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On this day…
15 May
in 1930, Rainbow, the last of eight successful America’s Cup defenders built by the Herreshoff yard at Bristol Rhode Island, USA was lauched. She was designed by Starling Burgess, who had also designed the successful 1930s defender Enterprise, and whose father Edward Burgess was the designer of the defenders Puritan, Mayflower, and Volunteer in 1885, 1886 and 1887. Rainbow defeated Endeavour in the first of T.O.M. Sopwith's two America's Cup challenges 4-2, but not without losing the first two races. It was the closest the New York Yacht Club would come to losing the Cup until 1983. Rainbow was widely regarded as being slower than Endeavour but was tactically sailed by her helmsmen Harold Vanderbilt and Sherman Hoyt. Rainbow was scrapped in 1940.
© Hamish Ross 2006
