1871 America's Cup - Columbia & Sappho defeat Livonia

After loosing his first challenge for the America's cup in 1870 James Ashbury had clearly gotten the America's cup bug and was was back for the 1871 Cup with his new yacht Livonia. Only 12 months after his last challenge it was quite a feet to prepare a new boat to challenge the might of the New York Yacht club.
Ashbury was one of the first to try and use the dead of gift to his advantage preparing consecutive challenges from 12 yacht clubs on successive days with the view of claiming the cup if he took victory in any of the races. This ingenious plan would give him the greatest chance of winning the cup after making the long journey across the Atlantic from the UK. The New York yacht club did not allow the 12 race challenge, while Ashbury was not happy about this he did gain a considerable advantage over the 1870 challenge with the New York Yacht club instead agreeing to race for the America's Cup in a seven race series of match races which helps the challenger by not having to battle the entire fleet of boats from the New York Yacht Club.
The New York Yacht club was so confident that they would win the 1871 America's Cup no new yachts were commissioned, instead they selected the four best yachts from the 1870 Cup fleet race, one defender would be selected to race against Livonia each day.
This would make winning the 1871 cup challenging for Livonia as one of Columbia, Sappho, Dauntless and Palmer would be selected to match the conditions of the day, given the defender a decided advantage over the challenger.
This America's cup would be like many to follow with protests and claims of cheating on multiple levels ensuring the debate over who won the cup continuing long after the last race was finished.
Columbia and Sappho each won two races to claim the Cup, with Livonia winning the first ever race as a challenger. Ashbury and his crew sailed races 6 and 7 against no opposition as it was their view that the series was not over, claiming they had won race 2 after a protest against Columbia for the direction they rounded the outer turning mark.
While Ashbury claimed he had won the Cup 4 races to 3 the New York Yacht club held firm saying the direction of passage round the outer turning mark was optional, resulting in the protest getting rejected with the America's Cup saying the property of the New York Yacht Club.
While Ashbury and his yacht Livonia failed to win the 1871 America's the were the first to take a race from the Americans and would have won the Cup if their protest was upheld. While it was small conciliation Ashbury record of winning on race was not be equaled until 1920.
We hope you enjoyed Bottom Up Boats latest Cup Chronicle were we relieved how Columbia and Sappho defeated James Ashbury's charge Livonia who was representing the Royal Harwich Yacht Club

[@patriotsman6511]

Great video 📹 👍 👏 👌 🙌 😀

[@BottomUPBoats]

Thanks for the visit and the feedback, glad you liked it :)