2023-08-22 13:46:40
BarcelonaMagnus Wheatley lives on the Isle of Wight, in the south of England. These days, however, he goes around Barcelona a lot, as he is the official chronicler and historian of the America’s Sailing Cup. With his beautiful English accent, he has been responsible for deciding the contents of the exhibition that will soon be opened in the center for visitors to the Old Port. He arrives at the meeting with the ARA in shorts, as soon after he will have to climb into a boat to explain how the training is going, with the commitment to explain only what the six participating teams let him explain. “All ships hide their cards, I’ve seen things they won’t tell me,” he explains with a laugh. The sea is his life. Well, it is a competition that was born precisely on the 22nd of August 172 years ago on the Isle of Wight. And with controversy. “I’ve been to pubs on the island where the patrons still argue that the Yankees cheated.” 172 years have passed and some wounds do not close.
“Why am I passionate about this race? I’ve seen the richest and most powerful men lose their papers, crying and screaming. At first it looks like an elegant and calm competition, but believe me, chaos always ensues. Some of the richest men in the world and some of the most powerful companies are giving everything to try to win a competition where there is no second place. Believe me, there is no second place. And do you know why there is no second place? Well, because that’s what they said to Queen Victoria,” he explains. The history of the Cup, which is coming to Barcelona for the first time, began in 1851 under the gaze of a queen who controlled half the world.
In the middle of the 19th century, the British Empire spread across all continents. And to celebrate, they organized the Great International Exhibition of 1851 in London, with which Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, made it clear that the idea was to show the world the technological advances of his country. It was the exhibition of the famous Crystal Palace, a glass palace so big that inside there were trees more than 30 meters high. All the countries of the world went there, impressed by the advances of the British, where the industrial revolution was already filling the pavilions with steam, wheels, chimneys and pistons. Now, on the other side of the Atlantic, a young nation that had become independent precisely from the British, the United States, wanted to attract attention. “We cannot understand the birth of the Cup without being clear about the context. It was important for the Americans to show that the future should belong to them,” says Wheatley.
In those days, navigation was very different. Few people went to sea for pleasure. “In the United Kingdom there was the Royal Yacht Squadron, founded on June 1, 1815, with the aim of practicing and studying sailing. Its members, however, were having some races by playing money with each other to see who had the fastest ship They were bets between gentlemansnothing more,” explains Wheatley. Those competitions were a personal affair without spectators. But on the occasion of the Great Exhibition, the Earl of Wilton had the idea of presenting a Cup which had cost 100 guineas to the winner of a race around of the Isle of Wight, where Queen Victoria had a palace, with the aim of attracting international participation, particularly from the U.S. It was to demonstrate who made the best ships in an era when, waiting for conquer the skies, whoever dominated the sea controlled the world.The idea was to see who had the best shipyards, but the result was a race that would forever condition the sport of sailing.
And Americans answered the call. In 1844 the New York Yacht Club had been created aboard the schooner Gimcrack, owned by John Cox Stevens. The great families of New York made a lot of money and refined their tastes. And sailing was starting to be one of his passions. John Cox Stevens was the son of Colonel John Stevens, the man who had introduced steam navigation to the United States and who had been a member of George Washington’s Revolutionary Army. In other words, his father had fought against the British on the battlefield for independence. The son decided that he would also face the British, but in a less violent way. It would be he who would encourage other members of the New York Yacht Club to build a boat that would serve to show that “on the east coast of America they made the best boats,” according to Wheatley. “They had a long tradition, with whalers and merchants. And a growing economy. They were really the best,” he admits.
“Shipbuilder William Brown sent George Shuyler, one of the founders of the New York Yacht Club, a letter in which he said he would make a boat faster than any boat made before for the not inconsiderable sum of $30,000,” recalls Wheatley, who has traveled to the United States to research local archives. Brown said that if his boat was not the fastest he would waive the building costs. For Stevens, Shuyler and the other members of the New York club it was a good move: “If they went to the Isle of Wight and lost they should not pay for the boat And if they won they believed that their pockets would be filled, since, in addition to the glory, they were chasing the betting money.” Yes, one of the main reasons why the first edition of the Cup was held be to make money in betting.” It was normal, then. They were ambitious people willing to do anything to become even richer,” says the chronicler of the competition. The built ship was namedamerica. The famous america.
