Early History
The Royal Yacht Club invited the U. S. to enter a yacht in a regatta to be held as part of the Great Exposition of 1851. In response, a syndicate of six men, led by John Cox Stevens, spent $30,000 to build a new racing schooner, America.
Designed by George Steers, the ship was launched on May 3, 1851. After sailing to France to be repainted and outfitted with racing sails, she was entered in a 58-mile race around the Isle of Wight. There were 17 other vessels, all British, competing in the August 22 race. The prize was the Hundred Guineas Cup, a silver ewer standing 2 feet, 3 inches high and weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces.
The race began at 10 a.m. America crossed the finish line 10 hours and 37 minutes later, 18 minutes of her nearest competitor.
Cox and his partners sold the ship in England for $25,000 but brought the cup back to the United States. In 1857, they presented it to the New York Yacht Club (NYYC) as a trophy to be challenged for by any foreign yacht club.
The first challenge didn't come until 1868, when James Ashbury of England offered to race his schooner Cambria against any American vessel. However, the NYYC decreed that the challenger would have to take on an entire fleet, as America had done in 1857.
After much bickering, the first race for the trophy, renamed America's Cup, was held in Lower New York Bay on August 8, 1870, with Cambria against 14 NYYC vessels. She finished eighth; the race was won by the schooner Magic.
Ashbury returned the following year with a new yacht, Livonia. The NYYC agreed on a best four-out-of-seven series, with a single defending vessel in each race, but reserved the right to change defenders from day to day.
Columbia beat Livonia in the first two races but lost the third after her steering gear broke. Sappho then took over to win the next two and keep the cup.
For the third challenge, from Canada's Countess of Dufferin in 1876, the NYYC had a single defending yacht, Madeleine. Since then, America's Cup races have always pitted a single defender against a single challenger.
The format of the series has changed several times. It was two out of three races from 1876 through 1887, three out of five from 1893 through 1903, and four out of seven from 1930 through 1987 and in 1992. There was a lone two-out-of-three series in 1988. In 1995, it became five out of nine.
Lipton and Sopwith: Six Challenges
From 1876 through 1903, the NYYC defended the cup ten times, winning 25 consecutive races in the process. Sir Thomas Lipton was the losing challenger three times, in 1899, 1901, and 1903.
After a long hiatus, caused partly by World War I, Lipton challenged for a fourth time in 1920. His Shamrock IV managed to win two races of the series but the defender, Resolute, won three.
Although the series moved from New York Harbor into open seas off the New York-New Jersey coast in 1893, defenders were still favored because of their knowledge of local waters. When it become obvious to the NYYC that even Lipton, the perennial challenger, had become discouraged after his 1920 loss, the club announced that the next race series would be held off Newport, Rhode Island. In addition, restrictions were placed on competing yachts for the first time. The club adopted the Universal Rule J Class as the America's Cup yacht.
Lipton returned for a fifth and final challenge in 1930, but Shamrock V lost in four straight races. The 80-year-old Irish grocery magnate, who's now best known for his tea company, had become so popular as "the world's best loser" that New York Mayor Jimmy Walker presented him with a silver loving cup on behalf of the American people.
There were two more challenges during the J-boat era, both from T. O. M. Sopwith, the English designer of boats and airplanes. (Charles Schulz's Snoopy flies a Sopwith Camel, the fighter plane made famous by the RAF during World War I. Sopwith also designed a prototype for the World War II PT boat.)
Sopwith's Endeavour was probably the fastest of the two yachts in the 1934 series, but U. S. skipper Harold S. Vanderbilt did a brilliant job of sailing to win the series, four races to two, in Rainbow.
Vanderbilt had an easier time with Ranger in 1937, beating Sopwith's Endeavour II in four straight races. It was, in a sense, a victory for American engineering. Ranger was the first America's Cup design to be tank-tested.
