The Magnificent “J”

Olin J. Stephens II Remembers Ranger.

Interview by Peter Lacey

Editor’s Note: We asked Peter Lacey, Supervisor of Naval Architecture at Bath Iron Works, to interview legendary yacht designer Olin J. Stephens II—who helped design the famed racing sloop Ranger, built at BIW for owner Harold S. Vanderbilt. The Ranger, designed by W. Starling Burgess and Stephens, went on to sweep the 1937 America’s Cup Series in four races, and this interview covers Stephen’s participation in the design of this classic racing sloop. As part of America’s World War II effort, the Ranger—one of the greatest racing boats—was scrapped in 1941.

Lacey: Of the four proposed hull designs, 77 A–D, that were tank-tested at Stevens Institute of Technology, 77C was chosen for the Ranger. Was this the first time tank testing was used to select a hull form?

Stephens: Yes, that was really the early days of yacht tank testing-especially with small models. Not that it had not been done before, but it had not been considered really successful. Small-model testing was looked at pretty skeptically by a lot of people.

Lacey: What made the tank test data valid and believable?

Stephens: I personally think it is simply when Ken Davidson, who started the small model work, and some of his associates were still active, and they did it so meticulously, that it worked. I don’t think anybody today is as careful. In fact, small-model testing has gone into a decline of disrepute for the last 20 years. All the model testing that I had to do with from the middle 1930s to the middle 1960s seemed to result in better and better boats. Since the middle 1960s, the testing, especially small boat testing, has really been a disaster. The fact is that repeated tests, which Ken Davidson made, were closer than the repeated tests seem to be today.

Lacey: When you got the results of the tests back from Davidson, was it obvious that 77C was the superior model?

Stephens: I think it was quite clear. You know the numbers came out quite well, and I think you could even see in the photographs that it made less fuss coming through the water. It clearly was a very good model.

Lacey: What philosophy did you use in determining how to vary the dimensions of the models? Stephens: The models were all about the same length and displacement; they varied a bit in beam and geometry. Starling Burgess, Mr. Vanderbilt, and I all favored a big boat, so we went right straight for the one very close to the maximum waterline length that was allowed. We felt that we had confirmed that decision by taking Rainbow—Rainbow and Yankee sailed a very brief series of trial races in the fall of 1936—and Rainbow was loaded down with about 30 tons of extra ballast to test the effect of the heavier displacement. She was brought up to the approximate displacement agreed, or thought we should use for the Ranger, and it seemed to help her rather than hurt her to have that extra weight. So we decided to go for a boat of that size, and as I said, the models were varied by beam, and length and shape of the ends, but the waterline length, displacement, draft, and consequently the sail area, were the same on all models that we tested. So, it was really just a test of the hull geometry and 77C was quite clearly the best.

Lacey: Whose design was 77C?

Stephens: She was Starling Burgess’ lines.

Lacey: The stern shape has been attributed to you.

Stephens: I think that comment is not literally true, but is partially justified by the fact that I had been making use of a lower profile aft, and most of Starling’s boats, however successful, had rather a steep run and a relative steep short overhang. I sort of think I can claim some credit for the stern because it was not characteristic of what Starling was then doing. We decided that we would go ahead, each of us, with the three models that were essentially our own, but of course, we were talking about it, and watching and looking at what the other fellow was doing right along while working in the same office and with the same people. I think there was a little cross-fertilization, but, clearly, the Ranger was Starling’s boat.

Lacey: I understand that the helm of the Ranger was very sensitive, to which Mr. Vanderbilt attributed one of the reasons for her success.

Stephens: She was a nicely balanced boat and this business of the yacht balance is one of the least understood and least well-controlled of any of the technical requirements of yacht design. Exactly what made her so nice to handle, I would not be quite sure, except I do think, in a general sense, that the balance of the ends is important. A lot of racing boats are built, today especially, with very fine forebody and heavy quarters and long, flat, wide afterbody. They do crazy things when they get heeled over too far, but Ranger had nicely balanced ends; a fairly full bow and a stern that was not overly full but had long low overhangs at both ends, and she just behaved well.

Lacey: I was reading about the flush plate construction technique used on the Ranger’s hull.

Stephens: Well, the design consideration is simply to have it as smooth as possible and we did not want to stir up any unnecessary friction drag. The actual rivets were countersunk and flush and of course the surface was painted—that was the worst problem. Aside from the bad luck of losing that first mast, the only problem we had was with the paint. That was really a hard problem and we never did get what we thought was a really good racing surface on the hull.

