Sir Thomas Lipton Tries Again

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1058, 23 August 1930, Page 17

Sir Thomas Lipton Tries Again

(Written by

C. T. C. WATS OK.)

| PALE little boy l[| H i inake his fortune 111 9L—; | had been told in |y 3»J school that the 1 ,si streets of New

York were paved with gold- Immature were Tommy Tjriton’s 13 years and he could have been pardoned for ignoranco of the meaning of metaphor. It was a very lonely and disillusioned Tommy Lipton who was received "Into the United States, to be left to his own devices, just as many thousand other migrants had been received by the land of their adoption. Xo yellow dollars slipped into Tommy hipton's pocket, but his Irish heart was stout and he was willing to work.

For • time he sold newspapers, then signed up to labour for three years on a Southern rice plantation, his pay a pittance, and conditions deplorable. The young migrant broke down in health, and at IS was compelled to return to Glasgow his fortune having increased no whit. But his Irish spirit held Its fire and he refused to admit defeat. Though without dollars, he set foot again on Scottish soil the richer in experience of human nature, a possession which was to serve him well. Then there began the romance of a youth destined to rank with Britain’s merchant princes. Tommy Lipton thrust his keen personality past the commercial conservatism of the waning 19th century into business which talked in hundreds of thousands, soon to become millions, and received a baronetcy from Queen Victoria for philanthropy. And in September, 1930, Sir Thomas Lipton is again to cross the Atlantic —a millionaire sojourning among

millionaires. There they will welto®e him, lavish their hospitality, Propose his v ery good health, and the kig dailies will interview him, hang ° a words uttered by one who perJ Pshadsold their papers in the biting 'old more than half a century earlier, am** no£ *kat Sir Thomas’s millions g. aay drawing card in the United i * n deed, a nation of money“*s looks wearily enough today on *• ma terial eminence. The AmeriPeople acclaim Tommy Lipton—y l * ie to call him that and he apth willingly for he says, freely, heart 6 is bal£ Americau —because at "aii . they rec ognise courage in a ,*key see in him British sports4~;™P epitomised. They see in -the earn ® irishman—he is 80—the greatin the world. They revertrom m ' ss i°n, which is to wrest oi .ii m in sporting battle a piece the t u F P* ate > the America's Cup, j ns oE which the nation has te «ted for 79 years. I J "« an b p said fairly that Sir Thomas Vat-ht* sa ' £a his yachts in a sea of tea. ts or tea, which are the more sei nf ß < *® pe “d s almost entirely on the ihi„. those whom Sir Thomas has fenced. At all events, if the bever “ade his name through a Pi&e^ 6 v?- e has a dded lustre to that o[ i , y “is Prowess as a yachtsman fears rnatio “ al repute. When 30 "as« a ?° w izard of commerce ienmift 1 t 0 loan hack and to conhe inf, 0 . 6 virile seasons before him § ain th 11 his ambition to reBritai„ e „ America’s Cup for Great fop. , ’ ”ir Thomas Lipton has made Ameri“ SUCCesߣul Pilgrimages to the !r ophv a . D sea board in quest of the °ccanir> a . £le has returned on each in thfi 11 hh that goateo of his high air and hia business motto,

Never Dispair; keep going on,” loud on his lips. Next month he will line up Shamrock V. for his fifth attempt —and no doubt his last.

All four of his previous Shamrocks, a dynasty in yachts which has the affection of sailing men the world over, have let the wind out of Lipton’s sails, yet. this kindly old Irishman keeps going on, his non-acceptance of defeat and his rawboned optimism stamping him a sportsman in excel§is. VVhen a man can pay out about £150,000 for the pleasure of seeing his and England’s hope lag in the wake of a foreign defender of the America s Cup on each of the four occasions he has raced, and is about to risk it again, is there any wonder that he has the admiration not only of his own country but of his opponents no less?

