Construction, Sail Plans and Leading Characteristics of the Three Cup Defenders of 1914.

© 1914 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC : MAY 2, 1914 - NOW that the British challenging yacht and the three cup defenders are plated up and practically ready for launching, all of them having long passed the stage when any knowledge by the designers of the plans of their competitors, would come too late to have ...

«I shall never think of my triumphs in the Sappho without associating them with you, » was the message to the British Captain, George Greenham , who owned the schooner, from the Rear Commodore of New York Yacht Club, William P. Douglass.
Greenham had assisted Douglass as pilot during three races sailed in the Channel against the Englishman James Ashbury's schooner Cambria, ...

When the measurements of the Thistle became known, in the spring of 1887, Mr. Burgess immediately began work on the designs of a steel centre-board sloop of about the same water-line length as the Thistle, and General Paine immediately stepped to the front in defense of the Cup, and bore the entire expense of building and fitting out a yacht from the new designs.

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.

Nobody in America's Cup history has sailed in the afterguard of more successful Cup boats than Hank Haff, skipper or tactician of four winners between 1881 and 1895. As of 2004, only Nathanael G. Herreshoff, C. Oliver Iselin, and Dennis Conner have matched his remarkable record.
Before the advent of Captain Charley Barr, his supremacy in America was unquestioned.

MICHAEL J. WHITEHAND, who was born in Bridlington, East Yorkshire in 1941, is a self taught marine artist. He specialises in oil paintings of marine scenes and currently works out of a studio in Cornwall. He is very prolific and his painting achieve prices well into the thousands.

Artist Franklyn Bassford came naturally to marine art, and was a prominent participant with the famous lithography house of Currier & Ives, painting original works of racing yachts. One of his first known canvases for this company was a scene of the classic America’s Cup 1885 match of PURITAN and GENESTA, his initial year with the firm.