AMERICA CUP

Hokitika Guardian, 2 July 1929, Page 2

AMERICA CUP

Tlic VETERAN CHALLENGER. SIR THOMAS UPTON. Sir 'iliomas Johnstone Upton, who isis again entered for the America Cup . ace nei.t year, was born in Glasgow in day, 1850. His father was an Irish farmer, but he left Clones, County Tyrone, and set up a small provision shop in Glasgow. The venture was not a success, and young Upton left school of his own accord at the age of nine to help the family by taking a job as errand boy at 2s 6d a week. When lie was seventeen, ho left Glasgow for, America as a stowaway. There lie worked on a plantation in South Caiolina and in a store at New Orleans.

Having got together £IOO, he left New York, and, returning to Glasgow, opened a small provision shop in 1870. From this modest beginning he built up a vast business, adding shop to shop, until twenty-two years later the concern was bought by a company for : £2,500,000, the issue being enormously over-subscribed. His first expansions took place in Scotland, whence he ex tended his operations to Ireland, and : later to England. As early as 1888 he j visited Russia to arrange tfor the sup- ' ply of certain provisions to the entire j Russian Army of 1,000,000 men, and ; during manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain he has fed as many as 70,000 troops. In 1389 he entered the tea trade, j and. although tf-pf is a business in which England leMs the way, he came rapidly to the froil, buying plantations in the East and growing his own tea. He once wrote a cheque for over £76,000, representing duty on 3,000,000 lb of tea. His success was largely due to his genius for advertising, in which be was a pioneer. Upton was full of novel ideas. On one occasion he offered prizes to the first twenty persons who arrived with the leaflets thrown from a balloon. It is declared that once, when the liner in which he was travelling to Ceylon was disabled and some cargo had to be thrown overboard, he had the jmxes painted with the slogan : “Use Upton’s Tea.”

Two of his maxims were never to take a partner, and always to decline a loan. He used to tell his staff that corkscrews had sunk more people than cork jackets would ever save. “Treat rich and poor alike,” he said to them. “ The poor man’s twenty shillings are as good as the rich man’s £l.” One night, when he was passing one' of his shops, he saw a man come out with a bag. Tipton pointed what looked like a revolver at his head and held him up 'till a policeman appeared. The man was a burglar, and the “revolver” merely a pipe-case. When he went to America in the days off his prosperity and bought hogs by 'the 100,000, he often thought of his first visit as a stowaway.

While lie was developing his great jjf'siness he worked twelve or more hours a day and had no recreations. It was his gift of £IOO,OOO to a charity in which the Princess of Wales was interested at the time of Queen Victoria’s jubilee that brought him into/ society. He soon became a great friend of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII.). and showed excellent social qualities. Among other things, he was a capital after-dinner speaker, with a keen sense of humour.

He first expressed a desire to win back the America Cup in 1887, but.it was not till 1898 that he had a yacht designed for that purpose by Win. Fife. The race was in October, 1899, but the Shamrock was beaten. He tried again in 1901, 1903, and 1920, with the same result, and his total expenses in connection with one off his efforts came to nearly £250,000. But the America Cup is an obsession with him, and he has lately announced his intention of buiding yet another Shamrock to try for it in 1930.

Apart from this particular contest, lie is a keen yachtsman and a member of all the yacht clubs, and his bonis are seen at every big regatta in Europe. During the war his splendidly equipped yacht, the Erin, was sunk by a mine while it was performing valuable work for the Serbians as a hospital ship. Lipton was knighted in 1898, and received a baronetcy in 1902. He is chairman of Lintons. Ltd.