The schooner yacht America was a child star and a technological marvel. Arguably the most famous yacht ever built, she won the ­silver cup in August 1851, and now she represents the pinnacle of yacht racing.

The story of America’s design, build, and her first 16 weeks afloat are the stuff of legend, and for good reason: The schooner’s origin story is irresistible and watertight. The yacht was funded by New York’s wealthiest sportsmen and created specifically for international competition; an invitation to compete had been extended to the Americans from British yachtsmen based at Cowes, on England’s southern coast. The resultant design brief was ambitious: The new yacht must possess the ability to safely and swiftly cross the ocean but also to win nearshore races against yachts specifically built for that purpose. Her given name reflected the aspirations of her owners: America. About 100 feet long on deck, America was constructed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the winter of 1850 and into 1851.

America’s design represented the latest—somewhat radical—ideas of how to create a fast racing yacht. Low to the water, lean, and carrying her maximum beam far forward of other racing yachts, she was rigged simply but ingeniously. A maximum of four sails meant that maneuvers could be executed quickly and by a relatively small crew. These sails were carried by a pair of dramatically raked masts. The engineless America featured state-of-the art sailing technology, including tightly woven cotton duck sails and lead ballast carried low and carefully molded to fit the shape of her hull. A tiller—more responsive than a wheel—could be fitted on for racing. 

In June 1851, just weeks after her launching, and with her racing sails stowed below, America bolted across the Atlantic—New York to La Havre—in just 19 days (a passenger-­carrying sailing ship of the era might complete the same route in 40 days). At Le Havre, her hull was painted black and, from there, she traveled to Cowes, England, to meet the British fleet. 

On August 22, 1851, America soundly defeated the cream of the British yachting fleet in a 53-mile race around the Isle of Wight. In the wake of this landmark victory, Queen Victoria walked her decks, and her owners were awarded a 27-inch-tall 134-ounce bottomless trophy made at Garrard’s, the Queen’s Crown Jeweler. Just 16 weeks after her launch, America was a legend. Her origin story is, to this day, familiar to sailors and aficionados of naval history and continues to be widely studied, written about, discussed, and analyzed in a near fetishized manner. However, what happened to America after the win at Cowes is a decidedly less-trafficked patch of water. America’s career post-Cowes is a more checkered narrative. After winning the cup, America was at the center of a decades-long run of ­adventure, neglect, rehabilitations, and hard sailing, always ­surrounded by ­colorful, passionate personalities. 

Recognizing an opportunity to cash in on their schooner at the top of the market—and harboring no sense of nostalgia or emotion—America’s American owners sold the schooner almost immediately after the race around the Isle of Wight. The new owner cut down her spars and added ballast. She would still be fast but never again as racy. America changed hands again and again. By 1854, just three years after her famous victory, she was abandoned on a mudbank at Cowes. Two years later, a shipwright bought her and began a restoration.

In July 1860, America was sold to a mysterious new owner who immediately put her in harm’s way. Her new owner sailed America back to North America, where the schooner was, apparently, sold into the Confederate navy, and for nearly a year, America officially served the rebel cause. In summer 1861, America carried a pair of Confederate officers across the Atlantic to Europe, and then returned to the southeast coast of North America, but only after entering at least one regatta in Europe. Through much of 1861 and into 1862, America appears to have been frequently in action on behalf of the rebel cause at the mouth the St. Johns River at Jacksonville in northeast Florida.

In spring 1862, as federal troops closed in on Jacksonville, America was pinned inside the St. Johns River at Jacksonville. Rather than risk the certain loss of the practically and symbolically valuable schooner, the rebels moved America 60 miles up the St. Johns and scuttled her in a shallow, muddy tributary—apparently with the intent of returning to refloat her at some later opportunity. Shortly thereafter, having secured the river and Jacksonville itself, US Navy sailors moved upriver, where they found and raised America. America then served on the federal blockade at Charleston and was directly involved in the capture and/or destruction of several rebel blockade runners. Finally, in May 1863, America received a reprieve. She was sent north to serve as a training vessel at the United States Naval Academy in Newport, Rhode Island.

In 1873, the federal government sold America to General Benjamin Butler, a colorful Massachusetts-based politician. Butler proved to be a strong patron of the now-iconic schooner, spending lavishly on her upkeep and sailing her extensively. Butler and America were among the spectator fleet at New York for multiple defenses of the America’s Cup in the late 19th century. After Butler’s death, in 1893, the aging wooden vessel was approaching 50 years and had been “ridden hard and put away wet.” By 1921, America was rotting at her slip in Boston and offered for sale. Much of her lead ballast had been stripped off and repurposed for military purposes during the Great War. When rumors circulated that a Portuguese syndicate was interested in purchasing her and converting her to a trading packet, a group of historic-minded sailors from Boston’s Eastern Yacht Club stepped in and purchased America. The group moved America to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, where she was ­presented to the Naval Academy. 

