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at 3.46 on Christmas afternoon the Henrietta anchored in Cowes Roads with not a yarn parted. At two o'clock the next day the Fleetwing arrived, and two hours later the Vesta; but the last-named had lost four hands in a heavy sea. Again there was great talk of redeeming British honour, and of races round the Azores. Nothing came of it; but Mr Gordon Bennett made the offer to the Duke of Edinburgh, as magnificent as it was impossible of acceptance, of his winning yacht, the Henrietta, just as she then lay in Cowes Roads.

In 1869 the Sappho, American schooner, 310 tons, owned by Captain Baldwin, sailed into the Solent, and challenged the world. The Cambria and Aline, schooners, and Oimara and Condor, cutters, accepted; and on the 25th of August a fine race between the four English vessels was sailed round the Wight for nominal stakes. The Cambria, a schooner of 180 tons, built by Ratsey in 1868 for Mr James Ashbury, a Manchester merchant, afterwards M.P. for Brighton, won; but the Sappho, which came to grief, lost her jib-boom off Ventnor, was fairly beaten, and came in more than an hour after the last of the English yachts, to all of which she was giving time, except, by special arrangement, to the Oimara. Mr Ashbury then threw down a very noisy challenge. He wanted the Americans to send a representative schooner across, and he would sail against her here and then race her across the Atlantic.

In the spring of 1870, after an intolerable epistolary wrangle, the Cambria and the Sappho met again for three races. The Sappho, now owned by Mr Douglass, was a very different ship. In the first of the matches, 60 miles dead to windward and back, the mark-boat failed to reach the appointed spot; but the Sappho obtained so obvious an advantage that the Cambria conceded the prize. The second trial, a trip from the Wight to Cherbourg, resulted in a squabble and a sail over for the Sappho. In the last trial, on a triangular course, the Sappho won anyhow.

After further acrimonious correspondence, the Atlantic challenge was accepted by the Dauntless, 280 tons schooner, Mr Gordon Bennett, and on the 4th July 1870, she and the Cambria were started from Queenstown. The yachts adopted different courses, and saw nothing of each other. The Dauntless, when a couple of days out, lost a man, and was two hours looking for him. On the 27th both vessels arrived at Sandy Hook, the Cambria at 3.30, taking the piece of plate of £250, the Dauntless at 4.47. August 9th, to the Long Island course, the Cambria made the first attempt to win back the America Cup. Fifteen schooners entered against her Magic, Dauntless, Idler, America, Phantom, Madgie, Sylvia, and Cambria being the order of arrival; Magic, a 92-ton centre-board, being 27 min. 3 sec. ahead. A very curious feature in this race was the capital show made by the old America. Other contests followed, but the Cambria was generally unsuccessful.

Mr James Ashbury was hardly an ideal national champion; but amongst his many faults could not be numbered want of pluck nor enterprise. The Cambria beaten, he commissioned Ratsey to build him a bigger vessel, the Livonia, a schooner of 280 tons, a hybrid ship, half British, half American, in design, and with her he challenged again. The Livonia was