One yachtsman who was not content simply to lounge on his vessel’s fantail was William K. Vanderbilt Jr. Aboard his 212-foot Aro he combined pleasure with scientific investigation during cruises throughout the world. In the process, he became an amateur ichthyologist of note, discovering many new species of marine life, which he brought home to his private museum at Northport, on Long Island.
A voyage to the Galapagos Islands in 1926 was particularly memorable. Vanderbilt took along four guests, a 33-man crew, a professional fisherman, a photographer (who was provided with a darkroom), and even an artist to record the colors of fishes before they faded.
In addition to ichthyological species, the yachting party studied such local creatures as penguins and tortoises. Meanwhile, curious pelicans flocked to study the yachtsmen, and at one island baby iguanas climbed onto their mothers’ backs for a better look at the party.
The 1926 expedition bagged some 25 hitherto unknown marine specimens. But Vanderbilt’s happiest catch was one of the passengers: A year later he and Rosalind Warburton divorced their spouses and were married.
Professional fisherman Charlie Thompson grasps the fin of a IB-fool tiger shark that was caught off James Island in theGaldpagas during Ara’s 3 926 cruise.
Her booms extended to hold her launches ond nets, riro lies ot anchor in the Galdpogos Islands. Vanderbilt used the nets/or/ishingand/or passengers’ protection/rom sharks while swimming.
Vanderbilt (center) poses as stiffly as any neophyte fisherman against the backdrop of a 16-/oot-wide manta ray that was a prize o/his 1924 outing.
Reveler. The yacht broker aroused the interest of a number of American businessmen, including Charles McCann, head of the Woolworth retail chain. Reveler sat at a dock in Southampton, England, and McCann was in London on business, but claimed not to have time to inspect her. He asked Julyan to have the yacht brought alongside the passenger ship Bremen so he could look at her as he sailed past on his way to New York. Julyan replied that this would cost ?400. McCann changed his mind and, for the first time, asked the price of the yacht. Julyan quoted a figure of ?75,000. McCann exploded, “ Nobody can afford to keep a yacht like that nowadays!” Julyan waited until the Bremen sailed, then cabled his representative in New York to meet McCann on his arrival. As he had guessed, McCann had cooled down. He bought Reveler, renamed her Chalena, furnished her luxuriously and enjoyed her for a decade.
Not all the beneficiaries of America’s boom felt wealthy enough to buy yachts; indeed, one young Rockefeller, asked why he did not have a yacht, replied, “Who do you think we are? Vanderbilts?” But some millionaires made even the Vanderbilts look parsimonious when it came to luxury craft. Emily Roebling Cadwalader, whose fortune came from the wire-and-cable company that built the Brooklyn Bridge, was a case in point. She commissioned three yachts, all named Savorono. The first one seemed cramped at 185 feet, so Mrs. Cadwalader invested two million dollars in trading up to Savorono II, which was launched in 1928. The new Savorono was 294 feet long, required a crew of 41 and cost about $200,000 a year to maintain. Among her modern improvements were gyrostabilizers—fins that could be extended from the hull to keep her steady in a heavy sea. Mrs. Cadwalader found they also could be manipulated to make the yacht roll at anchor, and she enjoyed demonstrating seagoing conditions to her guests while sitting in the harbor having cocktails. Savorono II also had black marble bathrooms with gold fixtures; the fixtures were a true economy, a friend, Mrs. Edward T. Stotesbury, explained, because they did not require daily polishing.
Still, 294 feet of floating splendor failed to satisfy Mrs. Cadwalader. So she commissioned the largest nonroyal yacht ever built. Savorono III was 408 feet long and rated at 4,646 tons—as large as an ocean liner. She cost four million dollars, carried a crew of 83 and could average 17 knots. Eleven watertight bulkheads ensured the yacht’s safety. In her enormous hull were 12 spacious staterooms, each with a private bath or shower, of course. Mrs. Cadwalader’s own suite was so large that it was called an apartment. But size had its drawbacks: Because of the yacht’s 20-foot draft, she could enter only major commercial ports. At the resorts Mrs. Cadwalader liked to visit, Savorono III anchored in the roadstead and the yachting party made their way ashore in tenders.
In creating this behemoth, the wire-and-cable heiress was the victim of bad timing. Savorono III was launched in 1931, when the nation was sinking into the depths of the Depression. Moreover, America’s great fortunes were being squeezed by increases in income-tax rates. In Mrs. Cadwalader’s case, the combination of lowered income and higher taxes meant that she had to keep her huge yacht outside the continental limits of the United States to avoid the enormous import duties that even she could ill afford. Savorono III had been built in Germany; she never came
Power in the hold: "Alva's" mighty diesels
Alva's main engines weighed 300 tans. To support them, the yacht had heavy transverse bulkheads and extra-thick hull plating.
The evolution of the power-driven yacht reached an awesome new level in the gleaming hank of diesel engines shown above, housed in William K. Vanderbilt Jr.'s Alvo. A 264-foot steel-hulled vessel. Alvo was powered by two 2,100-horsepower monsters that drove her 3,600 tons at speeds up to 17 knots.
By 1930, when Alvo was being constructed, the marine diesel engine—operating on a principle similar to that of the gasoline engine but able to use less-combustible (therefore safer) fuel—was almost a quarter of a century old: It had first been used at sea in the Dutch tanker Vulconus in 1910. Yachtsmen did not immediately take to diesels: The newfangled power plants produced more noise and vibration than a steam engine did. But these problems were soon alleviated, and even die-hard traditionalists were forced to admit the clear superiority of diesels over steam in some respects. Diesel engines delivered more power from their fuel than coal-burning steam engines did, thus saving
Space and improving performance: they were also cleaner.
