Off Newport (Cont'd)

When Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith's blue sloop Endeavour won the first two races for the America's Cup last fortnight, it looked as if the $500 trophy which has been in Tiffany's Manhattan vaults since 1857 would presently go back to England, whence it came in 1851. When Harold Stirling Vanderbilt's white Rainbow won the next four, it looked as though the Cup would stay in the U. S. for another year at least. But no one could be sure--not even Skipper Vanderbilt himself. As he finished ahead in that sixth race early this week, red flags of protest were run up on both ships to leave the series' outcome in doubt as spectators sat down to their Tuesday dinners. It was the second protested race of the contest. Not since 1895 had the America's Cup races been soiled by such embittered feeling, which promised to leave its mark for a long time to come.

Third Race. The course was 30 miles, 15 with the wind and 15 against it. Endeavour rounded the halfway mark with a 6 1/2-min. lead. An unfortunate tack by Endeavour, a lucky puff of wind for Rainbow, enabled the Vanderbilt boat first to catch up with Endeavour then to perform the maneuver which yachtsmen call "back-winding." Air currents, forced backwards by Rainbow's sails, destroyed the vacuum on the front side of Endeavour's. Endeavour lost more ground by tacking again, trailed Rainbow across the line by 3 min., 26 sec.

Fourth Race, over an equilateral triangle with 10-mi. sides, was postponed for a day while Endeavour got a new Genoa jib. Rainbow got the better start. Endeavour passed her on the first leg. Shortly after rounding the mark, Rainbow over-took Endeavour, went on to win by more than a minute. After the race, Skipper Sopwith filed a protest with the America's Cup Race Committee. He stated that Rainbow had committed one breach of rules before the start, which enabled her to get across the line first, and another after rounding the first mark, which had enabled her to regain the lead.

In 1895 when the Earl of Dunraven challenged for the America's Cup with Valkyrie III, he first charged that the owners of the defending yacht Defender had had ballast secretly and unfairly added at night, then that she had fouled Valkyrie at the start of the second race, and that the crowding of the spectator fleet endangered him. After crossing the line at the start of the third race, he withdrew unexpectedly and forfeited the series. After a celebrated "trial," in which Lord Dunraven failed to prove his charges, he was expelled from honorary membership in the New York Yacht Club for conduct unbecoming a gentleman and a lord.

Endeavour had not flown her red protest flag until a few miles from the finish line. New York Yacht Club racing rules call for a protest flag to be displayed "promptly." On the complicated ground that, by not flying a protest flag immediately after the first foul, Endeavour had deprived Rainbow of a chance to enter a counterprotest, thereby preventing the Committee from disqualifying Endeavour in case it found Rainbow rather than Endeavour to be the injured party, the Race Committee refused to entertain the Sopwith protest. Mr. Sopwith kept silent until after the

Fifth Race. The tugboat used for setting the course marks broke down, almost delayed the start. Endeavour's crew, which had functioned ably since the first race, bungled an attempt to set a spinnaker, let Rainbow get away first as usual. The only moment thereafter when Rainbow was in danger of losing her lead was when her parachute spinnaker split, halfway out on the 15-mi. run to leeward. She broke out a new one quickly, rounded General Cornelius Vanderbilt's yacht Winchester, used for the halfway mark in the absence of a buoy, five minutes ahead of Endeavour. She matched every effort the challenger made in a tacking duel on the beat home and crossed the line almost a mile ahead, needing only one more victory to decide the series.

Sixth Race. Before the start, Skipper Sopwith issued a statement indicating that he was by no means satisfied with the Race Committee's ruling on the first protest. Expressing "great disappointment" at the treatment he had received when the Committee failed to "take heed" of the "sailing tactics" of Skipper Vanderbilt, he intimated he would set sail from U. S. shores shortly after the series was over.

Sailing a triangular course, Endeavour jumped early into the lead, held it serenely down the 10-mile broad reach to the southward. In the beat to the windward, Rainbow with brilliant tacks that time & again outmaneuvered the Englishman, showed its stern to the challenger to round the second mark almost three minutes ahead. Despite a great flash of savage speed in the home stretch, Endeavour was unable to overcome the three minute handicap, trailed home by 55 sec. Because the protest flags were fluttering from both masts at the finish--why, no one immediately knew--what would have been the greatest race of the series merely climaxed a growing unpleasantness that added nothing toward international racing goodwill. That night the 1934 America's Cup races were still anybody's victory.

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