The Last Days of the Schooner America

A Lost Icon at the Annapolis Warship Factory

David Gendell

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781493084456
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

2025 BREWINGTON BOOK PRIZE WINNER

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. America 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. Refitting America 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. 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.

The Last Days of the Schooner America 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. As wooden warships are built around her, America waits for a rehabilitation that would never happen. To bring this unique story to life, Annapolis sailor David Gendell delves into archival sources and oral histories and interviews some of the last living people who saw America at the Annapolis Yacht Yard.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: “Groaning and complaining . . . ”
• Chapter 2: First Morning Ashore
• Chapter 3: “ . . . sanguine expectations”
• Chapter 4: “Like Jupiter among the gods”
• Chapter 5: “The whole thing went off well”
• Chapter 6: “I have never seen anything like the speed of this vessel”
• Chapter 7: Into the River
• Chapter 8: Bringing the Yacht America into the US Navy
• Chapter 9: “ . . . everything that can be done to improve her will be done.”
• Chapter 10: “A sentimental journey . . . ”
• Chapter 11: “More speed than you expect around here . . . ”
• Chapter 12: The Paradox of the Ship of Theseus
• Chapter 13: “Information Desired from Small Ship and Boat Builders”
• Chapter 14: Exchange at the Gate
• Chapter 15: The Vosper Motor Torpedo Boats
• Chapter 16: Sub-chasers and Vosper Plans
• Chapter 17: Motor Torpedo Boat Production Is Underway
• Chapter 18: “ . . . it was a distraction.”
• Chapter 19: New Workers and New Tools
• Chapter 20: “Gentlemen, we are at war . . . ”
• Chapter 21: “Shortly after the Pearl Harbor Incident”
• Chapter 22: “Our present emergency”
• Chapter 23: Launching the First Annapolis Sub-chaser
• Chapter 24: Sabotage on the Hudson
• Chapter 25: “Not an auspicious start for a vessel . . . ”
• Chapter 26: Enemies at the Coastline
• Chapter 27: “Somewhat Colder Tonight”
• Chapter 28: “The most awful crash I ever heard”
• Chapter 29: Work on America Is Officially Halted
• Chapter 30: Launching the First Annapolis Motor Torpedo Boat
• Chapter 31: New Faces at Annapolis
• Chapter 32: Passage to New England
• Chapter 33: The Bridge and the Club
• Chapter 34: A Bold Proposal
• Chapter 35: “ . . . not only no, but hell no”
• Chapter 36: “Schooner yacht AMERICA—Rehabilitation.”
• Chapter 37: “These gallant little ships”
• Chapter 38: November 1942
• Chapter 39: “ . . . all the strength you can build into her.”
• Chapter 40: Old Ship in the New Shed
• Chapter 41: A Tragic End
• Chapter 42: “Your post-war boat”
• Chapter 43: “U.S.S. America . . . Disposition of.”
• Chapter 44: “ . . . her last timbers were pried apart”
• Chapter 45: “ . . . in the haste of it all it got lost in the shuffle.”
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Sources
• About the Author