthian Y. C. The yacht and her crew 
soon made a name for themselves m numerous races 
against the centerboard sloops, even when the latter 
were manned bv picked professional crews. Following 
Oriva in 1882. came Bedouin and Wenonah, both de- 
signed by Mr.' Harvey and buih by Piepgrass for Mr. 
Archibald Rogers, a young Corinthian, and Mr. Still- 
man, who had built Muriel. ■ 
The years 1882-3 and 4 were notable ones, marked by 
many hard fights between cutter and sloop the former 
represented by the yachts already mentioned, of moder- 
a^? beam, and the imported cutters Madge, Maggie, 
Stranger, Ulidia and others, of extreme narrow beam, as 
well as by various "compromise" yachts, both keel and 
centerboard. The cause of the centerboard sloop was 
iinheld by Gracie, Fanny. Hildegarde, Vision, Fanita, 
Madcap and others, all of them making open confessions 
of failure from time to time by alterations and even 
entire rebuilding, adopting the lead keel long over- 
hangs, higher freeboard, and clutter rig, until all but the 
name of sloop had disappeared. q^c ,r,q 
We have seen how the years from 1868 to T87b 
brought little change and no advancement to American 
vachting. and how a oeriod of controversy and experi- 
ment succeeded it. This period e-nded with 1884, givmg 
way to a new era of prosperity and improvement on 
lines determined by the long battle of the sloop and cut- 
ter. 
In the fall of 18S4 there came another challenge ir&tA 
England, after an interval of thirteen years, for the 
America Cup; the challenger. Sir Richard Sutton, be- 
ing the owner of the 80-ton cutter Genesta, designed by 
Mr. J. Beavor Webb, then at the end of her first season, 
a very successful one. The victories of Bedouin and 
Oriva had brought doubts to the most faithful of the 
sloop men as to the abihty of the best of the 70ft. sloops 
to meet a cutter of anything like their own size, and it 
was plainly evident that they had no possible chance 
against a much larger vessel, such as Genesta. It was 
evident that a suitable defender could only be had by 
building, and steps were promptly taken to that end. 
How much had been accomplished in one direction at 
least by the Forest and Stream and the "cutter 
cranks" is shown by the fact that while in 1881 the New 
York Y. C. was well content to entrust the production 
of a Cup defender to a builder of the old school, in 1884 
it turned, as a matter of course, and with no practical 
opposition, to the designer, without regard as to who 
should finally build the yacht. How much this one inci- 
dent meant can only be understood by those who have 
heard, as we have, the personal abuse freely showered 
by prominent yachtsmen of the time upon yacht design- 
ers as a class, and all who believed in them. 
The great question involved in the designing of a de- 
fender was, of course, that of type; the challenger was an 
extreme cutter, of known speed and of the most recent 
composite construction. On the one hand, national 
pride forbade that she should be met by a keel boat, or 
anything' approaching her own type; and on the other, 
even those who still owned and swore by the American 
centerboard sloop knew well the danger of risking the 
defense of the Cup to that type. 
The result, so far as New York was concerned, was a 
compromise on the side of the sloop, an enlarged Mis- 
chief, a steel hull, but with no outside keel, the lead bal- 
last being inside the skin. While the rig was a com- 
promise, including double lieadsails and other details of 
the cutter rig, its proportions, with lono: lower mast and 
short topmast and gaf?, were essentially those of the 
American sloop. 
Another competitor for international as well as na- 
tional honors appeared from an unlooked for quarter. 
The central point of American yachting has always been 
New York, its birthplace and the home of the great 
yachts of the early days, as well as of later years. At the 
same time it is a question whether there has not been 
more of the true yachting spirit, though displaying it- 
self less prominently in the construction of very large 
yachts, about Boston and Massachusetts Bay. This 
much is certain, that the East has always prodiiced a 
deeper, stauncher and abler typb of yacht, even in the 
centerboard classes; that from the first Corinthian sail- 
ing and cruising has been more popular about Boston 
than about New York in proportion to the size of the 
two citiqs; and that, as a class, no bolder or abler 
yachtsmen are to be found anywhere than those who 
cruise and race between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. 
While the skimming dish type prevailed, even in these 
waters, from the earliest times the centerboard boats 
were deeper and abler than those of New York and Long 
Island Sound, and in addition there were not a few keel 
yachts. Though unknown about New York and in other 
parts of the country, even on the Great Lakes, the keel 
type was distinctly in evidence about Boston at the 
time of the first agitation of the cutter question, and 
when the building of keel boats began in earnest they 
increased far more rapidly in the East than abotit New 
York. 
