Sport: Off Newport (Cont.)

Seventy-nine years ago an unlovely $500 flagon with no particular name was to be competed for by 14 vessels of the Royal Yacht Squadron in a free-for-all race off Cowes. America, a rakish Yankee upstart which had crossed the Atlantic with the idea of bullying Englishmen into match races and making its owners some money, was grudgingly permitted to compete. When America came leaning down toward the finish line Queen Victoria asked her signalman who was second. "Your Majesty," he said, "there aren't no second."

Nineteen years later the flagon had been furbished up, called the America's Cup, put in competition for the second time. Jubilee Jim Fiske, arrayed in white & gold as the admiral of his Narragansett Line, watched the challenger—James Ashbury's Cambria—come in tenth in a field of 24. Nothing daunted, James Ashbury sailed to the U. S. the following year in the Livonia and lost four out of seven match races. Later came the Earl of Dunraven in 1893. He challenged and lost with Valkyrie II. Two years later he built Valkyrie III to race against C. Oliver Iselin's Defender. In that unfortunate race Valkyrie's boom struck Defender's upper rigging at the start and although the committee ruled it no contest, Valkyrie finished, won, claimed the victory. Lord Dunraven went home in a huff, accused Defender of being secretly overballasted.

The America's Cup races seemed at an end, for English and American yachtsmen were almost literally at swords' points. But in 1899 came Sir Thomas Lipton, flying the burgee of the Royal Ulster Yacht Club. He has competed for the trophy more than any other man (five times) and the races, which until his participation had never been without acrimony, became graced with the most decorous of seagoing courtesy.

In 1920 his Shamrock IV won the first two of a three-out-of-five series off the Jersey coast. The New York Yacht Club's steamer, crammed with spectators on the first two days, did not even set out to watch the third contest, so sure seemed the result. But Skipper Charles Francis Adams of Boston, sticking close to windward of Shamrock and keeping her canvas almost empty, sailed Resolute home in front, then won the next two races. That is the closest Sir Thomas, or any other challenger, has ever come to winning the 100-guinea flagon.

This year he is sailing four-out-of-seven races off Newport, R. I. against astute Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, skipper of Enterprise, the boat that was picked from four million-dollar, syndicate-owned craft to defend the trophy.

First Race. All morning fog hung over the low swell. Ships bells on scores of pleasure craft and naval vessels clanked off the half hours. Over on the Nourmahal the Astors felt sticky; so did the Morgans on the Corsair, the Manvilles on the Hi-Esmaro, the Jameses on the Aloha. You could not see to Brenton's Reef Lightship, 9 mi. northwest of the starting line; you could hardly see as far as the Committee boat. It looked like a bye-day.