On June 21, 1851, theamerica he set sail for Le Havre (France), hiding his letters. “They painted the boat another color to try to hide it and kept the cotton sails they had made, very different from the British ones, which were heavier,” explains Magnus Wheatley. With John Cox Stevens and his brother Edwin A. Stevens at the helm, on July 31, 1851 they left Le Havre bound for the Isle of Wight, ready to challenge the best English ships. “But when they reached the island, on a foggy day, something changed. They waited for the arrival of theHSM Lavrock, one of the fastest ships in the English fleet, to guide them to port. Since they didn’t know the waters, they had to wait for a boat to guide them, it’s normal. But that short journey served to discover his letters. theamerica it was with a deck full of trunks, baggage and live animals that they had needed for food during the crossing. And, in spite of everything, when the wind blew he moved forward Lavrock easily Everyone understood that the ship america it was very fast,” says Wheatley. The result was that word spread all over the island that the American ship was wonderful. Onlookers flocked to the harbor to see it, “but the shipowners would not accept the challenge of competing with him for money,” explains Wheatley. The London paper The Times he reported that the American ship had the effect “of a sparrow attacking a flock of pigeons.” No one wanted to gamble money against the Americans, who were hanging around the island’s palaces and pubs with no luck.
The play, therefore, did not go well for the visitors, who began to understand that they might lose money in that adventure. No one wanted to compete with them except on August 22, 1851, the day when the prize at stake was not money. It was the 100-guinea Cup given by the Earl of Wilton for the winner of a clockwise race around the Isle of Wight. “It’s a very complicated place. I’ve been sailing every week of my life along its coast and every day is different. The currents of the Atlantic make it a demanding course,” says Whitley. A total of 18 yachts signed up, but when it came time to start racing, only 15 were on the starting line. It was a curious shoal of ships, for there were one, two, or three-masted craft. Boats big and small, new and old. And when the starting shot was given, theamerica ran into trouble as they took a long time to raise the anchor, which cost them valuable minutes. The consequence was that they had to move up positions.
And they did, but not without controversy. “An unwritten rule, a sort of memorandum of understanding between members of the Royal Yacht Squadron and accepted by the other Royal Clubs, dictated that yachts would pass east of a light buoy called Nab light, going around the outer part, the furthest from the coast. But Robert Underwood, the British pilot who was on board theamerica having been recruited by the American consul at Southampton to guide the ship in these tricky waters, he knew nothing of this deal and took the shortest route. theamerica it went between the buoy and the shore, which cut the route short and meant that even today, if you go to a pub on the Isle of Wight, someone will tell you that the Americans cheated,” Wheatley reasons as he draws a map of the events on a piece of paper. But the historian, who is preparing a soon-to-be-published book about that race, admits that “they didn’t really cheat: it was a communication problem. Nobody had told them about that rule, so they did the most normal thing, stay close to the coast,” he explains.
Although theamerica he ripped a sail shortly after, he was already at the front of the race. Well ahead of the runner-up, a boat named Aurora. As the American yacht passed the Royal Yacht, with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on deck, the monarchs asked their aides who was going first. “Theamericamajesty,” they answered. “And who goes second?”, the queen wanted to know. The assistants looked at the horizon and, seeing no sail, answered: “There is no second, majesty.” For this reason it is said that there is no second in the America’s Cup,” says Wheatley.
“Now, there is one important detail. The Americans received the cup, but they did not know what to do with it. They came to value melting down the trophy and making medals for the crew. In the end, they had the idea to give -at the New York Yacht Club and to create a tournament, thus offering the British the opportunity to reclaim the trophy by visiting them on American soil. Thus was born the Cup. But in doing so, the Americans had recorded on the trophy the name of the winning ship in 1851, theamerica, as well as the name of the other boats that had finished that race. And, for some reason we don’t know, they didn’t put the runner up. They did not register theAurora. I have looked at the cup myself with a magnifying glass and the name is not there. There is no second,” he points out. Was it a personal revenge? Did the Americans respond in this way to the criticism of the English who accused them of cheating? Was it a forgetfulness? It is one of the mysteries of the Cup.
And so the tradition continues, almost two centuries later, which affirms that there is no second. This is how the British understood it, who, in fact, have never recovered the cup, despite having tried many times by investing a lot of money, as Sir Thomas J. Lipton, the great tea tycoon, did for many years. who lost many of the millions he was making importing tea trying to win the Cup. He never made it. Now Jim Ratcliffe, the owner of the multinational chemical company INEOS, is trying. Americans also understood that there is no second. In fact, when in 1851 the news arrived of the triumph of theamericaDaniel Webster, a congressman and secretary of state, interrupted the speech when he was addressing a large audience in the chamber of the House of Representatives, to say: “As Jupiter among the gods, theamerica it is the first, and there is no second.”
172 years ago, the triumph of theamerica in front of Queen Victoria laid the seed of the oldest sports competition in the world. “When I was a kid I used to go to a pub where they had a big wooden eagle in the entrance. Well, it was the figurehead of theamerica, which for some reason ended up there. It is now in a museum. There are still things to know about that first edition. The Cup has changed a lot. Now the boats are flying, and you have a team like Alinghi, with the support of Red Bull, which has two computers that have been simulating sailing 24 hours a day for months to get the most information the best. Everything has changed except the passion and the fact that men who chase glory end up losing their roles if they don’t win. In the Cup, there is no second,” concludes Wheatley.
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