When some of the leaders of Eastern yachting, headed 
by the late Edward Burgess and Gen. C. J. Paine, deter- 
rnined to build a large yacht to compete with New York 
for national honors in the trial races, they approached 
the same problem from a different position. They were 
less positively committed to the centerboard sloop as a 
matter of national pride, they were more thoroughly 
conversant with tlic advantages of depth and low bal- 
last; and the designer was accorded far more freedom of 
choice in the determination of type. The result was 
Puritan, a centerboard cutter, and distinctly a cutter, 
although she embodied three important principles of 
the sloop — large beam, the centerboard, and the laced 
mainsail. Her general form, her appearance, her heavy 
and comparatiArely deep outside keel of lead, the propor- 
tions of ner rig, with its relative lengths of lower mast, 
topmast and gaft', its round, straight bowsprit, staysail 
and jib and general mechanical details, all testified at 
once to their British origin and to the technical know- 
ledge and broad liberal spirit of progress of the men 
who built her. . 
The story of Puritan and her successors, also designed 
by Mr. Burgess and OAvned bji- Gen. Paine, needs only a 
brief mention, it is too well known to all yachtsmen. 
She first defeated the New York boat Priscilla, then the 
British challenger Genesta; the next year a larger sister, 
Mayflower, defeated Galatea, practically a larger Genes- 
ta, and a year later a third Burgess boat, Volunteer, de- 
feated the Scotch Thistle. This latter craft was a wide 
cutter, the British designers, after the victory of Puri- 
tan and Mayflower, having abandoned the old tonnage 
rule and the extreme narrow beam which it compelled, 
and adopted a length and sail area rule with no direct 
tax on beam. Thistle, the first yacht btiilt under the 
new rule, Avas considerably wider than the old ctitters, 
but Avith no m^ore draft, and failed through the ineffi- 
ciency of her lateral plane, she haAdng no centerboard 
and a comparatively shoal keel. 
The results of this grand series of races were of in- 
calculable value on both sides of the Atlantic ;_ on this 
side they not only brought convincing and indisputable 
proof, even to the most obstinate of the older yachts- 
men, of the defects of the shoal sloop, and the value 
of correct princioles and a knoAvledge of naval architec- 
ture, Avith the recognition of the yacht designer as a 
necessity; but they made it possible to adopt indirectly 
through Puritan and Mavflower, instead of directly 
through such British yachts as Madge and Bedouin, the 
deep hull, the lead keel, the bold and handsome sheer- 
plan, the cutter rig, and a hundred details of design and 
construction unknown in the days of ArroWi Gracie- and 
Vision. On the other hand, the British yachtsman 
was freed from the evil influence of a rule that, in the 
first place leading to an excellent type of yacht through 
the positive premium on depth and low ballast, had fin- 
ally compelled an extreme of narrow beam that had 
far passed a reasonable limit in racing yachts, the re- 
sult being a type of craft which sailed on her side, at a 
great angle, at a loss of comfort and speed. 
The question of which side gave up the most and 
Avhich gained the most has always been disputed by 
American yachtsmen, Avho love to point to Puritan as an 
original conception of Mr. Burgess, properly loved and 
reverenced by them, her remote origin, if she had any 
outside of his mind, being various imaginary American 
yachts Avith iron keels, of Avhich no definite records ex- 
ist. Looking over the field now, at a long interval after 
the hard fighting, we are still opposed to this view. 
The gain to British yachts has been in two directions, 
speed and comfort; the yachts built between 1888 and 
1893, or from Yarana to Britannia, were faster through 
their improved proportions, largely the added beam, their 
laced cotton sails were better than the old loose-footed 
hemp sails, and Avith added buoyancy and stability they 
were drier and more comfortable. The gain to America 
was far greater, both in degree and extent; in the first 
place the fleet Avas made absolutely safe from capsize, a 
danger that of old faced every yacht, from the great 
Mohawk down to the smallest catboat. The increase of 
depth of body and the added lead keel, both taken 
directly from the British cutter, removed one constant 
source of fatal catastrophes. Apart from the question 
of capsizing, the fleet was vastly ifliproved in sea-going 
qualities, in staunchness of construction, and in effi- 
ciency of rig. The gain in this respect was a most 
important one. The rig of the old sloop was essentially a 
sail boat rig, Avhatever its dimensions. Aveak, lubberly, 
faulty in its mechanical details, and dangerous in the 
extreme. The rig of the old cutter Avas that of a ship, 
heavy and complicated, it is true, but at tne same time 
correct in principle and complete in its mechanical de- 
tails. First ' adopted in its entirety in this country, it 
was very soon improved upon in various details, the 
housing of the boAVsprit Avas abandoned as of very little 
utility compared with the complicated gear necessary 
and the accompanying strain of the bobstay; some of 
the purchases and other details of the full cutter rig Avere 
discarded as involving useless weight and complication. 
