INVADER
Above l-r: carving the Fife dragon; a devotions to historical plans
and drawings; a mix of bronze and stainless deck hardwareI
n July of 2015 Wooden Boatworks Inc, of
Greenport New York, launched a new plank-on-
frame William Fife III 8-M. The yacht is named
Invader, commissioned by Brian Hunt Lawrence
of New York City and Oyster Bay, New York.
Invader is 48ft 2in on deck. She carries a 30ft
8in waterline, an 8ft 6in beam, and a 6ft 6in draft, well
representing a class with great international appeal in the
first part of the last century. 8-Metres were, and still are,
a competitive racing class and they formed an Olympic
class from 1908 to 1936.
This contemporary Invader was constructed as a
historical new-build of a 1930s era 8-Metre called
Invader II, which match-raced for the Canadian team in
the 1932 Canada’s Cup. This competition was the
freshwater equivalent of the America’s Cup, a decades
long rivalry between the Royal Canadian Yacht Club
and the Rochester Yacht Club on Lake Ontario.
Although the Canadians fought valiantly for over 50
years, the Rochester Yacht Club stubbornly retained the
Canada’s Cup from 1903 to 1954.
After again losing the 1930 Canada’s Cup to the
American defender, a Fife designed 8-Metre named
Quest, RCYC Commodore George Gooderham
commissioned the Scottish designer to create Invader II.
Determined to win back the Cup from the Americans
with a dose of their own Fife medicine, this Canadian
8-Metre yacht was christened Invader II, in honour of
the first Invader, Gooderham’s yacht that led the Royal
Canadian Yacht Club to their former victory in 1901.
By 1930, 8-Metres designed by William Fife III
dominated the class. He designed over fifty of them
under three evolving racing rules. Invader II was the
last 8-Metre Fife designed under the second rule. As
an interesting side note to the 1932 competition,
Invader II sailed against – and lost to – the American
boat Conewago, designed by a young American
making a big splash on the racing circuit, Olin
Stevens. The American public loved the Eights as well;
according to local newspaper clippings of the era, overtwenty thousand spectators assembled to watch the
battle for the 1932 Canada’s Cup.
Brian Hunt Lawrence, of the New York Yacht Club,
has dedicated himself to preserving important classics.
One of his favourites is William Fife III’s personal yacht
Clio, built in 1921. Clio is 46ft with a waterline length of
30ft and one of his very early bermuda-rigged sloops.
Known then as Sheevra, Donn Costanzo, now co-owner
of Wooden Boatworks, rebuilt the boat entirely with Jeff
Law and Olive Adzhead in 1983 in concert with Cantieri
Navale dell’Argentario in Italy.
When Lawrence’s love of match-racing united with
his love of Fife classics, he began a search for an original
8-Metre for restoration. He naturally turned to Donn
Costanzo and Bruce Wahl of Wooden Boatworks.
Besides Clio, Donn Costanzo has restored and raced
several other Fifes in Europe, so he is well-versed in Fife
design and construction. Wooden Boatworks specialises
in restorations as well as recreating newly built replicas
of older yachts. In this way, the original may remain an
artefact while a robust new boat is created for sailing.
Their new and restored work can be viewed by visiting
the shop’s website at woodenboatworks.com. In some
cases, depending on the planned use of a yacht, Wooden
Boatworks feels that a historical replica makes more
sense than a full restoration.
This was the case with the search for an 8-Metre for
Brian Hunt Lawrence. After trying to locate the right
boat on several continents, it turned out that 8-Metres
enjoyed such an astounding resurgence in popularity,
there remained no more viable original candidates left to
restore. So what began as a quest for a historical
restoration morphed into a historical reconstruction.
This was perhaps an even greater undertaking than the
restoration of an existing boat would have been. Invader
II made a perfect candidate for a reconstruction because
she no longer existed, having run into a tug and tow line
at night on the Hudson River and sank in two hundred
and twenty five feet of water. She enjoyed an
unparalleled provenance, a well-documented history, and