The tension is building in Barcelona as the 37th America's Cup series works its tortuous way towards a dramatic conclusion, with the expenditure of what war historians enjoy describing as "much blood and treasure". But while we might like to keep the head down and observe it all with fascination from a safe distance of non-involvement of any kind, it's only a matter of time before someone points out that these cruel nautical Colosseum games are ultimately the fault of the first Commodore of the Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire.
It's not a simple story. Yet those who would complain about the modern America's Cup circus having very little meaningful relationship with the way most of us sail are looking at it all the wrong way. For this lack of a meaningful relationship to everyday sailing and sport is the America's Cup's default setting, however much the promoters might claim otherwise.
Other worldly. America's cup AC 75s duelling this week off the Gaudi-designed Basilica of the Holy Family in Barcelona. Photo LVMH
FULLY ARMOURED JOUSTING KNIGHTS
It is the USP that has moved international sailing's peak event away from being an instantly recognisable sports happening into being a feature of some weirder area of international showbiz. And for those who would like a more historic analogy, the people actively involved are so hidden in protective gear that it's for all the world like fully-armoured knights of yore in a mounted jousting tournament
In time past, we saw the elements of a big top high wire act being introduced with boats like the Nathanael Greene Herreshoff-designed and built Reliance, successful defender for the Americans in 1903 under the command of Scottish-born Charlie Barr. She was literally fizzing throughout her short but win-getting life, as Herreshoff had blithely constructed her with a mixture of the metals best suited to each particular immediate function, regardless of the longterm effects.
"Totally off the planet". The utterly extreme and very brief-lived yet successful Reliance of 1903 in dry dock for scientific examination. Photo: Library of Congress
He did this fully aware that the mixed metals would all be at war with each other through electrolysis, right from the moment they came into contact with salt water, of which there tends to be rather a lot in the sea.
EGREGIOUSLY ELECTROLYSED
Reliance may best remembered now primarily for mighty wins. Secondly, she needed a crew of 64 when racing, of whom 20 could be pumping to keep her afloat And thirdly, she was so egregiously electrolyzed that when the 1903 series – against Thomas Lipton's utterly lovely but definitely slower Fife-designed Shamrock III – was over, she was borrowed by the US Navy to be floated in a dock in New York where their boffins could observe the mighty machine slowly burning herself to death while being scientifically recorded and analysed. And then, while she could still just about float, she was towed to a nearby shipyard to close the chapter as intended, by being broken up as some of those metals were very valuable indeed.
In its crazy history, although the over-the-top America's Cup narrative may hide any suicides that have directly resulted from the air of lunacy which has been there from the beginning of the cup-racing in 1851, there's little doubt that it could be a life-shortener for those who invested too heavily in emotional and creative terms every bit as much as financial over-involvement.
THE STRESSFUL LIFE OF G L WATSON
The most conspicuous example of this was the great Scottish yacht designer G L Watson, whom Lipton had roped in to design Shamrock II for the 1901 Challenge through the Royal Ulster Yacht Club. It took quite some doing to get Watson involved again, as he had been badly stressed during four previous challenges, two of them ultra-troublesome ones with Lord Dunraven of Adare's Valkyrie II in 1893 and Valkyrie II in 1895.
But Lipton had a way with him, and he persuaded Watson to design the new boat which was launched with unprecedented fanfare into the Clyde, the first America's Cup yacht on either side to have had her hull design tank-tested. Full of hope, Lipton had also persuaded Willie Jameson of Portmarnock and the Irish whiskey family to come on board as a member of the decision-making afterguard.
"If only all his design commissions had been as stress-free…" G L Watson's most popular design, the great cutter Britannia of 1893 vintage
HIGHEST REGARD FOR WILLIE JAMESON
Willie Jameson was held in the highest regard, as he had been Royal Sailing Master on the Prince of Wale then-new big cutter Britannia for the four seasons from 1893 to 1896, when the handsome cutter had a steady run of success. But for most events, all the decision making was done by Willie Jameson and the professional skipper John Carter, for at times in Britannia's ambitious and very busy annual programme, which included one winter season on the French Riviera, they were the minimal two-man afterguard, and knew how each other thought.
