Any serious yachtsman and many model ship and boat builders are familiar with the story of the schooner America. She was created in 1851 by fabled marine designer George Steers and Manhattan shipbuilder William H. Brown for industrialist John Cox Stevens and his partners, members of the New York Yacht Club. Her design was influenced by Steers’ experience designing fast and hardy pilot boats, but she also carried in her genes the raked masts and long, low lines of the legendary Baltimore clippers.
Schooner America represented something new in racing yacht design. Built not just for speed, she was made strong to cross the perilous North Atlantic and go head-to-head against England’s best racing yachts.
Without paper drawings, America’s final form emerged from Steers’s hull model and constant presence, from Stevens’s regular input, and from Brown’s considerable expertise. Launched on May 3, 1851, she was described by the New York Daily Tribune as “beautifully modeled.” The New York Herald said her cabin was “fitted up quite handsomely” as befitted her well-heeled owners.
In mid-June, she set sail for England, the first yacht in history to cross the ocean specifically for competition. She was a radical, unproven schooner challenging the very cream of the British racing fleet, and her innovative design inspired both hopes and doubts. On August 22, 1851, in a 53-mile race, she bested the best fourteen of England’s racing yachts, her triumph a blend of sound design and construction, advanced sailmaking, clever rigging, and flawless seamanship.
Like most racing yachts, America was not built for longevity. After a racing season or two, most were converted, scrapped, or left to rot, pushed aside by newer, faster designs. But schooner America broke that mold as well, surviving, more or less, for more than ninety years.
David Gendell’s new book, The Last Days of the Schooner America, chronicles the yacht’s long life and her sad end at the Annapolis Yacht Yard, a short row across Spa Creek from the United States Naval Academy. Preserved by the Navy as a potential training ship, America floated for decades and finally sank at the Academy’s pier. In the summer of 1940, the Annapolis Yacht Yard became the custodian of her remains, with the goal of restoring her – eventually.
World War II intervened, and the Annapolis Yacht Yard retooled to produce wooden warships -- submarine-chasers, Vosper motor torpedo boats (MTBs), and American Navy patrol torpedo (PT) boats. By war’s end, the yard had become one of the Eastern seaboard’s most experienced and capable wooden ship builders.
As the yacht yard shifted to warships, Gendell’s narrative shifts to a detailed and fascinating account of the daily life of a busy wartime boatbuilder. Without detailed plans, the yard’s designers and builders experimented, reverse-engineered, developed production methods, and overcame wartime shortages of materials and labor. Woven through this account is the story of America’s remains – mostly high hopes and neglect. Not even the support of President Franklin Roosevelt could move the Navy to divert men and materials from wartime production to restore the schooner.
In the end, little more than America’s keel remained salvageable. That she survived “in any form, into the 1940s was, itself, remarkable,” Gendell writes. “America was built for the moment,” for the 1851 racing season. She lives on only in salvaged bits and bobs in museums, yacht clubs, and private hands, and in the timeless legend of her triumph.
Author David Gendell is a sailor and racer, a former boating magazine editor, and a frequent speaker on sailing and history. He is also an excellent storyteller. Reading The Last Days of the Schooner America should please anyone with an interest in shipbuilding and in this iconic racing yacht.
