Final preparations

On August 11th, at 11.30 P.M., Shamrock II passed Sandy Hook, a little less than sixteen days out from the Clyde. She was promptly taken to Erie Basin, where all challengers since Genesta had refitted, and there received her racing spars and gear, which arrived by steamer August 4th.

No series of races in the cup's history was ever sailed under such adverse and trying conditions as that between Columbia and Shamrock. An unprecedented period of foggy weather and light airs made it impossible to secure a race until thirteen days from the first day set, October 3d. The yachts started on October 3d, 5th, 7th and 19th, but could not finish within the time limit for want of wind, while none of these meetings afforded a conclusive test of their merits.

Nicholson first drawing for the America's Cup

In selecting a designer for his fourth attempt to capture the Cup, Sir Thomas Lipton has gone to C. E. Nicholson, probably the foremost, or perhaps more correctly, most successful, designer of racing yachts in England, though he has had no experience in an America's Cup race.

Victorious defender of America's Cups 1899 and 1901

As soon as the challenge of Sir Thomas Lipton has been accepted, an order was promptly given to Herreshoff by J. Pierpont Morgan and Edwin Dennison Morgan of New York Yacht Club, for a cup-defence vessel, to be known as Columbia. C. Oliver Iselin had a share in her, and was to be her "managing owner."

Olin J. Stephens was born on April 13, 1908 in the Bronx, New York. His father was a coal merchant who moved the family to Scarsdale, New York in 1913, where Olin and his brother Rod went to school. It was while spending summers on the New England coast that Olin first learned to sail.
Graduating in 1926 from Scarsdale High School, Olin attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology for one semester only to be forced ...

Born in Bremen, Germany, Pansing became a sailor at age 16. After five years at sea, he settled in Hoboken, New Jersey establishing himself as a marine painter and portraitist in 1865. With excellent draftsmanship he also worked in New York City and Brooklyn as an artist illustrating sheet music and painting names on steamboats.

William Alexander Coulter, (March 7, 1849 - March 13, 1936) was an American painter of marine subjects. Coulter was a native of Glenariff, County Antrim, in what is today Northern Ireland. He became an apprentice seaman at the age of 13, and after seven years at sea, came to settle in San Francisco in 1869.