The new Britannia in Kingstown in May 1893, when Willie Jameson & John Carter and their crew were bringing the new boat south under the shortened passage rig from the builders in the Clyde to the Solent.
But on Shamrock II there already was an established and opinionated afterguard, and Willie Jameson was uncomfortable in the extreme with its slow-moving groupthink. As the series went badly for the challenger despite having the faster boat, the expression of central opinions on Shamrock II became louder, and Jameson withdrew into his shell.
"HARDLY SAID A WORD"
Afterwards, Jameson's former shipmate John Carter from the golden years of Britannia racing asked his friend Ned Sycamore, Lipton's professional skipper, how Jameson failed to act to prevent some of the more blatant tactical mistakes, and Sycamore replied: "Mr Jameson hardly said a word from beginning to end."
ULTIMATE VICTIM
But it was the designer George Lennox Watson, the man who had willingly submitted his hull design model to be the first racing yacht tested by his friends at the pioneering Denny Test Tank on the Clyde, who was the ultimate victim. Already ailing, he flatly refused to have anything to do with designing Shamrock III for a 1903 challenge, and while the Lipton team were still analysing the Fife-designed Shamrock III's failure against Reliance, G L Watson died of "Coronary Asthsma" in 1904, aged only 53.
The great yacht designer G L Watson, whose health was seriously impaired by over-involvement with the America's Cup. Courtesy Friends of Glasgow
Thus by 1904 the America's Cup had experienced its first direct losses among leading role players. For although it may seem crass to group the tragically young death of G L Watson with the brutal disassembling of Reliance, both indicated the hugely competitive and stressful level to which this oldest international sporting challenge had intensified in the mere half century since the first race was sailed in 1851. So how did that incredibly important first race come about?
"THE GUILTY PARTY"
Step forward Henry William Paget, born 1768 and raised from being Earl of Uxbridge (not at all an inspiring title) to become – in 1815 - the Marquess of Anglesey after his success as support commander to his friend the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo.
The Marquess of Anglesey, first Commodore of the Royal Irish Yacht Club, in full cavalry uniform
It was a magnificent title, something with real heft and redolent of W B Yeats' dream of somehow becoming Lord of Lower Egypt. But as with many of the grander titles in the more stratospheric levels of society, all is not as it seems.
ALL IS NOT AS IT SEEMS
A near ancestor had been of the Bayly family, with its Tipperary connections. But as the ancient Paget baronetcy was nigh unto dying out with the last baronet having only daughters, Bayly married one of them while cheerfully changing his name to Paget, thereby refreshing an aristocratic line which went steadily on to the giddy heights of the Anglesey Marquessate and beyond.
All in the family. Peter Bayly of Tipperary's Lough Derg Yacht Club, winner of the Mirror World Championship at Howth in 2001. Photo HYC
Before DNA had been discovered to reveal what nonsense some supposedly sacred bloodlines are when subjected to scientific analysis, the preserving of bloodlines and inheritance through male descent simply by changing surnames seems to have been more than acceptable.
There once was a Mr Wesley in Meath who had plenty of land, but nobody to inherit it. So he persuaded a boisterous family nearby called Colley that they could take it all over provided they changed their name to Wesley. They willingly did this. But in time they thought the Wesley surname to be tainted by its link to the excessively-evangelical preacher-man John Wesley. So they distanced themselves with another name change to the older version of Wellesley, and it was their own Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852) who won the Battle of Talavera in the Spanish Napoleonic Wars in 1809, on his way to becoming the Duke of Wellington.
BOOTED INTO WELLINGTON
On being offered a Earldom for his successes, he simply continued the surname as much as possible by the otherwise random choice of Wellington, a little market town in Somerset, where his brother had shrewdly bought an available manor house of modest size to provide Arthur with a meaningful title, which was already elevated to a dukedom by 1815 when he was winning the Battle of Waterloo to finally defeat Napoleon.
Daniel O'Connell The Liberator - both a colleague and an opponent of Anglesey – also a sailing enthusiast, O'Connell was among those who restored the Royal Irish Yacht Club on American Independence Day, 4th July 1846.
