IN HUMBLE GRAVE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 83, 5 October 1931, Page 7

IN HUMBLE GRAVE

and sporting terms from the New York Yacht Club. He was permitted to build one of the regular classes of the club instead of, as previously, to a specified length of waterline'. Once ho had nominated his yacht there was a scramble to produce a defender. Because of the excessive cost of building a yacht (today one costs from £150,000 to £200,000) Sir Thomas was met by a number of syndicates and four splendid boat 3 were built, the Enterprise, Weetamoe, Whirlwind, and Yankee. Enterprise proved the successful vessel in the trials, unfortunately for Sir Thomas, for she was a new and radical departure, a mechanised ship. Her hull, bronze plating over steer frames, her hollow duralumin mast, gauges, and machines made her different from other ships. In the encounter Shamrock failed once again. Undaunted, Sir Thomas announced laift October that he would contest the Gup again in 1932, and that he would have a boat ready which "would make the Americans sit up." "And do you know," ho added, "no one would be more glad than my friends in America to sco mo win." Th) contest has been between Liptpn and the American syndicates from the beginning. In the groupb which built the successful defenders there appeared the names of a numbe of American millionaires—J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Bockefeller, P. A. B. Widener, Charles Francis Adams, Harold S. VHudorbilt, and George I* 1. Baker. The contest ended iv failure for the old sportsman, but it brought him the respect and liking of two nations, and after his Shamrock V. lost last year a nation-wide subscription was made in the United States to present a cup to "the world's best loser." So Sir Thomas went back to England, whero his old h'me near Southgato was filled with cups and trophies—"a big collection of ever; kind of trophy except the one I want," he once said. And perhaps when ho placed that new silver cup with the others it meant almost as much to him as the America Cup itself would have meant. r

Such of the cabla ncvra on this PiißO na Is so headed has appeared In "The Times" and Is cabled to Australia and New Zealand by special permission. It s'aould be understood that the opinions gee not thoos of "The Times" unless expressly stated to h* io.