Diesel power was particularly appealing to American yachtsmen, who—in contrast with their European counterparts—were more interested in speed than in quiet operation. Vanderbilt had already learned the advantages of this type of engine in his twin-diesel Aro (pages 157-158), and when he commissioned the Krupp-Germaniawerft yard in Kiel to build his new Alvo, he not only specified twin diesels as the main power plant but ordered duplicate diesels installed in case the main units failed. The result, he noted, was “the most powerfully constructed yacht in existence.”
Alvo burned 12 tons of fuel a day, but her tanks could carry enough for 15,000 miles of travel without stopping to refuel. In 1931 her owner put the engines' stamina to a stern test when he circumnavigated the world in less than a year. Not one mechanical mishap marred the trip—a 38,000-mile endurance run that Vanderbilt boasted was unprecedented in yachting annals.
To the United States. Mrs. Cadwalader did take a few cruises aboard her palatial plaything, in the Atlantic, around Europe and once around South America. But by the mid-1930s, Savorono III was the greatest white elephant of luxury yachting—for sale at a third of her building cost and with no takers. She was finally bought by the Turkish government in 1938, for a quarter of what Mrs. Cadwalader had paid for her.
The largest nonroyal yacht ever built, 408-foot Savarona III was commissioned just before the stock-market crash in 1929 by Emily Roebling Cadwalader, granddaughter a/the buildero/the Brooklyn Bridge. Mrs. Cadwalader used her for two years; she wound up as a Turkish Navy training ship.
The timing was no better for the owners of another spectacular yacht, but the Depression had less effect on them. Wall Street broker E. F. Hutton had in the early 1920s taken a leave from his firm and become chairman of the board of the Postum Cereal Company, after marrying the founder’s daughter, millionairess Marjorie Merriweather Post. During those years, the Huttons entertained grandly aboard their 203-foot schooner Hussar, whose main saloon featured a grand piano and an electric fireplace with a mantel of Siena marble. Like Mrs. Cadwalader, the Huttons longed for an even larger vessel; and in 1931 they launched another Hussar, one of the most beautiful yachts ever built. She measured 316 feet from her clipper bow to her graceful counter. Her diesel engines, able to move her at 14 knots, were supplemented by four towering masts. She was bark-rigged, with square sails on her three forward masts and a fore-and-aft mizzen. Her total sail area was 35,822 square feet, comparable to that of the clipper ships of the previous century.
The second Hussor was as luxurious belowdecks as any yacht had ever been, with marble bathrooms, parquet floors and antique furniture. Because of her huge sail area as well as her lavish accommodations, she required a crew of 72, who were outfitted with new uniforms twice a year. And when the deepening Depression made the yacht’s upkeep seem extravagant, Mrs. Hutton explained that it was the duty of those who could afford it to spend money to help revive the economy. Hussar's owners were divorced in 1935. Marjorie Post Hutton kept the yacht, renaming it Seo Cloud when she married Joseph Davies the same year.
Yachting actually helped one millionaire survive the Crash of 1929 ana the hard years afterward. Woolens manufacturer Julius Forstmann set out on his yacht Orion in early 1929, taking his son Julius on a round-the-world cruise as part of his education. At port after port the senior Forstmann saw bulging waterfront warehouses—signs of an international market glut due to declining purchasing power. By the time Orion had worked her way through Asia and across the Pacific to Honolulu, it was early October, 1929. Forstmann called his broker in New York and directed him to sell the entire Forstmann portfolio. Ten days later he called again, to be sure his orders had been followed. His broker replied that he had not sftld anything. “Aren’t you glad?” he asked. “Everything’s gone up ten points.” Blistering the wires, Forstmann fired the broker and got another, who liquidated the portfolio. Two weeks later, on October 24, the bottom fell out of the New York stock market.
A few other multimillionaires withstood the immediate effects of the first stock-market plunge, notably J. P. Morgan Jr., who temporarily tried to support the market and stem the panic. But by 1931 Morgan paid no income taxes because he did not have enough income. His fourth Corsair, built the previous year at a cost of $2.5 million, was laid up for a year in 1935. This Corsoir—344 feet long and nearly as large as Sovorono III—was described by yachting author Erik Hofman as “the crown at the end of the steam yacht era.”
Corsoir, Hussar, Sovorona-such yachts were the last magnificent gesture of conspicuous consumption. Not only were they suddenly too expensive, they also now constituted an affront to an impoverished world. Indeed, a similar example of extravagance backfired when Vincent Astor entertained President Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard his 264-foot Nourmohol. The President, commenting on the yacht’s sumptuousness, remarked rather unkindly that if America’s wealthy men could afford such luxuries, perhaps they were not yet taxed enough.
Conspicuous consumption in the old style was thus not only beyond most yachtsmen’s means but a bad policy as well. It took a worldwide Depression to bring about the change, but the change was permanent. In 1930 there had been 81 yachts of 200 tons or more in the New York Yacht Club fleet; a decade later, there were half that many. And World War II completed what the Depression had begun. When in 1949 J. P. Morgan Jr.'s son Henry became the fourth Morgan to be elected commodore of the New York Yacht Club, his flagship was not a 300-foot luxury yacht but a mere 62-foot cutter named DJinn. She was no bigger—and certainly a lot less pretentious—than the royal barge that had borne Cleopatra to her rendezvous with Mark Antony almost two thousand years earlier.
World History