Yet if you think this has little enough connection with Ireland, let alone sailing, it does well to remember that the Duke of Wellington was a member of the Royal Irish Yacht Club in its first incarnation in the 1830s. But when he personally claimed to be Irish, it was Daniel O'Connell, The Liberator and a member of the group that revived the Royal Irish in 1846, who retorted that being born in a stable doesn't necessarily make you a horse.
PHILIP PERCY DOES THE RIGHT THING
And there's one final little shot in this surname-changing charade which has sailing links. After the Royal cutter Britannia was de-commissioned for some seasons after the four year Jameson-Carter run of success, when she made the scene again in 1898, the new Royal Sailing Master was Sir Philip Hunloke Bt. He was renowned on the Solent not only as one of the best helms in boats of all sizes, but as a mover and shaker who was in a key role when the 35ft Solent OD class was proposed in 1893, the world's first One-Design keelboat class.
By the time the Solent ODs were racing regularly in 1895-96, and especially by the time Hunloke took on Britannia in 1898, few remembered that he had started his Solent career as a junior member of the Percy clan that owned most of far Northumbria. But it happened that a childless baronet in Nottingham called Hunloke, whose extensive selection of fields were largely coalfields, had been keen to pass name and wealth to an adopted heir, and young Philip Percy did the sensible thing.
RAPIDLY-EXANDING LIVERPOOL
Meanwhile after 1815, Henry William Paget found much to interest him in the post-war period. His most extensive land-holding was in North Wales where the Welsh name of the family's stately home on the Anglesey shore of the Menai Straits, Plas Newydd, reflected the new Marquis's tendency to identify and empathise with the people whose lives, to some extent, he controlled.
Plas Newydd on Anglesey, with the Menai Straits beyond
His land-holdings extended profitability towards the rapidly-expanding international port of Liverpool, through which something like 40% of all world trade was to be passing by mid-Century - at its dizzy height, Liverpool became the worlds wealthiest city for ten or fifteen years, with even more money pouring into the Anglesey coffers.
The sport of yachting was developing rapidly with Napoleon out of the way, and Anglesey was still Earl of Uxbridge when he became a founder member in 1815 of The Yacht Club, later the Royal Yacht Club and subsequently the Royal Yacht Squadron, head-quartered in the Castle at Cowes. Some records suggest that he was signed on at a preliminary meeting in 1812, but either way sailing was very important in his life, and the keenest racing was central to his interest.
'UNKNOWN ORIGINS, POLYGAMOUS HABITS'
The competition was becoming more intense, so in 1819 he sought out the legendary designer-shipwright Philip John Sainty of Wivenhoe on the River Colne in Essex to building his racing dreamship. Sainty was quite the bit of work, 'a man of unknown origins, polygamous habits, and a confirmed smuggler but very expert boat-builder'. To create Anglesey's dreamship, Sainty had first to be released from Chelmsford Gaol, where he was incarcerated for smuggling. His boats of legendary speed were most profitable when used for smuggling, but their extra speed could be offset by the authorities through sending small fleets of their admittedly slower Revenue Cutters to entrap him.
OUT-OF-JAIL-CARD
Getting Philip Sainty an out-of-gaol card was no great problem for one of the national heroes of Waterloo. But it needed more subtle negotiation by Anglesey to secure the additional release of Sainty's brother and cousin, likewise in gaol for smuggling, but without whose very special talents, Sainty insisted, the new super-yacht could not be built.
All was resolved, and the gleaming new Pearl, 68ft long and registered as 113 tons, was launched at Colchester Hythe in June 1820. She fulfilled every hope for racing success through her long life, and Anglesey liked her so much he kept her for the rest of his life to his death in 1854.
Pearl sailing in the Menai Straits
He'd a busy time of it before then, as he was increasingly involved in public life. Ireland was in turmoil with the agitation – led by Daniel O'Connell - for the Act of Emancipation to be passed in the London Parliament to remove the last of the repressive Penal Laws which placed heavy restrictions on Catholic life. The role of Viceroy (Lord Lieutenant) was central to the mood in the country, and when the liberal and empathetic Marquis of Anglesey was appointed on 27th of February 1828, Ireland finally got one of the good guys handling some of the levers of power.
