No Contest

"The worst defeat since Bunker Hill," moaned the correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph. It certainly couldn't have been much worse. In four races against Constellation, the U.S. America's Cup defender, Britain's $300,000 challenger, Sovereign, did nothing to support her name. She lost the first race by 5 min. 34 sec.; the second by 20 min. 24 sec.; the third by 6 min. 33 sec. The fourth and final race last week was absolutely no contest at all.

In two of the first three races, Britain's Peter Scott had at least outmaneuvered Constellation's Bob Bavier at the start, had lost because Sovereign simply could not stay in the same water with the U.S. boat on the windward legs. But last week Scott did not even have the satisfaction of the start. Running along the starting line, he cut across too soon, had to wear back to the line, and start all over again. By then, Bavier had Constellation off and running, six boat-lengths ahead. Scott tried a few desultory tacks, mostly for exercise, then sat back and took his medicine. There was nothing else to do. Constellation's margin: 15 min. 40 sec.

Defeat by a total of 48 min. 11 sec. was half again as bad as Sceptre's loss in 1958. Britons tended to find a scapegoat in Helmsman Scott, but that was unfair: Sovereign was so far outclassed that it needed an engine. "Damn," said one U.S. yachtsman, "why did the British have to come up with a boat like this?" But Constellation had barely crossed the finish line when Australia's Sir Frank Packer, whose Gretel made a fair show of it in 1962, handed an envelope to Commodore Chauncey Stillman of the New York Yacht Club. "I know what's in it," said Stillman, and so did everybody else--a new challenge for 1967.

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