Samuel Colman’s oil on canvas Finish: First International Race for America’s
Cup, August 8, 1870 depicts the second edition of the sailing competition
GETTY IMAGES, RED BULL, INEOS TEAM BRITANNIA
The high sea has always attracted swashbuckling adventurers and, since the founding of the America’s Cup in 1851, larger-thanlife characters – two Vanderbilts, J Pierpont Morgan, tea baron Sir Thomas Lipton, media mogul Ted Turner and tech founder Larry Ellison among them – have taken time off from their empire-building to focus on nautical passions and yacht club honour.
First staged by Britain’s Royal Yacht Squadron, the inaugural race took place around the Isle of Wight under the watchful eye of Queen Victoria. When the royal yacht was passed by a radical-looking schooner for the lead, the monarch asked one of her attendants who was in second. “Your Majesty,” came the reply, “there is no second.”