262 
finished. For instance, if the America Cup races are 
finished Sept. 2, the races for the Lawson cups will be 
held on Sept. 9. 
Hanley has an order for a Canada cup defender from 
Detroit parties, and the keel of the boat is now set up in 
the shop. He also is building a Y. R. A. 2S-footer for ex- 
Com. A. W. Chesterton, who formerly owned the cham- 
pion 25-footer Hermes. He has an order to build a Y. R. 
A. 2S-footer from Crowninshield's design for T. B. Wales. 
The i8-footer for Humphrey and Lauriat is well along. 
Yachtsmen in the East will be glad that Hanley will have 
a chance to show his work in the Canada cup races. It 
was desired by those build'ng other defenders and by 
B. B. Crowninshield that a Hanley boat should compete. 
At Lawley's the Sloan 85ft. schooner is about half 
planked. The Parsons 46-footer is being finished up in- 
side and has been painted outside. The Binney 70ft. 
steamer is partly planked and the 86ft. steamer of the 
same design is having her house put on. The deck beams 
are being laid on the Douglas i8-footer. The Bar Harbor 
25-footer is all planked. The lead keel of a centerboard 
25-footer will be set up this week. The frames of the 
Eno i2oft. steamer are being set up. 
Kiley's Marine Agency has sold the passenger steamer 
Montvale to a syndicate, which will convert her into a 
house-boat; al=o the naphtha yacht Gladys to Edward F. 
Shumway, of Falmouth : the schooner Fiona to Elmer P. 
Broadbent, of New Bedford, and the catboat Foam to 
Frank Comer, of Fall River. 
Crowninshield has sold the steam yacht Columbia, 
formerly owned by Col. Albert B. Pope, to Montgomery 
Rolling, and. in connection with F. Bowne Jones, the 
yawl Scarpha to Mr. Fallett, of Brooklyn. He has an 
order for a 21ft. cat for A. T. Brownell, to be used at 
Newport. 
Fentf^n has the Y. R. A. 25-footer designed by Crownin- 
shield for F. B. Macomber all planked and the deck is 
now being laid. He is bnilding a Y. R. A. 21-footer from 
designs of W. Starling Burgess for T. K. Lothrop. New 
topsides and deck are being put on the 25-footer Khalifa, 
which was damaged by the recent fire. 
John B. Killeen. 
American Yachts and Yachting. 
Lecture by Professor Biles. 
There was a crowded attendance, including many well- 
known yachting people, in one of the class rooms of the 
Glasgow University on Monday evening, when Prof. 
Biles lectured on "Amer'can Yachts and Yachting." To 
all who have a love for the sea, said the Professor in his 
introductory remarks, the subject of yachts is always an 
interesting one and frequently an enchanting one. In 
clear, bright weather, when the sea is smooth and the 
winds are light, the yacht glides through the water with 
an almost imperceptible motion. After patient watch- 
ing, a breath steals over the water, develop 1 to a breeze, 
and when the vessel responds, the cooling breath of air. 
the swish of water on the bow and the heehng over of 
the vessel all betoken the flight of the great b rd ship. 
Later on the wind increases, and the sailors reluctantly 
take in the lighter of the beautiful white wings, and with 
a good anchorage not far aAvay ,the steersman prudently 
makes for it. This is yacht'ng in its plea an^est aspect; 
but the yacht must be made so that she can face the sea 
if she cannot find' shelter or happens to belong to the 
yachting enthusiast who detests fine weather and is only 
happy when he is at sea in a gale of wind. Generally 
strength can be added to a 'structure by putting in more 
material, but the construction's problem is to get as much 
strength as possible for a given weight. The problern of 
development in yacht des"gn is one of reducing weight- 
without strength. At any rate, in America the yacht de- 
signing has been developed on the.se lines, the question be- 
coming largely one of lightening construction and thereby 
increasing the weight available for sails and ballast, or 
reducing the displacement, and generally thereby increas- 
ing the speed. The first American yacht was bu It, he 
said in 1614, and the first English yacht ten years earlier. 
In the eighteenth century there was little .yachting in 
America, and it was not until the arrival of the schooner 
America and the winn'ng of the Squadron cup that Brit- 
ish yachtsmen began to take any interest in the doings of 
the yachting men on the other side of the Atlantic. The 
America was first in thai, historic race, with an Engli'^h 
sloop. Aurora, second ; but as the America was 160 tons 
and Aurora only 47, it looks, according to our up-to-date 
ideas of t'me allowance, that Aurora should have been 
awarded the cup. Up till about 1870. the America Cup 
races which were sailed were very like our cruiser races, 
except that they lacked the refinement of an offic'al handi- 
capper. The racers were chosen from boats already in 
existence, sometimes as much as thirteen years old, and 
the American boats especially had usually been experi- 
mented on by the fitting of different rigs at d fferent times. 
How different was the present-day fashion of building a 
yacht for international racing 1 A veiled secrecy sur- 
rounds it in conception and construction. The news- 
papers, in hushed, whispering paragraphs, print day by 
day inviolable secrets, and when the vessel i^ launched 
and completed she is to be seen by an interested and 
wondering public only at a distance of m'les, for_ fea,r 
some one might see her shape or material. Success justi- 
fies almost anything, and these precautions are taken_ to 
preserve the secrets which each de'=igner considers vital 
to his own success, but which probably the other, if he 
knew them, would only look upon as something to avo'd. 
In 1881 the Americans began to build defenders specially 
to meet our challengers, and the principle of light con- 
struction began to be pushed to its limits. This was 
seen particularly in the epoch-making Gloriana. and no 
yacht designer can be successful until he has learned the 
lessons which that boat helped to teach. L'ght construc- 
tion is the essence of speed in yachts, but weakness; and 
lightness were not synonymous any more than were heavi- 
ness and strength. When amateur naval architects took 
to fixing scantlings in order to insure strength to the 
yacht they showed a belief that heavy scantlings meant 
more strength. The Gloriana and other American b-^ats 
have proved that when the different stresses which come 
upon a yacht are taken as the guide to the scantling or 
each individual part, lightness is more apt to give strength 
