The navy is taking its extra destroyers down from the shelf and dusting them off for the neutrality patrol. A vast building program for sea defense is under way. Even the ghost ships at Solomons Island will give their all in scrap iron. But in all this activity one veteran of United States warfare at sea is only an onlooker. If she moves again, it will be in a triumphal procession to the proposed naval museum in Washington to take her proud place in the collection of ships which have contributed most to the glory and traditions of a seafaring people.
Of all the famous ships in Uncle Sam’s Navy, none has a more glamorous history than the adventuress America. An old lady, now nearly ninety, she still, like Ninon de L’Enclos, holds the attention of her devoted admirers even among this generation of American seamen. Too old to go about, she is visited by thousands of people every year, holding court along a pier at the United States Naval Academy.
Since 1921 only the wavelets of the Severn have lapped the hull that once tore swiftly through rough, shell-filled seas. If she is taken down the Chesapeake and up the Potomac to Washington, she may be embedded and preserved in concrete. “Sic transit gloria.”
Consider her record: She wrested a prize from previously unbeaten sailors before the eyes of their Queen. She changed the style in all American shipbuilding; in fact, she revolutionized designs that had been used since the first man put out to sea. During the course of the Civil War, she sailed under three flags, and performed valiant service for both the South and the North. Again, in the Spanish-American War, though privately owned, she performed small services of transport. Even in the World War, when she was too decrepit to take an active part, she did her bit—her keel was stripped of its lead to make munitions.
The America is a native of New York City. She was constructed in the shipyard of William H. Brown, at the foot of East 12th Street. Her birth was not accidental. She was designed and created for a particular purpose—to show the world, as represented by the British Royal Yacht Squadron, that American shipwrights could build the fastest boats on the ocean. Her six sponsors, members of the New York Yacht Club, put up $30,000 for her construction. The decision to have the United States represented in the great international race at Cowes in 1851 was made by John Cox Stevens, Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, and George L. Schuyler, a member. It was Schuyler who, although he thought the price was high, wrote the order to William H. Brown to build a yacht of “not less than 140 tons.”
But her real creator was George Steers, who began a brilliant reputation as a marine architect at the age of 10 when he built himself a scow. In his time larger brigs and frigates of his design brought prominence to Steers, but the comparatively small 93-foot schooner was what carried his fame into another century. Steers’ career was cut short at the age of 36 when he died from injuries received in a runaway accident which occurred while he was driving from his home at 91 Cannon Street, New York, to his country place at Great Neck, Long Island.
Tragedy came to another of the men associated with the building of the America, Hamilton Wilkes, a charter member of the New York Yacht Club who was to umpire her trial runs in New York waters before she could be judged capable of competing with the pride of British yachtsmen. Wilkes, who lived at Hyde-Park-on-Hudson, was so interested in the building of the schooner that he sat around the shipyard in all kinds of weather watching the men working. This continued exposure was said to have caused tuberculosis from which he died in France in 1852.
The order for the vessel had been given November 15, 1850, and she was to be ready for delivery the following May 1. But even though Steers worked at night by the light of a candle held by his young nephew, he was not able to complete his masterpiece at the specified time and $10,000 was deducted from the price by the backers because of the delay.
The finished product was the wonder of the East River. Before George Steers’ time shipbuilders’ models all followed what was called the cod’s head-fish tail pattern. The new yacht was described by a contemporary writer as being shaped “like a waterfowl.” Her prow, pointed instead of blunt, cut through the water like a knife.
On June 21, 1851, the America was towed down the East River for the sea, commanded by Captain “Dick” Brown, a Sandy Hook pilot. Her crew of 13 included her designer and his brother, James R. Steers. She was the first yacht to cross the ocean to take part in an international race.