Lacey: What happened with the paint?

Stephens: It was very hard to make it adhere to the steel. It loosened up and tended to peel in spots and we kept touching it up and sanding it and trying to keep it smooth.

Lacey: Were any of the sails innovative?

Stephens: At least one sail was quite new. It was what we called the quadrilateral genoa. It was a single overlapping sail, a big sail-with not so wide an overlap as the genoas we have today—it had two clews, so the upper sheet was trimmed way aft on the stern with the lower sheet trimmed further forward. The sail was made of a DuPont synthetic…We tried it out just once as secretly as possible and decided it was a very good sail and put it away until the Cup Races so it wouldn’t be copied.

Lacey: Did it create quite a bit of surprise?

Stephens: Yes, I think so, but the boat was so successful and so fast that the sail was used only once in the Cup Races-it was mainly in light weather that it was used; it was a fairly light sail for that kind of going. I think we really had a little more wind in the Cup Races themselves.

Lacey: I noticed that there was an aluminum strut on the Ranger’s boom; was it used to bend the boom to an airfoil shape?

Stephens: That was the idea. It was kind of amusing because the Enterprise, the first Vanderbilt/Burgess boat, had what was called a Park Avenue boom which you probably are familiar with.

Lacey: Yes, like six-foot wide!

Stephens: Very wide. The idea was to get curvature into the foot of the sail, and the Shamrock, which Enterprise raced against, had a bending boom more or less like the Ranger’s, and they would swap back from year to year, the English boat would have a bending boom and the American would have the Park Avenue boom, and then the next time they raced, it was liable to be the other. I don’t know whether either one meant very much.

Lacey: I was surprised, from the performance standpoint, that the winches and cleats on the Ranger were on the deck rather than below like her predecessor Rainbow.

Stephens: Mainly it was psychological because Vanderbilt had been so much criticized on Enterprise, and to some extent on Rainbow, for the ‘mechanical ship.’ Of course, today nobody would be so sensitive to that sort of thing. But Vanderbilt was, and he wanted to have something that looked comfortable below. The accommodations were really never used except for show and did not run into very much weight and had a very small effect on a boat of Ranger’s size and displacement. Anyway, he had a friend, a New York City architect and a member of the New York Yacht Club, do the drawings for the accommodations and they were attractive and deflected a lot of the criticism then made of the Enterprise and the Rainbow.

Lacey: In general, how innovative was the Ranger?

Stephens: She was certainly not a radical boat, although she was big for the class. What made her go was the combination, I think, of good stability and very good form, good hull geometry. She was just a big powerful boat and was able to go through in light air. Being the size and general power that she had-she had all this ballast and was a lighter hull than the Endeavor and so a higher ballast ratio—everything being equal, she should have been very fast in a fairly strong breeze, but exactly what made her carry that ability down to the lighter kind of drawing I could not say; except, I think, she had the right prismatic coefficient for the lighter going.

Lacey: Why was the Ranger destroyed?

Stephens: It was a matter of getting the materials—mainly the lead—but perhaps, to some extent, the steel, for wartime use. Primarily the lead, of course; you had about 100 tons of lead in the keel. But it shows a different wartime psychology—that this nation then seemed to have no hesitation to break those boats up, whereas in England they saved theirs.

Lacey: Including the Endeavors?

Stephens: The Endeavors were saved, and several of the other big English sailing boats technically J-boats, but not in the same class as the Endeavors or the Ranger. Several of them are still sailing…The man who operated the firm that broke the Ranger up became very well-to·do because of this sort of thing and had a beautiful place in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was quite a collector of modern sculpture, some of which he wanted to have out on the water. I consulted about this floating sculpture and made some stability calculations to keep it floating upright, but nothing ever came of it.

Lacey: He could have thought of a boat as a piece of floating sculpture.

Stephens: Yes, it is too bad he did not appreciate that.

Lacey: How do you feel about the current state of the America’s Cup Races?

Stephens: I am shocked by it all and don’t feel happy about it a bit. It has changed a lot and I am afraid not for the better as far as I’m concerned.

Lacey: What did you think of Conner’s Catamaran?

Stephens: Well, I generally approve of what the judge has said, but I would go further and say I think it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black—in other words, I think they both are wrong, really.

The New Zealander was legal in what he did, and legitimate in that sense, but he put his foot in the door when he should have allowed other people to have the opportunity of carrying on with the 12 meters. He jumped in when he and his lawyer decided they had a chance to do something different. I don’t think it was very good sportsmanship.

-Peter Lacey