Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 154.djvu/198
ready in the spring of the following year; but her English career did not prognosticate victory on the other side. Mr Ashbury crossed the Atlantic in the autumn, and challenged as the representative of twelve English clubs, claiming to take the Cup for any club under banner of which he might triumph, the New-Yorkers offering one race outright. But terms were arranged, the best out of seven, the Americans to nominate their ship on the morning of the race an obvious advantage, as they might choose a speedy light-weather ship or a good sea-boat according to the day. To be brief, the matches began in New York Bay, October 16, 1871. The Livonia lost the first two to the schooner Columbine, but beat her in the third. The schooner Sappho then inflicted two defeats on the Britisher, and was followed in victory, in a private match, by the Dauntless. These matches settled the matter of the America Cup for many years; but in 1876 Major Charles Gifford, vice-commodore of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, built a 221-ton schooner in Canada, called her The Countess of Dufferin, and challenged for the Cup. Arrived in American waters, she was refitted, and apparently supplied with an American crew, skipper, and pilot. Little interest was taken in the race in England, The Countess was in every way so very American; but on the 11th and 12th of August of that year Commodore Dickerson's schooner, the Madeleine, had the satisfaction of sailing round the New York course a considerable distance in front of the rash stranger.
In 1884 a very different state of affairs obtained in English yachting. The type of the successful racer is always greatly determined by the rule of measurement in force. No absolutely satisfactory system can ever be devised for measuring yachts though many hundreds of different methods have been suggested, and many scores tried, the object in view being always to encourage he safest, handiest, and speediest model. One vessel is built to carry enormous wings, and so obtain speed; another has a comparatively limited sail area, and depends for velocity on the small bulk of immersed body she has to drag through the water. These are only two examples out of many; but it will be seen at a glance that it would be difficult to bring two such vessels fairly together by measuring either the hulls or the sails. In 1884 the rule in general use for many years had been obtained by measuring only the length and breadth of the yachts. The length was taken on deck from stem-head to stern-post in feet, and the extreme breadth in the same manner; and to find a yacht's racing class—her tonnage, as it was then called, though the term ton had a purely arbitary value—her breadth was subtracted from her length, and the remainder was multiplied by the breadth multiplied by itself, the whole divided by 94, and the result expressed in tons. This was the formula:
=yacht's tonnage
It is obvious that the repeated use of the beam meant that a few inches of breadth increased a yacht's tonnage far more than many feet in length. Builders began to grasp this fact, and the result was the development of enormously long, narrow vessels. Depth, you will have remarked, was not penalised, consequently the yachts produced were very deep, and lacking what is called