James R. Steers thoughtfully kept a log of the 20-day voyage. Judging from the log his chief diversion was what they had to eat; and although he sometimes complains about the cooking and sometimes adds “first-rate dinner,” the cuisine seems to have been amazingly adequate for the size of the craft. Roast turkey, green peas, chicken pot pie, boiled corn, apple pie, and plum pudding are only a few of the delicacies enumerated. Brother George was seasick on June 30 and on the same date James wrote:
“Should I ever get home, this will be my last sea trip. All my clothes are wet. It has rained every day since we left.”
But Brother George recovered from his seasick spell and James got over his distaste for the water after their arrival in England. What happened at Cowes on August 22, 1851, is such familiar history it is hardly necessary to recall it. Never had Cowes been so crowded; a hundred yachts elbowed each other in the harbor; the beaches were thronged with spectators. Queen Victoria watched from the Royal yacht, the Victoria and Albert. It was not customary for a racing yacht to salute the Queen, “any more than it would have been expected of a jockey in a horse race to draw up before Her Majesty to salute.” But as the America approached the Queen’s boat she lowered her ensign, the commodore and crew removed their hats and stood with uncovered heads, “a mark of respect,” says a writer describing the scene, “not the less becoming because it was bestowed by republicans.”
There were 18 yachts entered in the race. When the opening gun was sounded the America did not move till a second or two after the others. When the race was finished the America was the only yacht in sight. She had left her competitors so far behind there was no second. The Yankee had the Royal Yacht Squadron’s coveted silver cup. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the American yachtsmen on board the America. All England talked about the winner. The United States was jubilant. Even in a little inland Maryland village called Libertytown, whose inhabitants never saw water except when it rained or they pulled a bucket out of the well, a newly born daughter was named “America” after the most popular heroine of the day. Nearly 70 years later the namesake of the America, an old woman then, talked about the great boat. “The America’s Cup will never leave this country while I live,” she used to say. Her prophecy was true.
Like an actress who achieves sudden popularity and immediately gets new offers, so with the America. Her owners, who did not want to bring her back across the Atlantic (James Steers was probably still thinking about being soaking wet on the voyage over) sold her for £5,000 to Lord John de Blaquiere, an Irish peer. This, with a $500 prize won in a race with the Titania after the Cowes regatta, made a net profit for the six owners of $1,750 above the original cost of the ship and expense of the voyage.
For 5 years then the America led the life of the leisure class; she cruised the Mediterranean with her titled owner until 1856 when he sold her to the second Viscount Templetown, who changed her name to the Camilla. In 1858 she was bought by Henry Sotheby Pitcher, who made much needed repairs. On July 30, 1860, Pitcher sold her to Henry E. Decie of Northamptonshire, a member of the Royal Western Yacht Club of Plymouth.
Here she leaves her life of pleasure and goes into the adventure of war. Decie, still calling her the Camilla, brought her to Savannah, Georgia, in the spring of 1861. As the Camilla she ran the Federal blockade carrying representatives of the Confederacy to purchase war supplies in England. One story is that Decie sold her to the Confederacy for $60,000 and that her name was changed to the Memphis. Men who have studied the records say that the description of the Memphis does not tally with the specifications of the America but that later Confederate naval records list the “C.S.S. Yacht America” without further description.
Her exploits for the doomed South are hidden in the past. It would be interesting to know what silent risks she ran before her capture by the Union—from the bottom of a Florida creek.
It was Lieutenant T. H. Stevens, of the U.S.S. Ottawa, who discovered in March, 1862, a letter on a boat taken in Florida waters, giving details of where the Confederates had sunk the blockade runner to prevent the Federals from getting as a prize what was still one of the fastest boats in the Atlantic. From the tip in the letter Lieutenant Stevens went up the St. John’s River, 70 miles above Jacksonville, to Dunn’s Creek. There
where the boughs of the old forest trees on either side of the creek arched over, leaving but a small strip of blue sky, where the silence was seldom broken except by the crane and the paroquet, or the plunge of an alligator, and where the boats of the fleet were never likely to penetrate, the champion America was found. She was scuttled and sunk close in under the bank, in a bend in the creek, and but for her masts would have been well concealed as there was about four feet of water above her deck.