America's Cup racing ended with World War II and it seemed as if it might have come to a permanent end, mainly because J-boats had become prohibitively expensive. To encourage further challenges, the NYYC announced a switch to the smaller, less expensive 12-meter class.
The first post-war challenge came from England in 1958, but the result was another 4-0 sweep by the Americans.
A new challenger emerged in 1962 when Sir Frank Packer, an Australian newspaper magnate, brought Gretel to Newport, managing to win one race against Weatherly.
There was one final unsuccessful English challenge in 1964. Then Australia, France, and Sweden all announced that they wanted to challenge for the cup in 1967. For the first time, trial races had to be staged to select the challenger. Australia's Dame Pattie won the trials easily.
Controversy and Acrimony
The America's Cup had stirred controversy and acrimony before 1967. In fact, James Ashbury and the English weren't happy about the fact that the entire NYYC fleet defended the trophy in the very first challenge race in 1870.
In 1895, the Earl of Dunraven's challenger, Valkyrie III, apparently won the second race of the series, but was disqualified. After deliberately defaulting to lose the third race and his chance at the cup, Dunraven charged that the American boat, Defender, had been illegally ballasted.
His protest was quickly disallowed and Dunraven continued to complain so vociferously that he was stripped of his honorary NYYC membership. Largely as a result of that controversy, England didn't challenge again until 1934. (Lipton's five challenges were all on behalf of the Royal Belfast Yacht Club in Northern Ireland.)
Controversy also arose with Sopwith's first challenge, in 1934. His Endeavour won the first two races of the series and narrowly lost the third. Sopwith was flying his protest flag after losing the fourth race, but the NYYC disallowed the protest on a technicality, prompting a British writer to comment, "Britannia rules the waves, but America waives the rules."
Those were relatively minor incidents, however, compared to the furor that arose with Sir Frank Packer's second challenge in 1967. America's Intrepid and Australia's Dame Pattie collided shortly after the start of the second race. Dame Pattie crossed the finish line first, but was disqualified because of the collision and Intrepid was declared the winner.
The NYYC was immediately flooded with telegrams, phone calls, and letters, most of them from Americans who felt the ruling was unfair. A furious member of the Australian Parliament even demanded that the country withdraw its ambassador to the U. S. in protest.
Intrepid proceeded to win the next two races for a sweep, but the disqualification still rankled with Australians and seemed to spur a determination to win the cup. After Packer's Gretel II lost four of five races in 1970, Alan Bond took over to finance the next four Australian challenges.
The first three, in 1974, 1977, and 1980, were unsuccessful, with the challenger winning only one race of thirteen during that period. Then, in 1983, Bond challenged with a very unusual boat, Australia II.
The smallest yacht ever to compete for the America's Cup, Australia II boasted a "secret keel," that was hidden with a shroud whenever the boat was out of the water. One night, skin-divers who tried to sneak a look at the keel were chased away by guards, and Australia charged the NYYC with illegal espionage.
The NYYC countered by asking the International Yacht Racing Union to change the challenger's rating, which would have meant disqualification. But the IYRU refused to get involved.
By this time, the secret was no longer a total secret. The challenger had an extra-heavy, bulbous keel fitted with fins, which both increased her speed and made her exceptionally maneuverable.
All the fuss seemed rather silly after the defender, Liberty, won three of the first four races. But Australia II came back to win three in a row, taking the cup from the United States for the first time.
That marked the end of the longest winning streak in the history of sports: 132 years, encompassing 25 successful cup defenses during which the American defenders had won 78 of 86 races.
Cup Racing Since 1987
Someone had once said that, if the America's Cup ever left its display case at the NYYC, it would be replaced by the head of the losing skipper.
But Dennis Conner, who had defended the cup in 1980 only to lose it in 1983, still had his head in 1987. And he proceeded to win the cup back with relative ease, skippering Stars and Stripes to a four-race sweep of Australia's Kookaburra.
That didn't bring the cup back to the New York Yacht Club, however. Instead, Conner's own San Diego Yacht Club took temporary possession and control of the competition.
