In the meantime steps were taken to build a boat to defend the cup. The superiority of Herreshoff vessels was such that no one was found willing to take chances against them, and as a result only one boat intended for defense was laid down, on order of a New York Yacht Club syndicate composed of William K. Vanderbilt, K. D. Morgan and C. Oliver Iselin. Extraordinary precautions were taken to make her a potential winner.

Four candidates for one place

The four candidates for the honor of defending the cup met for the first time on the New York Yacht Club cruise. Little definite was learned here of their relative speed, owing to a succession of light, baffling winds, with fog, while on the first day of the cruise. 

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN - MAY 21, 1870
The N. Y. Herald thus describes the rival vessels:

The Cambria, schooner, 248 tons, New York Yacht Club measurement, and probably the fleetest of the British yachts, was launched in May, 1868. She is a fine type of the deep and narrow English model, and in external appearance bears a resemblance to the stiffness and stability of a Cunard steamer.

For the defense of the second Dunraven challenge, Boston, though its great designer Burgess was gone, entered the field valiantly and produced two boats of radical style, Jubilee and Pilgrim. Both were fin keels, a type that had been tried in smaller boats, but was as yet an unknown quantity in so large a craft as a ninety-footer.

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John C. Stevens (September 24, 1785 – June 13, 1857), first commodore of the N.Y.Y.C. was the son of Col. John Stevens, a contemporary of Fulton and Livingston, and like them a pioneer in the application of steam to the propulsion of vessels, he being the inventor County of the steam screw-propeller. He was educated at Columbia College, and married Miss Maria Livingston, a famous New York belle, who presided over his household with distinguished grace.

Ron Charles Mitchell is an American Postwar & Contemporary painter who was born in 1960. Ron Charles Mitchell's work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from 138 USD to 12,595 USD, depending on the size and medium of the artwork.

A Delaware artist, Scott Cameron paints the simple elegance of the America's Cup races, serene coastal marsh scenes, timeless landscape vistas and historic steamboats in a style reminiscent of the era in which they reigned.