TOO LIBERAL?
He was much too liberal and pro-Catholic for some of the powers that be, and his first appointment to the role only lasted from the 27th February 1828 to the 22nd January 1929. But in those hyper-active eleven months, he achieved much ashore and afloat, for when he brought Pearl over to the massive new harbour at Kingstown (formerly Dunleary) in Dublin Bay, he immediately set about inaugurating a regatta, the first in the harbour and raced with much enjoyment and acclamation on July 22nd 1828.
This rough image of the July 22nd 1828 Dublin Bay regatta is the only known portrayal of Pearl in Irish waters – she is at left, largely obscured by the visibly convivial sailing spectator boat. The finishing order on the water is Liberty (Lord Errol), Ganymede (Col Madden,) Thetis (Rev D George), and Medora (Penthony O'Kelly)
Very diplomatically, Anglesey kept Pearl out of the race to function instead as an anchored spectator vessel at the in-harbour finish line, for she was such a flying machine that she'd have embarrassed the local fleet. Beyond that, the begrudgers of Dublin would have complained that the new Viceroy was only putting on this racing show as an act of vanity for himself and his super-yacht.
That the personality and character of one man could play such a part in the national mood was vividly illustrated by by the brief regime of his successor, the decidedly right-wing Duke of Northumberland. Dublin became a bad-tempered place, and an attempt in the summer of 1829 to stage a second Kingstown Regatta was blighted by bad weather and fights afloat between crews, as much prize money was at stake.
CHANGE AGAIN
But in London on 26th June 1830, the death of King George IV removed one of the last remaining obstacles to Catholic Emancipation with the 1829 Act becoming law. And the royal succession by the more amenable William IV, the Sailor King, created wellnigh perfect conditions for Anglesey to return to Dublin as Viceroy for his second very fruitful period, from 4th December 1830 until 12th September 1833.
FOUNDATION OF ROYAL IRISH YACHT CLUB
There was little high-profile sailing activity in 1830 owing to the extended period of Royal mourning on a national scale. But 1831 was the happening year, with a regatta and other races in the harbour and Dublin Bay, and the buildup to the formation of the Royal Irish Yacht Club with the Marquess of Anglesey as founding Commodore.
The Royal Warrant was received in August to enable a formalized meeting in September in Dublin's Gresham Hotel, leading on to the first official Annual Dinner on 14th February 1832 in the Northumberland Hotel on Dublin's Eden Quay.
The first club regatta as such was staged at Kingstown on June 25th-29th 1832, the principal trophy being presented by the Commodore to become the Anglesey Cup, and it was won by the Earl of Belfast's 162-ton Louise. We shall hear more of this Earl of Belfast, but meanwhile through the 1830s, the club's activity afloat in racing and cruising – some very long-distance cruises among them – reached a remarkable level, and membership increased at all levels with the Duke of Wellington being among those signed in.
ARRESTING THE LIBERATOR?
But things were becoming less agreeable ashore, for although Anglesey had held cordial meetings with Daniel O'Connell in his first pre-emancipation term as Viceroy, once it was achieved Anglesey's second term was blighted towards the end by O'Connell's agitation for his second cause, for Irish Home Rule and possible full Independence. This became so active that Anglesey as Viceroy had to sign a warrant for his fellow yachtsman's arrest, though it was never carried out.
FINAL DUN LAOGHAIRE APPEARANCE
Then too, although few would have guessed it from the pace with which he lived his life, Anglesey – now aged 62 – was at times laid low with a recurring debilitating illness, such that in July 1833, having resigned as Commodore, he made his final formal appearance with the RIYC at its Regatta Dejeuner in what is now the Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire, and on September 12th 1933 he retired from the role of Viceroy.
This shedding of responsibility did wonders for his health. But although the Royal Irish YC thrived on through the 1830, by 1840 the establishment in 1838 of what was to become the Royal St George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire went to provide an alternative focus of great sailing energy but very limited liberality in the matter of who qualified to be a member.
