Things you never knew

Encouraged by Grant Dalton, Magnus Wheatley set off in pursuit of the Holy Grail itself

Dalts phoned me up and said: ‘I’ve been involved in this game for a long time and you’re telling me stuff that I never knew.’

For some reason that fired the motivation to want to go deeper than ever before into what was really happening not just in the race, but around that first race in 1851 and the result was two years of blindalley research, stunning revelations and the ultimate uncovering of what I believe is the Holy Grail of the America’s Cup.

There is no Second (published and available worldwide on Amazon) challenges what you already knew about how the America’s Cup came to be, with a story that starts in 1815 with the formation of “The Yacht Club” via the Battle of Waterloo, the formation of the New York Yacht Club and the subsequent purchasing of an unremarkable, ugly silver ewer by the Marquess of Anglesey in 1848 ahead of a fascinating race around the Isle of Wight in 1851.

Crucially, I went back to the sources and drew on The Badminton Sports Library, Physics Today, Johns Hopkins University, Queen Victoria’s personal journals and extensive research of The Times back issues and the satirical journals of the day including Punch and the Illustrated London News. It was vital to go back to the real sources and present the quotations as they were in their original format so the reader can be the judge. A lot of books and accounts that I have read have simply skipped or re-hashed the intonation, so I really wanted to put the reader in charge of judgement of the facts.

The crux of the book however is the uncovering of the “anonymous” signal master who it had been suggested uttered the words to Queen Victoria as she sat on board Her Majesty’s Steam Ship, the Victoria & Albert in Alum Bay as the yachts hove into view around the then lighthouse-less Needles, when the Queen asked who is second? ‘Ma’am there is no second,’ came the response and it’s an apt phrase that has succinctly summarised the event ever since.

Above: a ledger of the Victoria & Albert crew in 1851 held undiscovered details of the background to the first America’s Cup.
Below: Magnus Wheatley’s new book challenges what we thought we knew about that first race

This was a really tricky one. I started with the Royal Archives in hope of finding a ship’s muster but I was quickly referred to the Royal Naval Archives who confirmed that such a list did not exist. However, a side conversation about sailors in the mid 19th century having to nominate a family member to receive their wages as the Royal Navy were worried about “consumption” amongst the crew, led to the National Archives in Kew and the breaking of seals on documents that had lain unopened for 173 years. This was remarkable and after days in the Archives wearing white gloves and thumbing through crumbling documents, I found a very detailed and beautifully written ledger of the Victoria & Albert crew in 1851 replete with rank, service numbers, addresses, full names and family members. Right there, the hand of history felt heavy and after plenty of cross-checking I can comfortably claim to have revealed that name, never before associated with the America’s Cup.

A legend was born that summer in England, but how much is “legend” and how much is truth? How much do you know about that race and the backdrop of Victorian England and the emergence of the New World? And what of the race itself – did America win fair and square and what happened to the British fleet – at the time regarded as “ruling the waves?” History has a funny way of being re-hashed and re-presented so I was determined to go not just back to the original sources but to try and understand the thinking of those accounts. What I uncovered were plenty of untruths and false narratives, plus plain wrong accounts of the race that have been pedalled ever since. It was a fascinating process.

The book is rich with imagery and with a foreword written by Grant Dalton, CEO of America’s Cup Events and Emirates Team New Zealand. There is no Second will challenge what you thought you already knew about that first race and is a mustread for all fans of the America’s Cup. It reveals not only how the race came into being but why it became the pinnacle event in our sport. Full of incredible characters, the book virtually wrote itself. It was a pleasure to write and I’m proud to present it to the yachting world as the definitive account of that incredible first race.

There is no Second by Magnus Wheatley is available worldwide on Amazon »