Kings of the hill – Part II
Julian Everitt continues our voyage through the 20th century in the company of New York design giants Rod and Olin Stephens, heading a little way north to Newport and the America’s Cup, and the setting for many of the two brothers’ greatest successes… and also some humbling public failures
If a single event loomed large in the Olin and Rod story it would be the America’s Cup. Such was the success of Sparkman & Stephens’ 6 Metre designs in the 1930s and, following Dorade’s Transatlantic and Fastnet race wins in 1931, it seemed only a matter of time before they would become involved in the America’s Cup. And the call did indeed come in 1936 from Harold S Vanderbilt – planning a second defence of the Cup in 1937 after an unexpectedly close shave in 1934 against Sopwith’s faster J Class challenger, Endeavour. Looking for a design advantage Vander-
bilt created what was probably the first ever America’s Cup design team by part- nering the young Olin Stephens with the highly established naval architect Starling Burgess. Vanderbilt had called on the ser- vices of Burgess for two previous defences
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in 1930 and 1934, but after coming so close to losing the Cup in 1934 he was looking for a clear design advantage. The fact that Burgess had a phenomenal
reputation for drawing fast yachts – partic- ularly in the Metre boat classes – did not allay Vanderbilt’s fear that a second Endeavour designed by Charles Nicholson might prove a faster vessel. In teaming Burgess with the young Olin, Vanderbilt was looking for the perfect mix of evolu- tion and revolution. But the way forward for this ‘dream’
team was not to join forces to produce the ‘perfect’ lines plan, but to allow each designer to come up with his own interpre- tation of the J Class Rule and to ‘test’ the resultant shapes against each other. This is the moment when the application of science and the art of yacht design came together by utilising models of the Burgess and Stephens creations in a series of controlled tank tests. Each designer produced two sets of lines, independently, from which four models were built. The model that proved to have the least resistance in the tank would be built but, by agreement, neither designer would reveal which shape was chosen. As it turned out many years after the
resultant J Class, called Ranger, success- fully defended the Cup, and after Starling Burgess had passed away in 1947 Olin finally revealed which of the four models
had been chosen. Popular belief had it that Ranger was primarily a Stephens design, but in fact the opposite turned out to be the case when Olin penned a letter to Van- derbilt, putting the record straight, reveal- ing that one of the Burgess model lines was used for building Ranger. In reality, of course, having picked the
best lines, both architects worked away ferociously on the final design to produce what became known as the ultimate J Class. Another part of the design package Vanderbilt demanded was that both Rod and Olin would sail onboard, reinforcing the notion that yacht design wasn’t simply an academic exercise but required a practi- cal skill base and a ‘knowledge’ of the sea. With a world war intervening, America’s
Cup competition didn’t reconvene until 1958, when the defender and challenger agreed to race the Cup in the much smaller 12 Metre class. The New York Yacht Club, still successfully defending the Cup since 1851, also encouraged more than one potential defender to be built. Sparkman & Stephens got the nod to
draw one of them in the form of Columbia. She raced the selection trials of 1958 against designs from Raymond Hunt and Phillip Rhodes – the same Phillip Rhodes who had given Olin his first significant job in yacht design back in the late 1920s. Columbia won the trials and went on to easily beat the tragi-comedic British
PHOTOS PAUL MELLO/OUTSIDE IMAGES
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