The Royal St George Yacht Club today. From 1838 onwards it began setting the pace in Kingstown/Dun Laoghaire
Thus the 1840s saw the Royal Irish becoming moribund, soon even more so as many of its former members were landlords in the west of Ireland whose entire world was changed out of recognition by the Great Famine of 1845-47.
RE-BIRTH OF ROYAL IRISH YC
It was in a symbolic response of hope for the return of better times for Ireland that a small RIYC restoration group met formally for the first time in Radley's Hotel on College Green in Dublin on July 4th 1846. It is most unlikely that the selection of American Independence Day was an accident, as the attendance included Daniel O'Connell and three of his sons.
The "castle" at West Cowes was one of the Anglesey family's summer homes before it became the HQ of the Royal Yacht Squadron. Next year in 2025, this user-friendly transit starting line will be used to send off the huge fleet in the Centenary Fastnet Race
By this time O'Connell's old adversary the Marquess of Anglesey, while sympathetically observing events in Ireland, was giving most of his attention to his huge estates and the continuing happy use of the cutter Pearl. But while he had joined local clubs such as the Royal Anglesey at Beaumaris and the Royal Mersey in Liverpool, his first loyalty was to the Royal Yacht Squadron, now based in the the Castle on the waterfront in Cowes, a quaint building which Anglesey and his family had used as a summer home before the RYS amicably took it over.
"A DARK PERIOD"
But in the late 1840s, while the revived Royal Irish YC was going from strength to strength with its impressive new Mulvany-designed clubhouse in the Kingstown waterfront being completed by 1850, the Squadron was going through what one of its historians described mournfully as "a dark period".
The Royal Irish Yacht Club building – now the world's oldest complete purpose-designed yacht club – was being planned, constructed and successfully completed as the RYS went through its "dark period" in 1847-1851
Things began to go off the rails for the RYS in the Autumn of 1846, when its popular Commodore for 21 years died while cruising in Spain. It had been assumed by all except the supposed successor himself that the new Commodore would be the Marquess of Anglesey, but he declined as he was already 78 and feared that extra responsibility would cause a return of his dormant chronic illness.
So it went to an increasingly bitter election, and the Vice Commodore, the Marquess of Donegall (formerly the Earl of Belfast whose Louisa had won the Anglesey Cup at the RIYC's first regatta in 1832) bludgeoned his way into the role of Commodore.
"Bludgeoned" seems to be the only word, as Donegall was one of the pugnacious Chichester tribe who had captured a vast swathe of land across the northern part of Ireland in the early 1600s, but proved to be poor landlords and businessmen in administering their new assets.
ASSET STRIPPING
Thus by the 1830s, the eldest son, the Earl of Belfast, was so over-milking his Belfast estates for funds to maintain his yachting habit that it got out of hand by the 1840s. The Belfast Donegall Estate was declared bankrupt, and much of the nascent city of Belfast, a very rapidly-growing asset, was sold out from under him even as he was becoming the Marquess of Donegall, installed in bad odour as RYS Commodore in May 1847.
ENGINEERING A COUP
He may have been an energetic and effective Vice Commodore for 27 years, but in the very different role of top man, he was an already-disliked disaster, and attendances at RYS club events and participation in club racing – most visibly at Cowes Week – fell of a cliff. Only 40 members attended the annual dinner in 1847, normally a crowded social highlight, and things got so bad that a group of powerful members engineered a coup which obliged Donegall to stand down as Commodore in June 1848.
A mixed blessing. George Henry Chichester, Third Marquess of Donegall, was the shortest serving Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, from May 1847 to June 1848
He had lasted just 13 months, but the damage was more longterm. Although the new Commodore, the amiable and diplomatic Earl of Winton, was in place within weeks, it took a long time for the wounds to heal and the event attendance numbers – afloat and ashore – to return to normal.
No-one suggested publicly that it was largely the Marquess of Anglesey's fault for declining the Commodore's role at the end of 1846. But if he didn't occasionally think so himself, he wouldn't be the man we have been discovering through these many words.
