The Westward ex Hamburg II schooner
commissioned by Alexander S Cochrane designed and built in 1910 by Nathaniel
Greene Herreshof in his yard in Bristol, Rhode Island. She was launched on 31st
March.
Westward compiled an astounding record in her first season. In April
1910 she sailed from Brenton Reef to Southampton in fourteen days. At the Kiel
Regatta in June, she handily won the Emperor's Cup in a four-race series during
which the Kaiser's Meteor IV suffered a broken bowsprit in a collision with Westward
when the indomitable Barr refused to give way.
Barr died suddenly the next year, and at the end of 1911 Cochran sold Westward
to the Verein Seefahrt Hamburg. Renamed Hamburg II, and she was
subsequently seized in Cowes by the British at the outbreak of World War
I. and in 1919 she was purchased by Clarence Hatry, who restored her
original name but raced her little. In 1923, she was purchased by the
seaman-turned-millionaire Thomas Benjamin Davis, a native of the Channel Islands
and holder of an Extra Master's ticket. Under Davis, Westward raced
such celebrated competitors as Bluenose,
Britannia,
and Shamrock
V, and on August 5, 1935, she beat every other vessel in the Royal Yacht
Squadron's Regatta, including a clutch of J-boats. When in 1936 his king,
friend, and racing rival George V died, T.B. Davis, a South African, who sailed
her with distinction in European waters for nearly two decades. In accordance
with his will, Mr. Davis' daughter had WESTWARD sunk in the Hurd Deep, off
Jersey, in the Channel Islands, where Mr. Davis had kept WESTWARD for many
years.
