rivals. But she did represent the most scientific approach yet taken to hull design in the America’s Cup.
Starling Burgess and Olin Stephens created a family of hull models that were tested by Kenneth Davidson, who first used the swimming pool at the Stevens Institute before building the first towing tank in 1935. From this hothouse came a string of Cup winners, plus other yachts that cemented Olin Stephens’ name as the yacht designer of the 20th century. The Stevens Institute at Hoboken, New Jersey, already had its America’s Cup cre- dentials well established. It was founded in 1868 by none other than Edwin Stevens, co- owner of America, brother of the 1851 New York YC commodore and the man who, with his other brother, created the first commercial railroad in the United States. The Js also brought to fruition all manner of other breakthroughs. Arc welding was employed for the first time to create Ranger’s hull. Before her in 1930 Enterprise employed a Park Avenue boom, allowing better shaping of the mainsail foot. In 1934 Sir T.O.M Sopwith used his aviation knowhow to fit Endeavour with strain gauges on the backstays, again as an aid to trimming.
Measurement and readouts were a recurrent theme on Endeavour. She fea- tured the first electronic wind speed and direction instruments. Her rival, Rainbow, employed a wide-chord sectioned mast,
38 SEAHORSE
Sir Russell Coutts won more races but Dennis Conner (left) is still the skipper the public most closely associate with the America’s Cup. The two-time Star world champion’s near-defeat of the much faster Australia II in 1983 was only surpassed in brilliance by his gutsy and successful comeback win in Perth in 1987 (above)
made from Duralumin, the zinc-hardened aluminium first used in the 1930s for framing the Zeppelin and Goodyear air- ships and that is today better known as 2000 Series aluminium.
It’s a tougher proposition to argue that the 12 Metres were any sort of revolution. They slowed down the pace of the America’s Cup, but deliberately so. Brought in to the changed world after WWII, their legacy was the eventual widening of the competition’s appeal to a greater number of new nations. The International Rule, or Metre Rule, sprang from a conference in London’s Langham Hotel at which the British, Germans, French, Swedes and Norwegians
sought to create a common currency among the yacht racing rules to supersede the Herreshoff-derived American Univer- sal Rule and British Tonnage Rules. The International Rule’s span ran from the 5 Metres to the 23mR with Twelves used for top-level competition long before they were adopted by the Cup after the WWII-induced 19-year break between 1937 and 1958. In fact, Twelves were used in three pre-WWI Olympics, with Norway dominating the medal table.
The pressure of the America’s Cup still brought developments to the class as never before. A little less auspicious than America lending her name, US skipper Briggs Cunningham nonetheless gave us what became the Cunningham Hole main- sail luff aid in 1958 with Columbia. Or Intrepid’s first onboard computer in 1970. This was a recording computer – Dick McCurdy had already tried to compute true wind solutions aboard Intrepid’s defeated defence rival Valiant.
While Olin Stephens’ mastery of the 12 Metres endured right through until 1980, his objective was always refinement rather
DANIEL FORSTER/DPPI
JONATHAN EASTLAND/DPPI
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