The Photograph Collection of the Larchmont Yacht Club

Magazine Antiques, August, 2001 by A.J. Peluso

In 1895 Defender raced against Lord Dunraven's Valkyrie III (Pls. X and XV). The first of three races was held on September 7, amid a spectator fleet of some two hundred steamships and sixty thousand sightseers. Iselin's wife, Hope Goddard Iselin (1868- 1970), was the timekeeper, accompanied by her dog Dandy. [12] Defender won the race comfortably, but that night Lord Dunraven filed a protest suggesting that the crew of Defender had added ballast the night before the race. This imputation of fraud became the subject of hearings, pamphlets, books, and bitter controversy for years to come.

In the second race, on September 10, the Yorktown, a steamship belonging to the Old Dominion Line, blundered across the course, causing a foul. The New York Times reported indignantly that the steamboat's action was "one of the most unpardonable interferences ever seen in American waters" [13] (see Pls. V and VI). Lord Dunraven and Iselin each signaled a foul. They raced on nonetheless and Defender won. The regatta committee of the New York Yacht Club, empowered to evaluate the facts, found in Iselin's favor, in part by using photographs taken by the English firm G. West and Son. Valkyrie III was disqualified.

When the third race was run on September 12, the newspapers reported that the skipper-challenger Lord Dunraven was so angry that he almost decided not to sail. However, both yachts were at the starting line, which Defender crossed first, closely followed by Valkyrie III. To everyone's surprise the English boat luffed, probably on purpose, slowed immediately, and her racing flag was lowered. A waiting tug towed her to her mooring at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Defender completed the course alone. Dunraven's actions were attributed to his "vivid imagination, his lack of judgment in small, immediate matters, fired by a temper always early rushed to the boil." [14] Dunraven was treated mercilessly by the American press and returned to England, never to race here again.

In 1899 and again in 1901, the unflappable and indefatigable Sir Thomas Lipton (1850-1931), who was the soul of sportsmanship, faced Columbia (P1. XVI) but failed to defeat her with Shamrock I in 1899 or with Shamrock II in 1901.

In 1903, the last race in which Iselin was involved, his daughter Nora christened the new defender, Reliance (P1. XVII), with "much ceremony much bunting, ribbons, flags, flowers and a brass band." [15] Reliance, at 143 feet overall, was the largest of the yachts to defend the cup. Reliance defeated the gallant Lipton's Shamrock III, which unluckily drifted into fog in the third and final race.

The next challenge did not take place until after World War I, by which time Iselin was no longer active. In 1920 and 1930 the luckless Lipton again challenged and again lost with shamrock IV Shamrock V. The humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935) called Lipton "the world's most cheerful loser." [16]

Additional research will be devoted to the club's pictorial archives that postdate World War I. A cursory look suggests a rich lode of works by the master marine photographers and competitors Edwin Levick (1868-1929) and Morris Rosenfeld (1884-l968). [17]