Brothers in sails
Early days on the waters of Sydney Harbour
Sailing and racing have a long history in Sydney harbour.
In 1850 local merchant John Bourinot became the first French consul in British North America. He entertained officers of French Admiralty ships while in port and organized and officiated the first known sailing races in Sydney harbour.
In the years following Bourinot’s early races many wealthy industrialists moved to Sydney to get involved in the coal and steel industries. They quickly became the foremost residents of Sydney and were involved in many sporting activities, including sailing.
Railway engineer James Ross was commodore of the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club in Montreal from 1896-99 prior to becoming a principal shareholder in the Dominion Iron and Steel Company. In 1896 he owned the “Glencairn” which won the Seewanhaka Cup (New York), skippered by George Herrick Duggan who later came to Sydney. Ross himself won the famed Seewanhaka three times prior to arriving in Sydney.
In 1900 the Cape Breton Yacht Club was formed, spurred on by the newcomers. Arthur Moxham, general manager of the Dominion Iron and Steel Company, became the first commodore. Henry Melville Whitney, who built the Sydney Steel Plant that opened in 1901, was a member.
Whitney and J.S. MacLennan (eventually Senator MacLennan), who succeed Moxham as general manager, drew up the initial plans for the yacht club building for Boston architect Richard Sturgis. The building opened in December 1900 with the dock and marina in place by June 1901.
In 1902 the club gained a royal warrant from the King. This meant the now Royal Cape Breton Yacht Club had an obligation to extend club privileges to officers of His Majesties Army and Navy as well as distinguished visitors to Sydney.
From the beginning the RCBYC initiated a junior sailing program for boys and young men up to 19 years old. They would then become junior members until age 25. Between 1900 and 1914 there were 38 boys and young men in the junior ranks. Many of them enlisted in the war and at least four never returned.
Toronto born George Duggan, an avid sailor since youth and a founding member of the RCBYC, who served as general manager of the Steel Plant from 1904 to 1909, lost both sons Herrick and Kenneth overseas. Captain Howard Johnstone, son of Dr. E.J. and Caroline Johnstone died in 1916. J.S. MacLennan’s son Hugh was killed in April 1915 at Ypres.
As way of remembrance MacLennan, then commodore, sent a $1,000 donation on behalf of the RCBYC to the minister of militia and defense to purchase a machine gun for the 25th battalion in his son’s honour and be so inscribed. A reply by the acting minister, James Lougheed, acknowledging the gift, said a large number of machine guns were purchased with donations from the public.
Other sailors who were first
taught to tack in Sydney Harbour fared much better. New York born Cornelius Shields took helm of the Dominion Steel and Coal Company from April 1901 to April 1903. During those years his four young boys started sailing. One son, Corny Shields served as a navy lieutenant during the First World War and was a famous yachtsman winning the Seewanhaka Cup in 1935 and 1937, sailing with his brother Paul.
Shields later wrote in 1964,
“the competition always had a special appeal for Paul and me, for in our boyhood in Sydney we had watched Seewanhaka cup challengers - one of which later became a winner-sailing in the harbour.”
He would go on to win the first North American Men’s Championship in 1952, and helped helmed the “Columbia” in her 1958 bid to be the America’s Cup entry that it went on to win.
Paul Shields went on to the world of finance, setting up one of the largest brokerage firms in the United States in 1923; Shields and Company. In 1926 he married divorcee Veronica Balfe,
whose daughter was married to actor Gary Cooper, thus making Shields the heartthrob’s step father-in-law. Interestingly writer Truman Capote and others claimed Marilyn Monroe said Shields was her greatest lover. Capote called him “sensational.” Paul Shields’ financial success and athletic prowess seemingly steered him a bit off course from the matrimonial bed.