END OF SHAMROCK IV

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4784, 3 December 1924, Page 3

END OF SHAMROCK IV

CUP CHALLENGER UQ-BE SOLD. LITTLE USE EXCEPT FOR RACING, After long consideration it has been determined to sell the American Cup challenger at New York for what she will fetch, and from what one can learn from the American Press, says the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, she will only fetch about a tenth of what she cost m 1914. It is only repeating the usual Hate of cup challengers, but when one remembers the high hopes that were entertained of her when she went out it certainly seems a little pathetic. The truth is that she would be of very little use for anything but international racing, and that is at a discount at the moment. Shamrock IV. was designed by Mr C. E. Nicholson, and built by his firm at Gosport in 1914. She was designed for the races which were to take place in .the September of that year, but the waf intervened and she was hauled out of the water at Brooklyn until 1920. Her designer was limited to a water-line length of 175 ft, and decided that he could not do anything against the American yachts on that if he stuck strictly to the British rilles, bo he went his own way and designed the fastest and most powerful boat he coul ( d on that length. She was built with web frames of nickel steel, planked with three skins Jf which had a total thickness of an inch and three-quarters. On this he built an immensely lofty rig, which spread nearly 10,500 feet of canva.. The hul.l was distinctly American in style, but, unfortunately, they ■tried to sail her in British fashion, with the result that she did not do particularly well, against the American Resolute, and was beaten, in the finish. Such a ship could not find any competitors to race with anywhere in the world, and was only kept as a trial horse for Shamrock V. when she goes out next year. The fact that she is being scrapped suggests that the new boat will be of ,a distinctly novel design, and that Shamrock IV. would be of little use.