Yves GARY Hits: 4794
Category: COUNTESS OF DUFFERIN
The first Canadian challenge was received in April, 1876, from Major Charles Gifford, vice commodore of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club of Toronto, who was the head of a syndicate or stock company, formed to build the Countess of Dufferin.
Capt. Alexander Cuthbert, of Cobourg, Ontario, a member of the syndicate, was designer and builder of the challenger, which was in frame at Cobourg when the challenge was sent. Capt. Cuthbert had turned out several models that showed speed, and the Canadians had faith in his ability to produce a vessel fast enough to compete with some show of success for the America's cup.
She was thus described in a provincial paper while en mutes:
|
From such notices as this, and reports of her speed received from seaports in the provinces, New York prepared itself to see a formidable vessel, investing the stranger with those attributes of prowess which defenders of a citadel are wont to attribute to an aggressive foe. It was ever thus in yacht racing, as in other matters of human effort. Romance hangs on every sail in the horizon except our own, says Emerson. But the halo of romance around the Countess vanished when she arrived in New York. The yachting barnacles of the coast jeered at her. She had "fresh water" written all over her, and this, in the eyes of the salts, was a crime. Her sails were said to "set like a purser's shirt on a handspike." Her hull lacked finish, being "as rough as a nut-meg grater," old salts declared, and she had little of the shipshape appearance expected of a cup challenger.
The Countess of Dufferin was in no sense a national type, and was even less typical of the marine whose flag she flew than was Livonia. Her model was American, the ideas embodied in it having been obtained by Capt. Cuthbert, according to general belief, from a design by P. McGiehan, a boat builder of Pamrapo, N. J., who had built a sloop yacht called the Cora for a Canadian yachtsman, which had proved the fastest boat on the lakes. Mr. Cuthbert set about to beat the Cora, and did so with the sloop Annie Cuthbert, which embodied many of her lines. The Countess of Dufferin was an enlarged Annie Cuthbert.
|
|
Plan created with DELFTSHIP
Download the MODEL FOR DELFTSHIP : Hull only
Download the MODEL FOR DELFTSHIP : Full model
Sail Plan created with DELFTSHIP