Geniuses all. Olin Stephens walks down to the dock in Newport during the 1974 Cup Match with the great Ben Lexcen. Stephens’ Courageous, skippered by Ted Hood, would see off Lexcen’s first challenger, Southern Cross, 4-0, after which Alan Bond’s upstart Australians slowly got faster before taking the Cup off the USA in 1983 racing Lexcen’s brilliant Australia II. During the 1974 defence trials Courageous had a tough battle with Olin Stephens’ 1967 and 1970 Cup winner Intrepid, which had by now been put back to her original S&S lines after being ‘improved’ by Britton Chance in 1970 (which had made her slower). The 1974 Cup saw some significant new names join the Cup family; Dennis Conner started the summer as Ted Turner’s tactician on the dog-slow Mariner, before first taking over the helm then moving over to join Courageous as tactician. Three years later Ted Turner himself would return, this time having bought Courageous, then seeing off all the new 1977 designs to successfully defend the Cup. Alongside them (right) master project manager, rigger and a fine bluewater racer Rod Stephens is seen at builder Camper and Nicholsons in Gosport, UK, at the 1975 launch of Edward Heath’s latest Admiral’s Cupper, Morning Cloud IV, the first built in aluminium and the last to an S&S design
another slow and wet sail on Scrapper, when Rod announced: ‘I wouldn’t go on a boat now if you paid me’, after a certain Sherman Hoyt, then considered the best helmsman in America, had offered Olin and Rod a sail on his two new 6 Metres. Fortunately for sailing, the Stephens
boys eventually relented, the experience opening their eyes to what a true perfor- mance sailboat should feel like after their formative years of sailing clunkers. They also met the yacht’s designer, Clinton Crane, who proved to be hugely influential in Olin’s progression to become a success- ful 6 Metre designer. Crane was not only a mentor and tutor to the 19-year-old Olin, but with the British-American Cup races for 6 Metres coming up in 1930, Crane, suitably impressed by Olin’s first 6 Metre design, Thalia, encouraged four other owners to take a chance on the teenager; while Crane, a prestigiously successful yacht designer, contented himself with designing only for his friends, leaving the field more open for the young talent. Sherman Hoyt was the source of
another element of synchronicity in the young Olin’s journey to become, arguably the world’s most successful yacht designer, when he helped him get his first drawing job with Henry J Gielow – a leading firm of naval architects specialising in large motor yachts. But despite his intense interest in all
things boat, Olin’s practical knowledge of draughtsmanship was still almost nil. His enthusiasm lay only in creating the lines and sailplans (a characteristic he shared with the late Doug Peterson, whose IOR One Tonner Ganbare would have a simi- larly electric effect on racing yacht design
50 SEAHORSE
decades later). Actually, Olin Stephens had never considered the conventions of draw- ing a construction plan and at J Gielow he was largely condemned to reducing exist- ing drawings of motor yachts to illustra- tions suitable for advertising purposes. But, as it happened, Olin’s workplace
was in the same building as Yachting Mag- azine… On an almost daily basis Olin pestered the assistant editor to publish drawings of his racing boat ideas. It paid off. In a bid to spice up interest in Ameri- can designers, who were lagging behind their European rivals in the elevated world of 6 Metre design, Yachting Magazine published Olin’s Six Metre drawings. For the 19-year-old Olin it was a blue
chip piece of public relations that had an almost instant effect, and soon he had switched jobs to work with yacht designer Phil Rhodes as a hull draughtsman. But as Olin himself later admitted, Rhodes had to accept a degree of inexperience and a very mediocre drawing talent! But the mechanics of putting a yacht on
paper mattered little to Olin compared to the ideas and shapes in his head that he craved to put into a real boat. Most designers or indeed yacht design
firms such as Sparkman & Stephens only get to count their total number of designs in the hundreds, while for S&S, as they are known the world over, it is in the thou- sands. By the time of Olin’s extended retire-
ment in the early 1980s he had overseen the drawing of more than 2,200 yachts and motor boats. The Second World War was a significant break in the business of designing pleasure boats, but Sparkman & Stephens continued designing boats
suitable for war, including the hull of the well-known Ford GPA amphibious Jeep; more famously the company also drew the DUKW (colloquially known as Duck) which became a mainstay of the American army as an amphibious troop transport. Designed primarily by Rod Stephens
Jnr, in conjunction with General Motors, the Duck proved to be extraordinarily sea- worthy for an amphibious vehicle, being able to safely – if slowly – cross the English Channel in fairly rough conditions. Such was the successes of Rod’s design, drawn in 1942, that he was awarded the US Medal of Freedom – the highest award possible for a civilian. Such is the scale of the body of work
that Olin and Rod presided over it’s not easy to single out a so-called golden era. When I first started putting this piece
together for Seahorse I tended to think, perhaps naturally, of the era I grew up with, that the mid-1960s through to the late 70s was their prime time. Yet it turns out that in the prestigious world of design Sparkman & Stephens ruled with remark- able success during four distinct eras. Although Sparkman & Stephens was
formerly constituted as a design and bro- kerage partnership in November 1929 Olin’s first design was built in 1928 yet carries the official title of S&S design number 01. Called the Manhasset Bay One Design, it was a useful start for the young Olin, as several of these 21ft one- designs were built and this commercial success quickly led to more commissions. Indeed five more, including S&S’s first 6 Metre, Thalia, before, in 1929, Olin drew the lines of S&S design number 07… which was to be christened Dorade.
PPL
JONATHAN EASTLAND
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