For seven days the United States seamen tried in vain to raise her. They were about to abandon the attempt when a picket brought in a “lengthy specimen of Florida backwoodsman” who told how the yacht had been sunk: by three 2-inch auger holes bored forward and two aft. With this information the navy men constructed flumes and pumps and were able eventually to bring her to the surface. At Port Royal she was put into condition to become part of the blockading fleet that, as a Confederate ship, she had previously eluded.
Now her role was reversed, but she played this part with distinction too. Two of her most important achievements in the blockade fleet were the capture of the British steamer Princess Royal, carrying arms, ammunition, naval machinery, and British workmen who were to instruct the Confederates in the manufacture of steel- pointed projectiles; and the destruction of the English iron steamer Georgia.
The purchase of the America by the United States Government in May, 1863, is interesting in the light of a much later sale. According to Winfield M. Thompson, who wrote a comprehensive biography of the yacht, she was bid in by the government before a prize court in New York City at $700. She had been appraised by Admiral Dupont at $6,000 but because her captors had waived their claim, supposedly on condition that she be turned over to the Naval Academy, the sale was merely a matter of form. After this formality the America was manned with 12 midshipmen from the Naval Academy (at Newport, Rhode Island, during the war) and was set to chasing Confederate raiders in northern waters.
She was given less strenuous duty in the summer of 1864 taking midshipmen on their summer cruise. The midshipmen used to sing ballads about her:
“Where did she come from? New York town!
Who was her skipper? Old Dick Brown!”
The Naval Academy was returned to Annapolis in 1865 and with it came the America. Only one event broke the course of the next 5 years, and that was a disappointment. She once again entered the international race in 1870, but finished fourth. After all, 19 hard years had passed over her mast.
In 1873 the Secretary of the Navy, against the wishes of naval officers, decided to sell the America and she was advertised to be sold to the highest bidder at public auction in Annapolis on June 20. But there was only one bidder, General Benjamin F. Butler, a friend of the Secretary of the Navy, George M. Robeson. Butler’s agent bought the vessel for $5,000. The America’s biographer, Mr. Thompson, says that years later General Butler related with relish how he had instructed his agent to threaten suit against any other bidder basing his threat on a supposed claim to ownership by a southerner who had had some interest in her before she was bought by the Confederacy. The threat, according to Mr. Thompson, did restrain a member of the New York Yacht Club, William Voorhis, who had made a special trip in his schooner, the Tidal Wave, to the Chesapeake Bay especially to buy the America.
The sale was so unpopular in Annapolis that when Butler’s crew arrived to sail her north they found “the weather hot but their reception chilly.” “Not a hand was raised to assist them in getting the America ready to leave the Academy.” The preparation was arduous, too, because of the fact that her lead ballast had been removed before the sale. When Butler’s agent protested, an order was given to supply an equal weight of old iron, to be exchanged in Boston for kintledge. So the New England crew, “with empurpled countenances” had to push “in the ardent summer weather” nearly 20 tons of empty bombshells down a runway to the yacht. Later members of the crew were quoted as having said that at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston Harbor lead ballast neatly stacked in pigs was awaiting the arrival of the America.
As the favorite of General Butler the prima donna became almost a burlesque queen, for the General had an odd and hearty sense of humor. He fitted her deck with brass guns and entered her in innumerable regattas in New England waters.
And now her history is almost ended. Butler’s son sold her in 1917 to Charles H. W. Foster of Boston, and Foster presented her to the government in 1921 after Elmer Jared Bliss, a Boston manufacturer, had the idea of restoring her to the Naval Academy. The America Restoration Committee was formed, with Charles Francis Adams as chairman and, with the assistance of the Alumni Association of the Academy, funds were raised to put her into shape and take her to Annapolis.
Her trip south was a triumphal voyage. Church bells rang in the villages she passed and crowds lined the banks to cheer the heroine on her journey home.