Challenger's Arrival

On Sept. 15, two tall-masted sloops slanting across the line off Newport, R. I., will mark the start of the most expensive sports event in the world--the four-out-of-seven races for the America's Cup. The owner of the British challenger. Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith, arrived in Manhattan last week, a few days ahead of his Endeavour which was being towed across the Atlantic by his Diesel yacht. With a stickpin burgee of the Royal Yacht Squadron in his necktie and a briar pipe in his mouth. Owner Sopwith said what he thought about the races and Endeavour:

"I decided to challenge the night after Shamrock V was dismasted one day last August.* I had bought the Shamrock, Sir Thomas' last challenger. . . . The next morning Charles E. Nicholson, the designer, came to see me about a new mast. He left with an order for a challenger. . . . Endeavour goes well to windward and in a jump of sea. . . . What about her chances? How long is a piece of cord?"

Last week's arrival in the U. S. was not T. O. M. Sopwith's first. In 1911, when he was 23 and had just won -L-4,000 for a non-stop flight of 176 mi., he brought to the U. S. a rickety biplane. With it, he made exhibition flights, took such notables as Nelson Doubleday and Walter Damrosch up for rides over Long Island. Interested in speed on water also, he won the Harmsworth Trophy in 1912 with Edgar Mackey's Maple Leaf IV, defended it successfully the next year. With the War, ''Tom" Sopwith began to make a fortune in England manufacturing his Camels, Pups and Dolphins. After the War he dissolved his airplane company and formed a new company named for his longtime test pilot, Harry Hawker, who first tried and failed to fly the Atlantic in 1919. Today Hawker Aircraft, Ltd. makes half the planes used by the British Royal Air Force.

In 1930 Mr. Sopwith's first wife, a daughter of the 8th Baron Ruthven, died. The present Mrs. Sopwith, whom he married two years ago, is an expert deep-sea fisherwoman, last year caught a 640-lb. tuna in British waters after a 6-hour struggle. As enthusiastic about sailing as her husband, Mrs. Sopwith will be the first woman ever to help man a boat in an America's Cup race. Her job will be time keeper. At the start, with a stopwatch in each hand, she will let her husband know how many seconds he has before Endeavour can cross the line. Says she: "If our teamwork is perfect we should hit the starting line at full speed just as the gun flashes. . . . Yes, you may be sure I won't wear trousers. ... I watch for the flash to start my watches as it takes several seconds for the sound to reach us. I'm so busy watching for the flash that I never see anything of the actual start."

Before Endeavour left Gosport, England last fortnight Herreshoff shipyards at Bristol, R. I. received a cable: "Can you please refit Endeavour when she arrives--Sopwith." Although it is contrary to custom for a challenger and defender to be refitted at the same yards, the shipyard cabled that it would be pleased to do so. When Endeavour arrives at Bristol this week, the Herreshoff workers will doubtless be as much surprised by her as they were by her owner. Endeavour, hydrangea blue above water, bronze below, is made entirely of steel except for a silver-spruce boom and a mahogany rudder. On a panel ahead of her helmsman, is a full set of airplane navigating instruments, including a windgauge invented by Owner Sopwith. Her sails are made of Sudan and Egyptian cotton specially woven at Somerset by a company whose chief arrives in the U. S. this week to make sure they still fit properly.

As exceptional as Endeavour is her crew. When his professional sailors went on strike last month after their demand for higher pay had been turned down. Owner Sopwith picked from 700 volunteers an amateur crew of 16 to help the ten paid hands who stayed on board. Amateurs and professionals alike are dressed in blue caps and jerseys embroidered with the name of their boat, made to order by a high-grade London tailor. The captain has a white jersey with blue letters. On the voyage to the U. S. the crew slept in luxurious quarters decorated by Mrs. Sopwith, each on a spring-mattressed bed equipped with blue sheets and pillowcases. They dined in a blue-and-white carpeted saloon, on meals prepared by Endeavour's high-priced chef.

While Owner Sopwith drills his crew and experiments with Endeavour in U. S. waters, the New York Yacht Club's selection committee will still be trying to decide which U. S. yacht will cross the starting line Sept. 15 as the Cup defender. In the first two series of trials Yankee, owned by a Boston Syndicate and skippered by Charles Francis Adams, outclassed Harold S. Vanderbilt's new boat Rainbow. Rainbow, Yankee and Weetamoe, the slowest of the three, will join the New York Yacht Club cruise this week. The final trials begin off Newport Aug. 22.

*Shamrock I, the late Sir Thomas Lipton's first challenger for the America's Cup and beaten in 1899 by Columbia, was last week wrecked on a reef in the Indian Ocean. Re-named Noddeskallen, she was being used on a scientific expedition.

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