The America’s Cup contest originated in Britain and arose out of a contest staged by the Royal Yacht Squadrou in the middle of last century. The prize was called the Queen’s Cup, the course being round the Islo of Wight. To the consternation of Cowes yachtsmen the cup was captured easily by the U.S. schooner America, and the winners carried the trophy across the Atlantic, to be conveyed to the New York Yacht Club by deed of gift in 1557. Then came its international aspect. In 1870 and IS7I Great Britain challenged with Cambria and Livonia, both of which were defeated. Similar fate befell Canadian challengers in 1575 and 1881, and further British challengers in ISSS, ISB7, 1593 and 1595.» In the last two contests Lord Dunraven challenged with Valkyrie 11. and Valkyrie 111. repectively and attributed his defeat-in the second series largely to the crowded state of the course. That was quite enough. British yachtsmen were disheartened. No, not quite all. During the years Lipton was painstakingly building his big business in Glasgow he used to spend his leisure in sailing on the Clyde, where the river spreads near Greenock and Gourock. He began his yachting in the very early days when cutters could be hired for sixpence an hour. He became so keen a yachtsman that he graduated from small craft to more pretentious boats. Soon ho felt the lure of the greatest of all yachting trophies, and followed interestedly the dismal fortunes of British candidates for the America's Cup. Why not “have a shot at the old mug” himself? He first planned it in ISS7 but it was not until 1899, after he had formed his huge business into a limited liability company, that he felt free to dispatch the first of the famous Shamrocks to New York. His sweet-lined yacht was pitted against Columbia, built by J. Pierpont Morgan and C. Oliver Iselin. Three races only were run, although five were scheduled. Columbia won the first and third, Shamrock being disabled in the second by the snapping of her topmast. Back came Sir Thomas two years later with green-hulled Shamrock 11., built on the Clyde from the design of the famous builder G. L. Watson. But again Columbia proved too slick of heel, the defender winning three consecutive races, the first by about 200

yards and the second by a minute, 'a 1903, Lipton made a third attempt with a new Shamrock, which failed to win a single race against the American, also new, called Reliance. The Irishman was becoming as famous in the New World as in his home country. Everybody liked Sir Thomas Lipton, one of the nicest things about him being that he was not in the least ashamed of his humble origin, and he invariably took his trouncings with a cheery smilo aud

an upthrust of his provoking goatee. Undaunted he challenged again in 1913 and the contest was set down for September, 1911. Three American defenders had been built and had held preliminary contests and Sham rock IV. was in mid-Atlantic on her way over when the Great War broke

out. Shamrock went to Bermuda under convoy and then found her way to New York to wait for the nations to settle their differences.

The postponement was long and Sir Thomas Lipton impatient to be at grips with the Yankee. Then in 1920, Shamrock matched herself against Resolute and Lipton had the joy of seeing his entrant twice cross the finishing line ahead of the defender. The races were fought out oft Sandy Hook and are famous in his-

tory as drifting contests, there being an exasperating absence of a reliable breeze for most of the competition. Aud in this year of graco and high hope, Shamrock V. makes her curtsey. Old Sir Thomas has loosened his purse strings and has been as generous as ever in an effort to produce the ship

which will substantiate his dream. Shamrock V. is the first British attempt to apply fully to a big yacht the latest practice elsewhere of rely ing upon the shape rather than the area of the sails and of deriving that shape from the wing peculiarities of swallows, swifts and falcons, which are birds of the highest known flying speeds. The new beauty is Marconi rigged, which means thpt she has a particularly , long mast and neither gaff-spar nor bowsprit. Her main boom i 3 nearly flush with the counter, an advantage in a fresh breeze, though in very light airs the long booms and enormous sail spread of the older * types cannot be excelled. A particularly striking feature is the 160-foot mast. Building a “stick” as aspiring as that of Shamrock, so that it would not make the yacht topheavy and dangerous in a seaway, involved a serious engineering problem. It was decided to make the great spar of hollow construction requiring more than 60 pieces of wood all glued together—as pleasing a piece of joinery as a tradesman could wish to see. A peculiarity is that if you whisper into one end the huge tube has the property of magnifying the voice into a shout and retaining it in a medley of echoes. America’s Cup rules stipulates that the challenger must sail across the Atlantic on her own keel. The big mast and lacing suit of sails is of course unshipped and the craft jury-rigged. Shamrock’s racing mainsail alone has cost £2,000 and took a long time to make. It would be fatal if the canvas were stretched and spoiled on the way. to the battle ground. Altogether her sail area measures 7,500 square feet. There is nothing freakish about her hull, except possibly her centreboard, a point on which Eritish yachtsmen who saw Shamrock launched at Gosport, are inclined to be reticent. She is steel-framed and wood planked with line ends, but With more freeboard amidships than most British yachtsmen like. Under all sail Shamrock is a beautiful ship, her toweriug mainsail appearing as a snowy triangle based on a bright green hull. Already the challenger has numerous victories to her credit in British club racing and has shown an encouraging turn of speed both to her designer, Mr. C. E. Nicholson, and to her heady old skipper, Captain Ted Heard, who reports: “She is beautiful, and all right.” For the first time in the history of the America’s Cup the defending yacht and tjie' challenger will both conform to the same rule and will be matched without a handicap. Both will be built to Lloyd’s Rules, which means in fine that they will he of similar weight of construction as ordinary cruising or racing yachts. This is a point in Britain’s favour and has resulted in elimination of the freak constructions of extreme lightness which have been 1

common in the States when the ques- , tlon of building a defender has been , projjosed. Britain has alwaj'S been at a disadvantage in that her candi--1 date bad to be of such staunch timber . as to weather the trying passage to 5 the scene of the race, whereas the i American could be made frail and > light.

