his boxy little schooner Gimcrack. races when they could, and on 30 But rhe new vessel would be no July 1844 John met with eight Gimcrack. Starting in 1848, Steers friends aboard his stout 51-foot built his vessels on rhe new model schoon er Gimcrack, anchored off developed in New York's East River the Battery, to form the N ew York ya rds, in which long, sharp bows Yacht C lub. H e became rh e Yacht replaced the traditional bluff round C lub's first commodore, a pos t he bows, with rhe point of grea test was to hold until 185 5. beam moved aft, from a position So in the autumn ofl 85 0 when close to the bows ro about midan English businessman wrote an ships. His fas t pilot schooner Mary American colleague in N ew York Taylor, built on this plan in 1849, sugges ting that New York should Steven '.s 97-foot M aria was designed by his brother Robert. She had made him famous. So Stevens enter on e of irs fast pilot boats in carried 7,890 square feet ofsail on a broad, flat huLL drawing the G reat Exposition of 185 1, it only 5 feet. She was a pure racing machine, not a vessel in which had a pretty good idea of what he wo uld be getting-and William was natural that Commodore you would want to cross the North Atlantic. Brown 's faith in his young designer Stevens gor wind of rhe idea-and that he responded to ir. As a perso n who thought big and rel ished was stro ng enough to get him to sign a contract rhat would make a sporting gamble, he decided to build a fas t vessel to sail across rhe a lawyer of the present day fall down laughing. All this was heady Atlantic and enter in rhe G rear Expos ition. H e turned ro rhe well- stuff in an age when fo rtunes were made and lost by the perforknown East River yard of William Brown to build rhe vessel. H e mance of sailing ships. And the G rear Expos ition fo r which the new vessel was destined chose to do rhis through a syndicate of six friends, led by himself. The others were his younger fri end George L. Schuyler, a wealthy was a wo rld stage of a kind rhar had never existed before-as all the steamship promoter and scion of a prominent N ew York family, participants and indeed all New Yorkers were well aware. Britain, Stevens' s brother Edwin, des igner and builder of ironclads fo r rhe rolling down the express track of the Industrial Revolution, had U S Navy and founder of Steve ns Institute of Technology; James seized on this special project of Prince Albert, rhe 33-year-old Hamilton, son of Alexander H amilto n and former secretary of German husband and prin ce consort of Queen Victoria. Britons, stare; Yacht C lub vice commodore H amilton Wilkes, so n of rhe who adored rhe yo ung queen, looked ar Albert somewhat askance president of rhe Bank of N ew Yo rk; and John K. Beekman Finlay, fo r his stiff, earnest, fo reign ways. Albert's proposal for an exhibian upstate fri end of rhe others with no particular interest tion of "The Arr and Industry of All Nations" was meant in sailing. Schuyler was deputed ro draw up rhe to encourage every counuy of the world to come to agreement under which rhe new vessel was ro be London, center of rhe industrialized wo rld, to built. The terms are worth pausing over- they show their most advanced products, learn from were extraordinary. each other, and make further progress toward rhe uni ty and well-being of mankind. T his Brown was to build a yacht of nor less than 140 tons, "[r] he model , plan and rig of rhe towe ring rheorerical concept, utterly alien vessel" robe entirely ar Brown's discretion, to the normal English mindset, somehow with the proviso rhat she was to be "a strong took hold of rhe imagination of England's merchant class, and of the manufacturers seagoing vessel, and rigged fo r ocean sailwho made rhe mines and factories huming." For this vessel of un kn own rig and form , h e wo uld ch arge $3 0,000-apincluding rhose making rhe rails on which America srill depended for its growing railproaching the $4 5,000 initial cost of rhe road network. The project even attracted superb 1, 780-ton clipper FlyingCloudbuilt rhe landed aristocracy, which was beginat East Boston that year. Bur- and here the sport begins-she wo uld be delivered ning to use more farm machineryatAlbert's subject to trials to see if she were "faster urging, and seized the interest of the press, rhan any vessel in rhe U n ired States brought and the English people-and then rhe world. to compete wi rh her. " If not, rhe syn di care In June 1850, ground was broken in john Cox Stevens, head ofthe America syndineed nor accept her. Andi f she were beaten London 's Hyde Park for an unprecedented cate, was the eldest son of a distinguished and by any vessel in England, she could also be accomplished family. His brother Robert in- glass hall (soon dubbed rhe C rystal Palace) refused. T his proviso was a wild one, giving vented the T-rail, the track in use by railroads and the gigan ri c transparent structure, the syndicate an easy out and a free summer's today, and with another brother, Edwin, seem ingly built of air, bega n to take shape. sailing if they fa il ed to win just one race! designed and operated the first commercial U nder its lofty roofir acco mm odated some Schuyler undoubtedly met with George railroad in the United States. Edwin also of the park's giant elms, which Parliament Steers, actu al des igner of rhe vessel, who designed and built ironcladsfor the US Navy, had insisted on saving: the trees of the city's had recently joined Brown's 12th Street and on his death in 1868, his will established common green were not to be shorn for a yard , to wo rk out these terms, which were the Stevens Institute of Technology (where mere exhibiti on, however distinguished . in Steers's bravura style. Stevens knew the many Americas Cup contenders have been European rulers, still shaken by the revolutionary uprisings of 1848, were not too 3 1-year-old builder well. Steers had built tested) on Stevens property in Hoboleen.
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SEA HISTORY 97 , SUMMER 2001