from sailing in club races for the remainder of the season.’ This death penalty and the other new procedures evidently brought order at the club and, as we will see soon, in relations with the most famous and suc- cessful professional sailor of the period. But then in 1901 the issue resurfaced


when the club’s favourite professional captain got into trouble. On the last day of that year’s exceptionally close competition to choose the club’s America’s Cup representa- tive, Columbia, captained by the greatest professional sailor of his time, the brilliant and fiercely aggressive Charlie Barr, was disqualified by the NYYC Regatta Com- mittee without any explanation except that whatever it was that Barr did to his oppo- nent, Constitution, he did it three times! And then on the next day the NYYC


America’s Cup Committee announced its selection of boat to defend, Columbia. What on earth and sea was going on here? Who would prefer a boat and skipper with a history of wild sailing? Was the club try- ing to malign its sailor? Or protect him? And who was this professional captain, Charlie Barr, who needed that protection? A Scots-born professional sailor who


emigrated to America in 1887, Charles Barr was soon at the helm of some of the finest racing yachts of his day. Between 1899 and 1905 he commanded all three winners of the America’s Cup and the schooner Atlantic when she set the elapsed time record for transatlantic racing – a record that stood until 2005. Though not imposing in size or


demeanour, Barr was in most ways notably relaxed, self-disciplined, careful and content. The yacht designer L Francis Herreshoff, who raced with him fre- quently, recalled, ‘He never seemed to be under tension in a race and could steer the yacht by instinct while carrying on a con- versation or perhaps telling some funny incident of past yachting.’ Some of his confidence and success was


due to his well-organised multinational crews, led by his Norwegian chief mate Chris Christensen. Yet Barr was both bril- liant helmsman and tactical genius. When the yachting writer WP Stephens praised Barr for steering a boat ‘as a man would his bicycle’, he can only have been thinking of bicycle racers who used their equipment tactically, blocking and intimidating oppo- nents. Stephens also noted that Barr ‘knew the rules and his rights under them and claimed all that was coming to him – and sometimes a little more.’ Winfield Thomp- son, in his great history, The Lawson His- tory of the America’s Cup, described Barr as sailing ‘without special regard for the niceties of the rights of others, so long as those rights were not insisted upon’. Barr did not always push the rules. He


didn’t have to when he was in the faster boat. But in 1901 he was at the wheel of two-year-old Columbia, which he had commanded in 1899 when she won the Cup. This time her owner’s syndicate (JP Morgan and his cousin ED Morgan) had


This etiquette was understood by some


Opposite: you’ve been swooped. Charlie Barr drives Columbia down and over Shamrock I during a pre-start in the 1899 Cup Match. In an era when dismastings were frequent there are windspotters high aloft on both boats. Barr and Columbia together again (above) in 1901 when he won through the defence trials, now with the slower boat. The second wheel is to allow help manoeuvring in rough weather


but one mission: to provide a tuning partner and trial horse for the new Herreshoff wonder, Constitution. Unlike his backers, however, Barr was


not at all inclined to play the passive role. Before long he was winning starts and races through three advantages: tactical genius, able crew work and forceful boathandling. As one observer wrote, ‘He forced them to do whatever he wished, and shoved and jostled Constitution, the latter’s skipper giving way in the most complaisant manner.’ One of Barr’s favourite aggressive


tricks, on starts and upwind legs, was to position his boat just to windward of his opponent and suddenly bear off. Called the ‘eagle swoop’ by one observer, and not yet clearly barred by racing rules, this did not lead to contact (Barr and his crew were too good for that), but it did put the oppo- nent on the defensive. It also gave Barr a reputation for danger. Thomas Fleming Day of The Rudder magazine predicted that one day a swoop would lead to ‘a grand smash-up’. This aggressive behaviour (for which Barr


was paid $3,000 for the season, about $90,000 today) put the NYYC America’s Cup Committee and the Regatta Committee in a bit of a bind. For one, recent Cup con- troversies concerned bad behaviour by chal- lengers (remember the Earl of Dunraven?), not by defenders. Barr may have been popu- lar because he was so successful, yet it was common knowledge that he routinely used fierce and sometimes borderline tactics. Could he be the next Dunraven? Could he be counted on to behave himself in the Cup races when the whole world was watching? The people who took those questions


most seriously were the officers of the New York Yacht Club. The America’s Cup Deed of Gift made clear that the Cup was won and held not by its winning sailors, but by their yacht club. What happened on the water directly affected the club’s reputation.


skippers, especially the club members (all Corinthians) who commanded Cup defenders beginning in 1920. Emil ‘Bus’ Mosbacher, Cup winner in 1964 and 1967, told me that when he raced in the eliminations he was seriously alert to the New York Yacht Club’s institutional investment in both the results and the style of his performance. He was aware that no matter how many races he won, his and his boat’s ultimate success was measured by the two NYYC committees who would evaluate and judge him, the America’s Cup and Race Committees. This concerned him, he told me, because he was keenly aware that he was not always patient. That self-knowledge steeled him to be careful. ‘I always had in the back of my mind a reminder not to do anything that would allow the selection committee to believe that I was not reliable,’ he told the yacht- ing writer Everett B Morris. ‘I did not want to take unnecessary


risks. So much of what you do in this position is not so much what you think you should do in the circumstances, as it is what you think the educated observers think you should do.’ Charlie Barr was not as sensitive. He


had to be aggressive, sailing what was the older and presumably slower boat. But what were the limits? For that reason the club in 1901 sent a warning shot across his bow when the Regatta Committee disqual- ified him from the last race of the defender trials. One more swoop and under Rule 19 he would be sent ashore for the rest of the season. Persuaded that he had learnt his lesson and was so tamed, on the very next day the America’s Cup Committee selected Columbia to defend the Cup. The two committees then erased that last day’s results from the club’s official records. His opponent in the Cup races, Sham-


rock II, designed by GL Watson, was even faster and better sailed than Constitution. Charlie Barr sailed less aggressively than usual, all the races were close, and the last one was for the ages – described by a witness as a ‘Homeric contest’ around the 30-mile course, ending with the two boats in a tacking duel that culminated in a near dead-heat, with Columbia the winner by 41 seconds on corrected time. As the immense spectator fleet off Sandy


Hook let loose with a barrage of loud whistles, Charlie Barr casually pulled an apple out of his pocket and bit into it. Those who knew the whole story spread


their credit around. ‘I am not much given to lavish praise,’ wrote Thomas Fleming Day, the observant editor of The Rudder magazine, ‘but on this occasion I will depart from my habitual coldness and say that it was the best-handled series of races I ever saw, and that the Regatta Committee of the club as now constituted has shown itself to be the most experienced and able body of its duty in the world.’ John Rousmaniere is the official historian of the New York Yacht Club


SEAHORSE 37


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