Schooner yacht America

Brief history

In early 1851 Commodore Lord Wilton of the Royal Yacht Squadron made yachting history by establishing a race around the Isle of Wight, open to yachts of all nations, under the sailing rules of the Squadron. He invited the New York Yacht Club to participate.

An 1851 engraving of the yacht AMERICA by lithographer Nathaniel Currier Click for enlargement

A syndicate formed by John Cox Stevens, the New York Yacht Club's Commodore, accepted the invitation. William H. Brown, a New York shipbuilder just beginning his career, offered in a Nov. 1850 letter to build a yacht for the syndicate "of not less than 140 tons... the model, plan and rigging to be entirely at my discretion... to be a strong seagoing vessel and rigged for ocean sailing." A price of $30,000. was to be paid only if trials proved her faster than any boat in the U.S. or, if sent to England to match race, faster than any vessel of equal size built there. America, designed by George Steers, William Brown's foreman, was the result of that letter. She was a schooner of conventional wood construction — 101 feet, 9 inches long, with a 23 foot beam displacing 132 tons. She displayed a graceful clipper bow; there was a pronounced rake to her two masts, and all her sails were laced. In the celebrated race on August 22, 1851, America won very easily (her majesty Queen Victoria was famously told "there is no second...") and brought to the New York Yacht Club the trophy we now know as the America's Cup.

Stevens soon sold America. She was raced with some success as Camilla, neglected and bought for junk in 1859 by a shipbuilder, reconditioned and re-sold. During the Civil War she was operated as a blockade-runner for the Confederacy. Stories conflict as to whether or not she was sailed under English colours as a means to disguise the fact she was serving the Confederacy. Whatever her role, she was chased by a gunboat up the St. John's River, Fl., scuttled and sunk.

Raised by the Union and given heavier rigging, she served the Union as a blockader. Later she became a Naval Academy training ship under her original name, America.

General B.F. Butler purchased her, reconverted her to a yacht with rigging closely matching the original design, and was sailing her in Boston waters by 1893. About 1918, once again a somewhat dingy hulk, she was rescued by yachtsmen from Marblehead's Eastern Yacht Club. With help from a score of other clubs, her hull was restored and she was donated to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1921. There her underbody was coppered, her topsides strengthened, and she was again rigged as she had been seventy years earlier when she won the Cup.

America remained at Annapolis as a yachting shrine until 1946. At that time, she was destroyed when snow collapsed the roof of her storage shed. As a result, many Annapolis homes display remnants of the America, and visitors to the America's Cup Hall of Fame can view a small section of her keel mounted under protective glass.

Please see our library holdings on this subject, which include the first edition of The Lawson history of the America's cup : a record of fifty years published in 1902.