Sport: Vim and Tomahawk

The world’s most renowned regatta is the English yachting festival known as Cowes Week. Held on the Solent, between the chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight and the wooded southern shore of the mainland, Cowes is to yachting what Wimbledon is to tennis, what Ascot is to horse racing, what Hurlingham is to polo, what Lord’s is to cricket.

From the sacred lawn of the Royal Yacht Squadron, most venerable and exclusive yacht club in the world, six generations of Britons have watched the zigzag tacks of yachting history. It was there in 1851 that the U. S. schooner America astonished British autocrats by winning the brand new One Hundred Guineas Cup, first international yachting trophy ever put up—which later became known as the America’s Cup and caused Britons to spend some $30,000,000 trying to get it back. It was there that the late King George’s magnificent Britannia raced every summer for 40 years before she was buried at sea with due reverence in 1936.

But Cowes is not only for aristocrats. By ferry and excursion steamer sporting England flocked to the Isle of Wight last week. What they came to see this year was the yachting duel between Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith, Britain’s No. 1 yachtsman, and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, the American upstart who trounced him in U. S. waters in two challenges for the America’s Cup (1934 and 1937). This year both were racing twelve-metre boats (half the size of Cup boats). Along the Esplanade as well as within the Royal Yacht Squadron gates, the No. 1 controversy of the week was whether Sop-with’s Tomahawk could beat Vanderbilt’s Vim.

When Skipper Vanderbilt landed in England last June for his first racing in British waters, 50,000 British yachtsmen chuckled. The tricky tidal currents, blustering winds and close-to-shore courses, were quite different from U. S. racing. But, to their dismay, Skipper Vanderbilt caught on quickly, won twelve of the 17 races in which he started this summer. Last week’s regatta, climax of the season, was Britain’s last chance to recover its lost prestige.

With business-like efficiency, Vanderbilt and his well-drilled crew went after the Tomahawk with which his arch-rival had hoped to scalp him. In the first race, sailed in a gale that sank one of the competing boats and drowned a seaman, Vim finished 37 minutes ahead of Tomahawk, but was disqualified for crowding Sopwith’s sloop at the start. In the second race, Vim beat Tomahawk by 28 seconds, in the third by seven minutes, in the fourth by 51 seconds, in the fifth by eight minutes. When the flags came down at sunset on the last day of Cowes Week, Vanderbilt and his Vim were awarded the International Challenge Cup, No. 1 trophy of England’s No. 1 regatta.