Text of Conditions for Yacht Race

"Mischief... magnificently handled, easily outdistanced the Atalanta, a new yacht, hastily built... and bungled around the course by an alleged crew, who would have been overmatched in trying to handle a canal boat anchored in the fog".

This was the description of a Spirit of the Times journalist in his article about the 1881 challenge.

Particular interest attaches to this year's series of contests, because of the fact that they will be held under a new rule of measurement, which discourages the building of the extreme and almost freakish type of yacht with which the public was made familiar in the last series of "America" cup contests.
The new rule governing this year's contests encourages a return to a more wholesome form, with a fuller and deeper body and sharper ends, ...

Edward Burgess was a son of Benjamin F. Burgess, a sugar importer of Boston. He was born in Sandwich, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, June 30th 1848. After his graduation from Harvard College in 1871, he took up the profession of a naturalist. A year after his graduation he was an instructor in entomology at the Bussey Institute, connected with Harvard College. He resigned this position to become secretary of the Boston Society of Natural History, ...

A self-taught artist of the Liverpool School, John Hughes was born in that seafaring town in 1806. He was a very competent marine painter, the majority of whose works were done for export to America. It is interesting to note that of all the known works by John Hughes only a very few survive in his native England.

In the 1890s, with the arrival of Ben Nicholsons three sons to the firm Camper and Nicholson, a final name change was made to Camper and Nicholsons. Middle son, Charles Ernest Nicholson, emerged as the consummate yacht designer, able to combine elegance with speed and seamanship.
Nicholson’s first design of note was the Redwing class, designed for the Bembridge Sailing Club as a single-hander, to replace the expensive half racers...