Four big yacnts have been announced to compete in elimination trials for tire selection of America’s defender, their names being Whirlwind, Yankee, Weetamoe and Enterprise. The dimensions of these compared with Shamrock’s are set out below:

What thinks the yachting world

of Shamrock’s chances ? The designer gives an optimistic feeling that the yacht has more than ordinary 7 chance of succeeding. Said Lipton watching Shamrock spread her sail 3 to the breezes for the first time: "I am very pleased. She is a beautiful boat, and what I have seen today,gives me an assured feeling that in her I have got a winner.”

American opinion, in some quarters at any rate, appears to favour the challenger’s prospects. Advice from the United States gives information that the skippers of the four American yachts—Christensen of the Weetamoe. Olsen of the Yankee. Muir of the Whirlwind and Monsell of the Enterprise—are finding difficulty in getting good for’ard hands to man their yachts, sailors of the sail era being rare these days. The opinion of Mr. John B. Paine, the grand old man of American yachting, is that the America’s Cup from the standpoint of the United States is, on this occasion, “three sheets in the wind, and one shaking.” (| The winner will be the yacht which has the best of a series of seven races.

For the first time in the long story of tho cup the races will take place off Brenton Reef, which is to the south and to seaward of Newport, Rhodo Island. Hitherto the racing has been held off Sandy Hook. The change i 3 very heartily welcomed in the yachting world, because during September the winds off Sandy Hook are exasperatingly fluky. But on the new course, truer and more robust breezes prevail in the open sea round about Rhode Island. The alteration originated, much to the delight of England, in American minds. The actual starting point, which will not be varied throughout the contest, is to be a mark laid about 10 miles south-east of Brenton Reef. In accordance with practice adopted for all important sailing contests the competitors will race over a triangular course, and over what is called a windward-an d-leeward one, alternatively. Each course will bo 30 miles long. This means that if on one day the yachts are set a triangular course they will sail three "legs.” each 10 miles long. On a windward-and-leeward course they will sail 15 miles dead in the eye of the wind, slogging and tacking all the way, then run back 15 miles with the wind directly astern giving them opportunity to crowd on every stitch, a

glorious sight. It may be that the direction of the wind will give the run first and the beat last, but whatever it is the course will be a hard one and a searching test on all points of sailing. As the Brenton Reef course is devoid of local peculiarities such as tides and shoals, “local knowledge” which often counts for so much in yachf racing, is not likely to be virtually important. If one is tempted to the impression that Lipton’s four futile excursions for the “old mug” constitute little more than Irish obtuseness and that defeat is a habit of his, an inspection of Sir Thomas’s old-fashioned home at Osidge on the northern outskirts of London would reveal that his racing record has not always been in debit.

The baronet has won more yachting trophies than any man alive. The dining saloon of his steam yacht Erin, the old one which ran hospital supplies to the Serbians during the war and was torpedoed, used to be crammed with gold and silver flagons,

cups and bowls, and it was found necessary to.have meals in a smaller cabin. These trophies were if course removed ashore when the ship was lent for war service and nowadays, are kept at Sir Thomas’s beautiful home. The new Erin has been escort mg Shamrock V. on her trials and

accompanied her protegee across the Atlantic. Sir Thomas Lipton is a bachelor and a man of simple tastes. “Singing and playing,” he says, “are among the real recreations of life, especially in bad weather when you are not in

I the mood for books.” Gardening, re- | marks Sir Thomas, is the most perfect jof pastimes for it gives one just I enough to think of to be a complete distraction yet not enough to worry | one. When he loosens his purse I strings, and that is often and in many

directions, his coin flows freely. The Indomitable yachtsman has spent probably more than most sportsmen on a hobby; yet he has never wagered a penny. He hates gambling and although others have put thousands on the cup races he himself has never made a bet. Yachtsmen the world over are eagerly awaiting the matching of Shamrock with the American. Messages of encouragement are flashing to the baronet and the toast of the hour in every British yacht club, in New Zealand not least, is "Sir Thomas Lipton—Shamrock V.!”

Length. Tonnage. • Overall. Bear t. DisplaceYacht. ft. in. ft. in. ment Shamrock V. 3 20 39 7 123 Whirlwind .. 3 20 21 8 158 Yankee 125 22 2 146 Weetamoe .. 3 25 2J 20 133 Enterprise .. 120 2 L S 1281