ENDEAVOUR 1 – HISTORY & 1934 CHALLENGE FOR THE AMERICA’S CUP.

It is 22 June 1935, and Endeavour 1 is pictured here racing against five other J Class yachts in the Lymington Yacht Club Regatta. She has rounded a buoy off Ryde and is now on her run back towards Lymington. She is sailing in a light breeze, the very conditions that she was designed to excel in, her royal blue hull reflecting the waves being parted by her long, graceful bow. The crew are easing forward her spinnaker pole, and she is surging along nice and comfortably through a light Solent sea haze.

Her owner, Tommy Sopwith, made his fortune manufacturing some 18,000 aircraft for the RAF during the First World War. (He went on to make a further fortune building the Hurricane fighter aircraft during the Second World War). He is pictured here at Endeavour’s wheel, whilst his wife, Phil, wearing her customary sunglasses, sits right aft with their guests who have joined them for that day’s race.

The previous year, 1934, Sopwith had challenged for the America’s Cup and had asked Charles Nicholson of Camper & Nicholson in Gosport to design and build the new boat for him. Sopwith was an experienced helmsman having owned a number of successful 12-metre yachts. In 1932 he had acquired Shamrock V in order to familiarise himself with the handling of the much larger J class yachts. This gave him a clear idea of what he expected Nicholson to deliver, whilst his innovative work in aircraft design was brought to bear on the design of the mast and the sail plan of Endeavour 1.

Sopwith’s arrival in the J Class racing scene was certainly a game changer. Up and to that time the British Big Class yachts had been in charge of a professional skipper, with the owner often viewing the performance of his yacht from a vantage point ashore, if indeed he attended the regatta at all. Sopwith represented a more Corinthian attitude, where the owner was an active participant in racing the yacht. His wife acted as the time keeper at the start of each race. A competent helmswoman in her own right she occasionally took over steering Endeavour 1 during the British yachting season.

Endeavour 1 was steel plated over a steel frame; 129.7 ft overall and 83.3 ft on the waterline. Her beam was a fraction over 22 ft. Her real innovation lay in her 167 ft high mast which was a welded steel tube, some 20 ins in diameter at the base, which was found to be aerodynamically more efficient than the pear shaped mast carried by the rival America’s Cup yacht, Rainbow.

Also noteworthy was Endeavour 1’s boom which, unlike the booms of old, was not circular in its cross section. Instead, it was constructed with an inverted triangular cross-section. The boom’s upper face was fitted with tracks which ran from side to side. Each track carried its own car to which the foot of the mainsail was attached. Thus the bottom of the mainsail was able to adopt an aerodynamically efficient shape, especially when going to windward. It was known as a “Park Avenue” boom as it was said that two men could walk abreast along it.  In order to ensure that the boom remained perpendicular to the sail at all times, even when the yacht was heeled, the crew could rotate the boom along its whole length.

Sopwith also devised a more aerodynamically efficient jib. Hitherto all jibs had been triangular in shape but Sopwith introduced the quadrilateral jib which had two clews, thus allowing an improved airflow across the mainsail. Unfortunately whilst testing that sail on the Solent prior to her departure for America, her new sail plan was spotted by an American yachtsman who, realising its importance, sent word back to the New York Yacht Club.

Endeavour 1 was launched on 16 April 1934 and took part in 12 races in British waters in June that year, finishing up as class champion. However, on the day before she was ready to set sail for Newport, Rhode Island, her professional crew went on strike demanding more money. Sopwith refused to give way and 14 of her 22 crew abandoned ship. There was a large response to an appeal made for amateur crewmen to fill the gap. However, all the time taken to train up her original crew had now been wasted and her challenge would be handicapped by the use of an enthusiastic, if relatively inexperienced crew and an afterguard chosen for their friendship with Sopwith rather than having extensive experience racing such a large vessel.

Endeavour 1 was the most potent challenger that Britain had sent out to participate in the America’s Cup up to that date. She won her first two races, although she lost the following four races, but by the end of the series of six races the Americans were only ahead by 6 mins 37 secs on a cumulative basis. It had been a very close run event.

For the 1937 America’s Cup Races she would serve as the trial horse for Endeavour II, but on returning to Britain she was laid up in a mud birth on the River Hamble and allowed to rot gently away. Eventually her steel hull plates rusted through, allowing the tide to flow in and out of her.

Endeavour 1 Before restoration

Despite a number of attempts to restore her, it was not until 1984 that a full restoration was undertaken by the American yachtswoman, Elizabeth Myer. She placed the Dutch designer, Gerry Dijkstra, in charge of the work, which kept as faithfully as possible to her original plans, having made due allowance for safety and concerns about structural strength. She was relaunched in May 1989. Elizabeth Meyer then took on the restoration of Shamrock V. It was thanks to her remarkable commitment that others were encouraged to come forward to restore or rebuild yet more of these beautiful craft.

Endeavour 1 After Restoration

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