The Challenger SHAMROCK IV

The challenger is the last to launch on Tuesday May 26th from the Camper and Nicholson yard in Gosport.  For Charles E. Nicholson, 20 years Nat's junior, this is his first America's Cup design, and his first experience with the American Universal Rule.  His boats have competed in European waters against Herreshoff designs in the ½ and 2½ rater classes, and his new schooner MARGHERITA has beaten the three-year-old WESTWARD  (the latter without the services of Charlie Barr). When asked to assess his take away from that experience Nicholson cautions, “we must remember our boats have only raced against American boats in our home waters under our rules instead of their which makes an enormous difference”.⁹

Nicholson was the first to apply lightweight laminated wood to sailing yachts. SHAMROCK IV's hull is a mahogany laminate (two ½ inch diagonal plys covered by one ¾ inch fore and aft ply) on steel frames with diagonal struts to provide rigidity. The decks consist of lightweight ¾ inch thick panels of five ply pressed birch veneer on light steel beams.  She has a lofty rig with the topmast socketed into the mainmast as Herreshoff had done in RELIANCE.¹⁰

SHAMROCK IV departs Falmouth England on July 21st for New York by way of the Azores in company with Sir Thomas Lipton's steam yacht ERIN. On August 4th they learn by wireless that England has gone to war with Germany. The following evening they are ordered to the nearest friendly port. Bermuda, some 450 miles distant, is chosen rather than Halifax because the track to Halifax crosses shipping lanes vulnerable to prowling German cruisers whose coded messages are filling the airwaves.  They eventually make safe passage to New York arriving on August 17.^11,12

This ends the plans for a 1914 Cup. SHAMROCK IV is laid up in the US. ERIN returns to serve in the Royal Navy as a hospital ship and later as a patrol vessel until sunk by a German submarine.

In the next Curator's Log we complete the story of the 13th Challenge with the 1920 Cup races.

John Palmieri