While Annapolis seemed to be a logical long-term home for the famous schooner, the Naval Academy did not have the ­facilities or manpower to maintain an aging wooden sailing vessel. She spent the next 20 years afloat in a slip on the brackish Severn River, serving as a photo backdrop for midshipmen and, sometimes, as a playground for local children. She was kept afloat but with a bare-minimum level of maintenance. Finally, in 1940, a move was made to restore the now 90-year-old schooner. While no official paper trail has been found connecting President Franklin Roosevelt to America’s rehabilitation, the effort was widely assumed at the time to have been endorsed by the president himself who, allegedly, envisioned America as a centerpiece of a new Navy museum at Washington. Plans were made to move America to nearby Annapolis Yacht Yard, with the facilities and staff capable of undertaking a proper rehabilitation. On a windy evening in December 1940, America floated on a king tide over the sill of the privately owned Annapolis Yacht Yard’s marine railway and was hauled ashore, according to one witness, “groaning and complaining.” She would not touch the water again.

As work was started on the America project, the Annapolis Yacht Yard’s leadership began an aggressive, effective push to secure contracts to build 110-foot wooden submarine chasers for the United States Navy and, later, to build 70-foot wooden motor torpedo boats for the British Navy and other allied navies under the auspices of the Lend-Lease Act. The facility became a vital military production partner, critical to the war effort. Meanwhile, America languished in the literal center of this activity. Some initial scoping work had been completed and a few sections replaced, but the demands of wartime shipbuilding overcame any serious rehabilitation effort. In late March 1942, a makeshift shed that had been built over America’s hull collapsed under the weight of a surprise snowstorm. After the shed collapse, any visions of a straightforward rehabilitation evaporated, no matter how powerful the project’s sponsor. A more permanent structure was constructed over the ruins, and, at the end of the war, with Roosevelt dead, America was unceremoniously broken up and the remains hauled to the Annapolis city dump. 

At the time of the breakup, a handful of historic-minded ­yachtsmen and museum officials bemoaned the loss, but there was no widespread outcry, and it is unfair to judge the decisions and actions that led to America’s breakup through a modern lens. America’s planned rehabilitation was interrupted by the attacks at Pearl Harbor and halted after the United States’ entry into the Second World War. The iconic America, her physical form likely well beyond “saving” after the shed collapse, was, ultimately, a victim of poor timing and most unfortunate circumstances.

Editor’s note: This article has been edited for style and clarity.

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As a green 21-year-old junior editor at Sailing World in 1995, my boss put me in charge of editing Dr. Stuart H. Walker’s monthly column. It arrived by facsimile, always single-spaced, Courier font and the title underlined in the upper left corner. These were days before email and internet, so I’d have to retype it, line by line, careful not to omit a single word. I was warned: The doctor is precise, and he doesn’t like to be edited. But those who know Walker’s writings through his dozen books, hundreds of columns and lectures will understand when I admit that after transposing each month’s column, my brain would hurt. I’d reread long, wordy passages multiple times before making sense of it.

To simplify the experience for myself, I would deconstruct sentences and whole paragraphs, attempting to break them into comprehendible nuggets. I’d send the manuscript back, and we’d battle professionally over my heavy-handed editing. But, alas, we’d settle somewhere in the middle, and he would always return his final copy with a kind handwritten note at the top.

As laborious as editing his columns was at times, this immersive experience into Walker’s writings taught me all I could ever retain about tactics, current, lake winds and the deep, cerebral part of the game. I did eventually learn two things over more than a decade of editing his masterpieces. There is a clear and powerful lesson in every column. And Dr. Walker is always right.

He was a rare and amazing individual on the water and off, a man who lived a racing ­sailor’s life until stomach cancer took him at age 95, steering his Soling in Annapolis, Maryland, right up until the end. Francis, his wife of 67 years and mother of their two daughters, passed away in 2012, and he remarried, at age 90, to Patricia Empey. The two of them traveled far and wide, honored guests of old sailing mates everywhere in Europe, where he raced Solings extensively. His final book, published in 2015, Travels with Thermopylae, chronicles the excellent adventures towing his beloved keelboat throughout Europe in the mid-1980s.

A World War II Army veteran, doctor and professor of pediatrics, champion sailor and Hall of Famer, wisdom and character are what define Walker, whisperer of the Chesapeake. He was immensely successful in life, career and his sport, and I believe he revealed the secret to such success in the author’s note of his essential reading, The Tactics of Small Boat Racing (1966), in which he writes, “To my wife Francis — who loves sailing in order to love me and accepts my racing all day and my writing all night.”

I imagine Dr. Walker is now riding “the sailor’s wind” into the afterlife, looking for the next shift and devising his own “grand strategy.”

Dr. Stuart H. Walker’s Bibliography:

• The Techniques of Small Boat Racing
• The Tactics of Small Boat Racing
• Performance Advantages in Small Boat Racing
• Wind and Strategy
• Advanced Racing Tactics
• Winning: The Psychology of Competition
• A Manual of Sail Trim
• Positioning: The Logic of Sailboat Racing
• The Sailor’s Wind
• The Code of Competition
• Travels with Thermopylae

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Excerpt from Second Wind, by Nathaniel Philbrick. Published by arrangement with Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright (c) 2018 by Nathaniel Philbrick.