In the course of ' international competition a great many 
minor improvements have been made on both sides in 
the arrangements and quality of details of rig, blocks, 
ironwork, wire, turnbuckles and spars, the American de- 
signers and manufacturers being responsible for the 
greater part of this work, especially in the later Cup de- 
fenders. In the very important detail of sails, the Brit- 
ish were ahead at the time of the first invasion of the 
cutters, both in material and making. As the result of 
the Puritan- Genesta contests, a material improA^ement 
Avas made in this country in the production of better cot- 
ton duck, and the making of better sails; the superiority 
soon being accorded to this side. After a time the 
universal custom of a loose-footed mainsail was aban- 
doned by the British in favor of the American laced 
mainsail. For some years past the tAvo nations have 
kept closely together in the tAvin arts of Aveaving and 
cutting canvas. 
We have pointed out that Puritan's claims as a repre- 
sentative of American ideas rested mainly on three 
points, the centerboard, the beam and the laced mainsail. 
The first of these lay close to the root of the sloop-cut- 
ter controversy, in fact, it Avas the one predominating 
point. It Avas not settled in any Avay by the races of 
1885-6-7; there Avere too many other questions involved, 
but in 1888 it was put to a final test by the Scotch 40- 
footer Minerva, a keel cutter of moderate beam. Her 
many races against the best of the modern centerboard 
class, corroborated by the additional " evidence _ of the 
American keel boats in the same class, not to mention the 
extreme narrow cutter Clara in the S3ft. class, finally set- 
tled this question in favor of the keel. So conclusiA^e Avere 
these results that the later victory of the keel cutter De- 
fender Avas superfluous as a proof of the superiority of 
the keel type to the centerboard in point of speed. 
The triple series of races for the America Cup brought 
up another serious question, in which Forest and 
Stream Avas again called upon to take the unponular 
side. The defeat of Thistle in 1887 was followed on the 
same dav by a new challenge from the Royal Clyde Y. 
C. for the Cup, naming 70ft. l.w.l. as the size preferred for 
the contestants. The great success of the 53ft. cutter 
Clara in this country at the time led to some doubt 
on the part of American yachtsmen as to the 
probable success of the Puritan type as opposed to an im- 
proved Clara of 70ft. l.w.l. Imraediately on the receipt 
of the notice of challenge steps were taken to alter the 
terms of the deed of gift on which the Cup was held by 
the NcAV York Y. C. One such alteration had already 
been made after the Mischief-Atalanta contest of i88t. 
barring yachts from the Canadian shores of the Great 
Lakes, but otherAvise differing but slightly from the 
original terms laid down by the donors of the Cup. The 
work of making another ncAV deed was deputed to a 
special committee, and was carried on Avith all possible 
secrecy until the document Avas framed and finally made 
as nearly legal and binding as the circumstances admit- 
ted. Not until this Avas done was it submitted to the 
members of the club and the public. 
The whole matter brought up some very important 
questions, the right of one of five original donors to 
alter the original terms of the trust, the propriety of a 
temporary custodian of the trust making ncAV conditions 
under the nominal plea of returning the Cup to the sur- 
viving donor, the haste and secrecy Avith which the new 
deed Avas made, the legality of action in the name of the 
club Avithout a formal vote of its members, and finally 
the specific nature of the changes from the original terms 
of trust. These questions, Avhich involved the good name 
of American yachtsmen, Avere brought prominently to 
the front by the many circumstances attending the 
framing of the new deed of gift in the face of a formal 
notice of challenge, and of the astounding nature of the 
provisions of the deed, demanding the dimensions of 
the challeHger nearly a year in advance, Avith no assur- 
ance in- return of the size of the defender. 
The action of the New York Y. C, generally con- 
I 