GARRARD'S SILVER BARGAIN
Certainly what we do know is that when he heard in 1848 that Garrard's the London jewellers and silversmiths had made a job lot of ornate silver ewers, he promptly bought one for £100 and donated it to the slowly reviving RYS in the hope that it might be used for some special race to help them regain full health.
One of a job lot of silver ewers made in London in 1848 became the America's Cup
Well, it sat around for about three years gathering dust. And when in 1851 it was hurriedly pressed into use for "some special race", the outcome gave the RYS such a shock that it is only now, 176 years after old Anglesey gave them the trophy, that we can think of them regaining full health with regard to that cup he presented.
JOHN COX STEVENS AND THE NEW YORK YACHT CLUB
Enter, in 1851, the irrepressible John Cox Stevens, Renaissance-style citizen of New York, bon viveur, man-about-town, business pioneer, inventor, and complete sailhead who brought the New York Yacht Club into being aboard his yacht Gimcrack in 1844.
John Cox Stevens, founding Commodore in 1844 of the New York Yacht Club. This image doesn't do him justice – there should be a distinct twinkle in his eye
In 1851 he was still Commodore NYYC, and close friends - on equal terms in the best American style - with the yacht design genius and builder George Steers. Stevens led with the notion that he and a syndicate should fund Steers in designing, building and tuning a classic fast American-style schooner, and then sail across the Atlantic to Cowes to race the best of the RYS fleet to demonstrate American prowess in boat design and build as their contribution to the very international displays of industry and creativity at the Great Exhibition (mainly in London) in 1851.
The proposal reached the peace-making RYS Commodore the Earl of Winton in February 1851, but his reply letter generously inviting Commodore Stevens to enjoy the hospitality of the Squadron when they arrived – a rare enough invitation – carefully disguised the fact that he made no mention of a race.
RECENT DEFEATS
We have to remember that the US and Britain had been at war as recently as 1812-1815, with a British defeat which was not entirely obscured by the complete victory of Waterloo in Europe. And beyond that, many of the old guard in England still reckoned that the successful American War of Independence of 1775-1783 had been no better than an impertinent rebellion against the Crown.
So the very idea of maybe seeing the cream of their fleet being bested by a new-fangled Yankee schooner was seen by many as anathema. Thus as the swift schooner America sailed across the Atlantic, reached France, made modifications and then sailed across to the Solent to stalk around the place in full racing mode, the Brits manoeuvred around avoiding full confrontation like Sun Tzu's army trying to win a war without fighting battles.
CLOSED SHOP
For it emerged that their two races in Cowes Week – with much energy being expended on the social side ashore – were only open, in time-honoured manner, to RYS members. By tradition and preference, it was a Closed Shop. Yet here was the cream of American sailing, strutting her stuff and looking for a race as part of Prince Albert's beloved Great Exhibition.
We don't know if the Marquess of Anglesey suggested the novelty of an open race to all around the Isle of Wight to round out Cowes Week in this special year. All we do know is that he was very much around the scene again, even if Pearl was not being raced in Cowes Week. And we do know that at the last minute before the Week, with formal entries closing on Saturday 16th August, a standard Royal Yacht Squadron poster appeared for the Cowes Week events, but amended and expanded to include an additional race on 22nd August – the unfashionable Friday - open to all recognized clubs.
The epoch-changing poster with the new race for Anglesey's cup tagged on at the end. The barely perceptible hand-written scrawl above FRIDAY, AUGUST 22nd suggests that even then, someone was trying to sabotage the race for America, as it says: "A Subscription Cup, by Yachts of any R(oyal) Y (acht) Clubs not exceeding 30 Tons. Start at Eleven". Fortunately this was ignored, as it would have excluded America on both counts, as her club was emphatically not Royal, and she was well above 30 tons
ANGLESEY'S CUP IS USED
We do know that his cup was used as the prize, still modestly known simply as the £100 Cup. And of course everyone knows that America won, and thus the seeds of the contemporary ongoing circus in Barcelona were sown.