On Friday, April 23, Bruce Perry, a friend who was the administrator of the Conservation Commission on Nantucket, called to tell me the town was opening Sesachacha Pond that day. All winter he’d heard me talking about my dream of one day sailing “through the cut.” As it turned out, we were scheduled to have dinner with Bruce and his family that night, and since he planned to watch the cut’s completion that afternoon, he said he’d tell me about it in the evening.

Bruce and family lived in what’s called an upside-down house (bedrooms downstairs, living room and dining room upstairs) overlooking Long Pond in Madaket on the western end of the island. It was the perfect place to hear about a pond opening. Apparently, Sesachacha had been at a record high, so when the cut was finally completed, it had come roaring out in a way that dwarfed the relative trickle I had seen in October. Bruce recounted how fish and even eels were caught up in the rush of water that had quickly carved out an opening the size of a small river. If anything, it should be even bigger by the next afternoon when I planned to go sailing.

“But, Nat,” Bruce cautioned, “it’s nothing to fool around with. There’s an awful lot of power in that pond. And once you’re out there in the ocean, you’re gone.”

That evening, during the drive back into town, I promised Melissa that I was more curious than I was determined to sail through the cut. I just wanted to take a look. And, to be truthful, Bruce’s words had a sobering effect. I wasn’t going to go dashing out there like the Lone Ranger. I didn’t want to wreck my boat or drown myself. I really didn’t.

I spent Saturday morning in the Nantucket Atheneum, the town library. The building, particularly in the wing where the archives were stored, had a Miss Havisham feel to it, as though it were still suspended in a time that the world had long since passed by. Although a spectacular and much-needed renovation project has given the building a whole new ambiance, that morning in the spring of 1993, as I read my way through a stack of ancient letters, I felt as if I too were a kind of artifact blanketed with dust.

By the time I set out for Sesachacha around 1 in the afternoon, I was anxious to wash off the past and rejoin the present. Melissa, the kids and Molly were in the car with me. The plan was this: They’d help me with the boat on the southern end of the pond, then drive over to the other side, where they’d walk the quarter mile or so to the cut. The subject of my sailing through the cut was studiously avoided.

When we pulled up to the launch ramp, the pond seemed higher than ever. In the distance, we could see the backhoe over on the barrier beach, but from our perspective it looked as though the cut might have closed in overnight — at least that was the claim of an elderly gentleman who’d brought his two dogs for a walk along the pond’s edge. “I tell ya,” he said, “they should let the old-timers do this kind of thing. These scientific guys don’t know what the hell they’re doin’ when it comes to pond openings.”

I was reserving judgment. Appearances, particularly when you’re looking at a distant beach, can be deceiving.

The breeze was moderate out of the southwest with plenty of peppy puffs. Soon I was sailing on a beam reach toward where the cut, if there was one, should be. I passed a father and his son fishing in a motorboat. As I entered the midsection of the pond, I saw that Melissa, the kids and Molly had parked and were now walking along the pond’s edge toward the ocean. I waved, but they were too far away to notice.

It was then I realized that there was a cut. It was wider than I would ever have imagined — maybe 30 to 50 feet. A virtual torrent of water was rushing through the opening, a white-water river that must have been close to an eighth of a mile long as it curved out toward the sea and collided with the ocean’s surf in a distant intermingling of brown and blue waters. I now knew what Bruce had meant when he had spoken of the pond’s power, a power that showed no signs of waning more than 24 hours after it had first been tapped.

Someone was standing on the northern edge of the pond cut. After watching me for a while, he waved and called out to me. It was Bruce. The question was how to get close enough to speak to him without being immediately sucked out to sea.

I approached cautiously from the north, where a sandbar had been formed by the turbulence at the cut’s opening.

“Bruce!” I shouted. “What do you think?” “Don’t do it! The current is really ripping!”

I decided to sail past the pond opening just to give it a look. Although I could feel the current grab my boat, torquing it seaward with a trembling, atavistic lurch, the cut wasn’t the all-consuming portal to destruction that I had first assumed it would be. There was enough of a breeze to let me flirt along the opening’s edge without losing myself to the current.

The cut was wide. There was plenty of space for me to sail through it, even with my sail all the way out. It also looked fairly deep. I did notice, however, quite a bit of wave action at the end of the cut. In fact, it looked like a sandbar had formed out there. Even if I did make it through the cut alive, how in God’s name was I ever going to sail back to the pond? But still, the opening beckoned.

Suddenly I was filled with a desire to just close my eyes and ­surrender myself to the flow. Meanwhile, Melissa and company were gradually making their way along the beach. Should I wait for them? If I did, I might lose my nerve.

I tacked and began to bear away toward the cut.

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