The SDYC planned to accept its first challenge in 1989, but a New Zealand syndicate headed by Michael Fay went to court to force a cup series in 1988. The court, however, said nothing about what types of yachts should be involved or how many races should constitute a series.
The SDYC agreed to defend in a best two out of three series and built a 60-foot catamaran (multi-hulled vessel) to defend against Fay's 120-foot monohull. Conner had no problem winning two straight races.
Fay then went to court again and won a ruling that the race was a "gross mismatch." That ruling, however, was overturned in late 1989 and Fay's appeal to a higher court was turned down the following year.
A new design, the International America's Cup class (IACC), was established for the SDYC's second defense, in 1992. IACC vessels are 75-foot monohulls with 110-foot masts. Italy challenged this time around with Il Moro di Venezia, skippered by American Paul Cayard, but the Italian entry could win just one of the five races.
The 1995 series was just plain bizarre, especially during the trials. It actually began in December of 1994, when a French challenger fell from its lift and sustained $1 million worth of damage when being lowered into San Diego's Mission Bay for the first time.
Less than a month later, a freak wind caused $600,000 to one of the U. S. boats, Young America. Then the keel fell off another French challenger, causing the boat to capsize.
During a challenger trial race on March 5, an Australian boat suddenly split in half and disappeared below the water in less than two minutes, becoming the first yacht in America's Cup history to sink. Fortunately, all crew members were rescued.
Young America, back in action in March, was damaged again when a rogue wave broke off a 16-foot section of its hull. Two weeks later, the keel nearly fell off Dennis Conner's boat during a defender trial race. The crew had to don lifejackets for fear the boat would sink, but it didn't.
While a New Zealand entry, Black Magic, was dominating the challenger trials, three U. S. boats were battling for the right to defend the cup. One of them, Mighty Mary, began with an all-woman crew, though a male helmsman/tactician was later added to the mix.
Mighty Mary was narrowly defeated by Conner's Stars and Stripes in a semi-final match, and Conner then beat Young America in the final race, winning the right to challenge. However, Conner decided to skipper Young America in the final, because it was the faster boat of the two.
It made no difference. Lacking little experience with their new vessel and up against the much faster Black Magic, Conner and his crew lost the cup in five straight races, none of them even close.
New Zealand staged its first cup defense in 2000, when Black Magic once again won easily, this time over an Italian challenger, Luna Rossa.
The least likely challenger in cup history, Switzerland, beat Black Magic with a new boat named Alinghi in 2003. The series wasn't close, as Alinghi took all five races.
The victory by land-locked Switzerland reflected the total change that had come over America's Cup racing since the days when every bit of the vessel and all of her crew had to come from the represented country. The winning boat's crew was made up almost entirely of New Zealanders, led by Russell Coutts, who had skippered Black Magic to her two victories.
Alinghi won again in 2007, defending against a New Zealand challenge, but this was a more exciting series than the 5-2 margin would suggest. The defender won the final race by just one second. It could easily have become a 4-3 series, with more racing to follow.
The 2010 series was preceded by more than 2 years of litigation that resulted in a the first America's Cup contest between two multi-hulled vessels, the catamaran Alinghi 5 defending for Switzerland against the trimaran BMW Oracle, representing the United States.
Home port for the series was Valencia, Spain, and the course was in the Mediterranean Sea. Leading up to the first race, experts debated which vessel would have the edge under various conditions, and the consensus was that the odds were about even. But the first race seemed to prove that the U. S. boat was easily the faster of the two.
Despite a botched start that left her 660 meters behind, BMW Oracle won by a marine of about 2 miles, showing such speed both upwind and downwind that it seemed unlikely the Swiss boat had a chance.
The second race was close until the second leg. Alinghi 5 actually led for a time on the first leg, but after the boats rounded the first mark, BMW Oracle pulled steadily away, winning by more than a half-mile.
