Partners' Summer

If racing for the America's Cup has been a bitter and disappointing experience to British challenger Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith, the past summer has proved even more distressing to his partner in the aircraft business: bluff, sixtyish Frederick Sigrist. After building the yacht Endeavour II for his second Cup challenge, Mr. Sopwith prevailed upon Mr. Sigrist to charter his previous challenger, Endeavour I, from its new owner, Commodore H. A. Andreae of the Royal Southern Yacht Club, help him bear the expense of taking both boats to the U. S. as alternative challengers. En route, Endeavour I slipped her towline from Mr. Sigrist's motor yacht Viva and was unsighted for ten anxious days.

At Newport, where ambitious Mrs. Sigrist was overshadowed by ambitious Mrs. Sopwith, Endeavour I, and Endeavour II held no formal trial races and rumor was that the partners had a series of misunderstandings. Mr. Sopwith selected Endeavour II as the challenger, lost his navigator when Donald MacPhee died of gastric ulcers, then lost the cup to Harold Stirling Vanderbilt's Ranger with four straight defeats. At the end of this unfortunate adventure overseas, with relations cooler than they had been in 20 years of partnership, the Sigrists and Sopwiths sailed home.

Same week their boats started back in tow of their motor yachts. Endeavour I was skippered by Ned Heard, veteran of Sir Thomas Lipton's challengers. Endeavour II by 58-year-old George Williams. After three days Viva returned to Newport to announce that Endeavour I had once again snapped her towline--this time in a hurricane gale. After a week of frenzied search by the U. S. Coast Guard, Lloyd's of London announced that she had been sighted by the British tanker Amastra 750 miles off the Azores, tolled its historic Lutine Bell at the good news. But from the Amastra by radio came a prompt and puzzling denial. Four days later word came that another British tanker, the Cheyenne, had sighted the missing sloop 260 mi. off the coast of Ireland and the Lutine Bell tolled again, first occasion it had ever been rung a second time for one ship.

Same day Endeavour II arrived at Gosport. Partner Sopwith boarded her in brief, for Captain Williams, his friend and skipper for a decade, had died on board of a gastric hemorrhage.

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