Booknotes: The Last Days of the Schooner America

New Arrival:

• The Last Days of the Schooner America: A Lost Icon at the Annapolis Warship Factory by David Gendell (Lyons Pr, 2024)

From the description: "The schooner America was a technological marvel and a child star. In the summer of 1851, just weeks after her launching at New York, she crossed the Atlantic and sailed to an upset victory against a fleet of champions. The silver cup she won that day is still coveted by sportsmen. Almost immediately after that famous victory, she began a decades-long run of adventure, neglect, rehabilitations, and hard sailing, always surrounded by colorful, passionate personalities." Though its title is suggestive of a more limited focus, David Gendell's The Last Days of the Schooner America: A Lost Icon at the Annapolis Warship Factory is a complete history of the America, with additional focus directed toward its connection to the Annapolis Yacht Yard.

Gendell's book "traces the history of the famous vessel, from her design, build, and early racing career, through her lesser-known Civil War service and the never-before-told story of her final days and moments on the ground at Annapolis. The schooner's story is set against a vivid picture of the entrepreneurial forces behind the fast, focused rise of the Annapolis Yacht Yard as the United States prepares for and enters World War II."

America had quite the long and varied career afloat. More: It "ran and enforced wartime blockades. She carried spies across the ocean. And she was on the scene as yachtsmen and business titans spent freely and competed fiercely for the cup she first won. By the early twentieth century, she was in desperate need of a thorough refit. The old thoroughbred floated in brackish water at the United States Naval Academy, stripped of her sails and rotting in the sun." Because it was a celebrated vessel, the America's role in the Civil War is often mentioned in various texts, albeit only briefly. Around thirty pages in this study are devoted to the yacht's Civil War career, which began as a Confederate blockade runner based out of Florida. Trapped by U.S. ships in the Saint Johns River, the America was submerged by its operators in hopes of escaping detection. However, it was duly discovered, raised, and put into Union blockade enforcement service.

As mentioned above, on the eve of WW2 the yacht was a deteriorating mess. Refitting it "would be a massive project—expensive and potentially distracting for a nation struggling to emerge from the Great Depression and preparing for a world war. But the project had a powerful sponsor. On a windy evening in December 1940, the eighty-nine-year-old America was hauled "groaning and complaining" up a marine railway at Annapolis: the first physical step in a rehabilitation rumored to have been set in motion by President Franklin Roosevelt himself."

There the narrative shifts to the Annapolis Yacht Yard and its development into a significant naval construction facility. "The haul-out brought the famous schooner into the heart of the Annapolis Yacht Yard, a privately owned company with a staff capable of completing such a project, but with leadership determined to convert their facility into a modern warship production plant on behalf of the United States and its allies."

In order to bring these stories to light, the author "delved into archival sources and oral histories and interviewed some of the last living people who saw America at the Annapolis Yacht Yard." The text is further enhanced through a wonderful collection of historical photographs.