World sailing icon – America wins on 22nd August 1851
And it's good to know that the Marquess of Anglesey and John Cox Stevens got on very well indeed. Anglesey may have been 17 years the senior, but in Stevens he recognized a kindred spirit, and when – after America's victory – he asked if America might take on a short match race against Pearl, Stevens smilingly agreed.
After some days of Anglesey's men preparing the old cutter across at Portsmouth, America arrived to race despite a lot of wind. But the show went on, and George Steers and his brother joined the 83-year-old Anglesey and his elderly skipper aboard the 31-year-old Pearl for a rugged c test in which, despite being reefed, the cutter Pearl was hard-pressed with her headsail luffs in an unseemly curve, whereas the light-helmed America – her tiller was "like a broom-handle" compared to the English style tree trunk helm – flew along under the very efficiently-set shortened rig of foresail and straight-luffed jib only.
America (right) remains fast and powerful and easily controlled under her forward sails only off Portsmuth, while the old Pearl (left) labours with sagging foresails. From the painting by Henry Sargent
But the issue wasn't settled for Pearl's skipper. He insisted that America was going so fast that she must have the extra drive of a hidden propeller, presumably driven by hidden cycling crew athletes in the style of today's America's Cup machines.
So Anglesey agreed to placate him by having a good look for this when he went across to the schooner America for post-race drinks. He hung out so far over that stylish stern in search of a non-existent propeller that Stevens reported: "I had to grab him by the leg to stop him falling in".
THE ANGLESEY LEG
And there you have it. Ever since Waterloo, Anglesey had been one-legged. He and Wellington, mounted on fine horses and in the brightest of uniforms, went onto a bit of height to get a good view of the progress of the battle towards it conclusion, and Napoleon's artillery chief – quite possibly known personally by both of them – swept his guns rond guns round to take them out, and as the pair gazed calmly through their telescopes with grapeshot whizzing past, Anglesey exclaimed:
"By God, Sir, I've lost my leg!"
And Wellington, calmly putting aside his telescope for a moment, responded:
"By God Sir, so you have".
So the man who may have been the key to starting the America's Cup was, for half of his life, a one-legged soldier and sailor. His artificial prosthetic limb my have been state-of-the-art, but it was artificial nevertheless.
State-of-the-Art. One The Marquess of Anglesey's pioneering prosthetic legs is on display with the National Grust at Plas newydd
He lived on until 1854, still owning Pearl which it took his executors two years to dispose of to boatbuilder Ben Nicholson, eventually of Camper & Nicholson, who kept her in good order for subsequent owners who finally had to have her broken up in 1902.
John Cox Stevens did not live so long. He died in 1857 aged 71, but had done enough to ensure that the Deed of Gift saw to it that Anglesey's series-produced silver cup meant something far beyond its material value. Over time, having been bigged up to be the Hundred Sovereigns Cup and then – mistakenly – to be the Hundred Guineas Cup, it became the America's Cup, and the show was on the road.
OLDER SAILING TROPHIES
In Ireland and elsewhere, there may be older sailing trophies such as the Ladies Cup of Sligo YC, which goes back to 1822, and the Royal Cork Regatta Cup, clearly of 1825.
Yet inevitably, the America's Cup is always in the ascendant as sport's oldest international trophy. But its direct link to the first Commodore of the Royal Irish Yacht Club had not been delineated when the 1994 holders, San Diego Yacht Club, took it on tour courtesy of Heineken through their Irish outlet of Cork's Murphy Brewery.
Thus it came about that in June 1994, the America's Cup, the £100 cup of their founding Commodore, was briefly in the Royal Irish Yacht Club for the first time. The last time it had been on the agenda there was in 1904, when Lipton let it be known that he might be open to support of the club in making his next America's Cup bid.
As the Royal Ulster YC became enslaved to the Auld Mug during Lipton's five challenges, the Royal Irish YC should now be content that it was their first Commodore who started the wheels turning, saw it was going the right way, and left it at that.
Catching up. The America's Cup finally made it to the Royal Irish Yacht Club in June 1994, brought along by Taoiseach Bertie Aherne, American Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, Tom Wilson of holders San Diego Yacht Club, and Marien Kakebeek, MD of Murphy's Brewery in Cork
