Word: yachting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Your July 12 coverage of the demise of the last great, and perhaps greatest, yacht-building institution-the Henry B. Nevins yard-brings considerable remorse to people who watch the changing American scene with an evaluative eye. The economic phenomena which have brought such great institutions as this to their knees can only be described as ''creeping socialism," and it is, in my mind, gradually undermining the whole structure of American society . . . Although I ... would never be able to own one of Mr. Nevins' boats ... I would and will defend to my death the rights of more...
...comparatively few U.S. citizens are able to afford big, custombuilt yachts. Over the past fifteen years, three of the nation's famed yacht yards - Herreshoff, Lawley's, Robert Jacobs - have shut down. Last week Nevins announced that it, too, will close, a casualty to foreign competition (mostly German and Dutch) and income taxes...
...Even after he became a millionaire, he often brought his own lunch pail to work, ate outside with the loftsmen and mechanics. His friendship and personal ability invited them to do their best work; his high standards demanded it. Once he set down this principle: "The man who builds . . . yachts is a craftsman; outside of yacht building, there are few craft industries left. A good craftsman must have, first of all, a basic sense of integrity and pride in his work . . . He is only secondarily materialistic...
...Lulu, winner of the Prince of Wales Cup in 1937; Nyala, winner of the Astor and King's Cups in 1939; Harold Vanderbilt's 12-meter Vim, winner of the same cups the next year; Goose, the outstanding international 6-meter for ten years; the New York Yacht Club's 325 and some 700 other yachts...
During World War II the Nevins yard built minesweepers and aircraft-rescue boats. But when war orders ended, Nevins found he could no longer make profits on new boats. Nevertheless, he kept building, often turning out yachts at cost just to give jobs to his workmen, some of whom had been with him for 30 years. Then he was injured in a fall at the yard, and when Bolero was launched in 1949, he told his wife he expected it would be his last launching. In the last months of his life, he often asked to be carried...