George Steers72 CLASSIC BOAT SEPTEMBER 2016
The schooner’s exact dimensions are diffi cult to
pin down, but were they really so radical?
THEO RYE
F
or a yacht that existed for the best part of 100
years and was measured numerous times, not to
mention having won probably the most famous
yacht race of all time, it is extraordinarily
diffi cult to fi x even the most basic dimensions of the
famous schooner America. The dimensions shown here
are one set but it is pretty clear that there are plenty of
others; her waterline in particular is very variable in the
record. However, if precision is lacking, it is all in
keeping with the general story of America, which is so
beset with misapprehension.
One of the fi rst myths is that America represented
some sort of revolutionary hull design; plenty of writers
(including WP Stephens) have fallen into the fallacy that
before 1849 all yachts were modelled on the ‘cod’s head
and mackerel’s tail’ principle; a gross over-simplifi cation.
America was in fact claimed in some contemporary
articles as a ‘wave-line’ design, a ‘system’ which was
achieving prominence after about 1835 thanks to the
work of J Scott Russell (who later claimed America as
“one of his own”). Even accepting that she bore some
relation to wave-line hull forms (which her designer
George Steers was silent about), even that method was
not revolutionary in terms of the hull shapes it created.
There were dozens of examples of yachts (and revenue
cutters) that shared America’s long hollow bows,
“sharp” sections and with their midship sections aft of
amidships. Tom Waterman’s Mosquito (1848) was a
prime example, along with Assheton-Smith’s much
earlier Menai and many others. America was fairly
modern in some respects, but not that radical. Certainly
her success did mean that some owners wanted to
emulate her and went in for hull extensions to hollow
their bows, but that was mostly in the spirit of
adoration rather than anything more considered;
(although in some cases it could hardly help but be an
improvement). As GL Watson noted in his essay on the
evolution of modern racing craft (1893), it may just
have been that America was foreign that caused the
British to examine her hull so closely and be so amazed;
the examples from closer to home simply lacked asuffi ciently exotic air. It is very likely that Steers had
heard of Scott Russell and knew something of his work,
but whether he was prompted by theory or as a result of
practical experiment is not known; he does seem to have
had something of an epiphany in 1848, but the cause is
unknown. Certainly our later knowledge enables us to
say America probably succeeded in spite of her hollow
bow and not because of it.
Steers, who died aged just 36 after a road accident,
said very little himself about the design of America. It
was certainly derived from his successful pilot schooners
Mary Taylor and Moses H Grinnell, and Steers’ method
was quite well known; he worked from a carved model,
then lofted the hull full-size and made small adjustments
at that stage. What calculations he did, if any, is
unknown; but the contract for America stated she was to
be at least 140 tons “Custom house measurement” so at
least that would have been calculated.
America lost in trials to the “out and out” sloop
Maria; but nobody was very dismayed. The syndicate
cannily got a hefty discount on her price, whilst knowing
that it was hardly a fair test of a schooner that had to
cross the Atlantic; Maria was extreme in every respect.
Like Maria though, America had a hollow bowsprit,
which was something the British wouldn’t even attempt
for years to come. America also had a secret weapon;
cotton sails. Almost all British yachts of the period had
fl ax sails; and GL Watson himself noted that this was
probably America’s greatest advantage; that and the fact
they were laced to the spars.
America won that important (and to many observers
highly unsatisfactory) race on 22 August 1851 not
because she was a revolutionary hull. Instead, she was a
very fi ne design, well resolved and fi tted with nice sails.
Not least, she had a dedicated and skilled team of
determined sailors (and a pilot prepared to go inside the
Nab). There have been a few replicas built; and given the
confusion over her original dimensions, perhaps we
should not judge the decision of one of them to add four
feet to the beam; it’s still probably as close as you can get
to George Steers’ masterpiece today.AMERICA
GEORGE STEERS
CLASSIC DESIGNS