A Pocketful of History

by Jim Noles

  Convinced by Tate to give his hometown a try, Wilbur set out to reconnoiter Kitty Hawk the following month. From Dayton, he took a train to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where he hired a local trapper to take him by boat and foot the rest of the way. Fifty-five hours later, an exhausted and hungry Wilbur Wright arrived at Tate’s doorstep. Without skipping a beat, Tate and his wife, Addie, offered Wright a bed in their home of five children.

  Later that month, Orville arrived to join his brother, and for several weeks, they tested their gliders at Kitty Hawk, relying on the soft sands and steady winds to provide them with a natural wind tunnel. Through trial and error, they engineered a flying machine over the course of the next three years during a series of lengthy visits. A comment by Darrel Collins, of the U.S. Park Service at the Kitty Hawk National Historical Park, summed up the brothers’ progress as they nibbled away at the mystery of powered flight. “Before the Wright brothers, no one in aviation did anything fundamentally right,” Collins said. “Since the Wright brothers, no one has done anything fundamentally different.”

  In the fall of 1903, the brothers returned once again to Kitty Hawk. Bad weather hampered their efforts, but by November 5, they were able to ground test a powered version of their earlier gliders. The test revealed problems with their propeller shafts, which necessitated Orville’s return to their Ohio workshop to rework them. So did a cracked propeller blade. But by December 12, 1903, their aircraft was ready for its first flight—should the weather cooperate.

  An initial effort at powered flight came two days later. It began with a promising run down the sloping track built down Kill Devil Hill and ended within seconds with an ignominious stall. After the necessary repairs were completed, the brothers’ next opportunity for flight came on December 17, the morning after a fierce nor’easter had left puddles of ice between the sand dunes. The wind, gusting in from the ocean at speeds of up to thirty miles an hour, created a wind chill factor of 4˚F. It was not a particularly comfortable day on which to make history, and when a coin toss dictated that Orville would be the day’s pilot on the brutally exposed lower wing, it was not clear whether he had won or lost the toss.

  Defying the weather, the two brothers, with the help of five men from the local lifesaving station, dragged their 600-pound flying machine through the biting wind and prepared it for takeoff. Then, at approximately 10:35 that morning, Orville rode what had been christened the Flyer down the launch rail and into the air. Later, Orville described the moment in his diary as follows:

  On slipping the rope the machine started off increasing in speed to probably 7 or 8 miles. The machine lifted from the truck just as it was entering on the fourth rail. [John] Daniels [one of the local lifesaving crew] took a picture just as it left the trucks [sic]. I found the control of the front rudder quite difficult on account of its being balanced too near the center and thus had a tendency to turn itself when started so that the rudder was turned too far on one side and then too far on the other. As a result the machine would rise suddenly to about 10 ft. and then as suddenly, on turning the rudder, dart for the ground. A sudden dart when out about 100 feet from the end of the tracks ended the flight. (Kelly 2002, 114–115)

  Daniels’s photo captured the image found today on North Carolina’s state quarter. Controlled, powered flight had been achieved for the first time, and it had been accomplished in the skies of North Carolina—for a grand total of 120 feet and twelve seconds.

  Next came Wilbur’s try. He logged a flight of 175 feet, bested by Orville in a third flight of 200 feet. Wilbur was at the controls again for the fourth and final flight of the day. This time, Wilbur covered 852 feet in 59 seconds. A snapped elevator support ended the day’s flying; a sudden gust of wind that flipped and mangled the Flyer ensured that its fourth flight was its last.

  But by then history had been made, announced to Kitty Hawk by lifesaver Johnny Moore, who ran back into the village yelling, “They done it! They done it! Damned if they ain’t flew!”

  Nearly a century later, it became apparent that Moore’s fellow North Carolinians were still equally impressed with the Wright brothers’ accomplishment. Invited to provide the U.S. Mint with a design concept for his state’s quarter, Governor James B. Hunt appointed the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources as the leader in the state’s design concept process. The department, in turn, established the North Carolina Commemorative Coin Committee, which consisted of members from the State Department of Cultural Resources, the Division of Archives and History, and coin collectors, and it solicited design ideas from the residents of North Carolina.

  The committee was soon awash in ideas. Alternate design concepts suggested the Wright brothers’ Flyer superimposed over an outline of the state, the Hatteras Lighthouse superimposed over an outline of the state, and the Hatteras Lighthouse shown with a dune and seagulls. In the end, however, the committee and Governor Hunt selected the “First Flight” theme for the official design. It fell to Hunt’s successor, Governor Michael F. Easley, to mark the release of North Carolina’s quarter on March 12, 2001, in a minting that would eventually total more than 1.055 billion.

  “On behalf of the State of North Carolina I want to commend the U.S. Mint for the commemorative quarters program,” Easley declared. “It is an opportunity to share a bit of North Carolina history with the rest of the nation.”

  It is hard to imagine William Tate—the man whose warm hospitality helped ensure that such aviation history would be North Carolina history—disagreeing with the governor one bit.

  13

  RHODE ISLAND

  Relying on Reliance

  Rhode Island’s state quarter offers an elegant design—a vintage schooner tacking across Narragansett Bay, with the Claiborne Pell Bridge in the background. The phrase “Ocean State” completes the image, paying homage to Rhode Island’s 400 miles of coastline and a nautical heritage that dates back to 1524, when Giovanni da Verrazzano first sailed into the bay. But the identity of the schooner on the quarter, and its remarkably brief history, may well be the most impressive fact associated with the Ocean State’s commemorative coin.

  The schooner in question is the Reliance, a massive yacht built in 1903 for one single, overriding purpose—to stave off increasingly strident foreign challenges and keep yacht racing’s prestigious America’s Cup in American hands. In short, America was relying on Reliance.

  To fully appreciate the importance of Reliance on Rhode Island’s— and the sporting world’s—history, an understanding of racing for the America’s Cup is essential. The race traces its origin to 1851, when Great Britain’s Royal Yacht Squadron hosted its Annual Regatta in conjunction with that year’s Great Exhibition. Inviting the world’s yachtsmen to test their skills against Britannia’s legendary rule of the seas, the Royal Yacht Squadron’s challenge sparked the competitive fire of the New York Yacht Club. A syndicate of five members of the club built a ninety-foot schooner they proudly christened America. America cost the syndicate $45,000, a mere pittance compared to the $200-million price tag that accompanies serious America’s Cup challenges today.

  Launched in June 1851, America sprinted across the Atlantic, making the crossing in a record-breaking twenty days. Once in England, the yacht made equally short work of the fifteen competitors fielded by the Royal Yacht Club in the waters around the Isle of Wight and returned home triumphantly with the race’s trophy, a silver-plated bottomless ewer crafted by Garrards of London. According to legend, Queen Victoria, when learning of America’s victory, asked whose yacht had placed second. “There is no second, Your Majesty,” she received in reply.

  Back in the United States, the syndicate donated its prize to the New York Yacht Club as an international trophy for friendly yachting competition. The British, rather formally, had called the trophy the “Royal Yacht Squadron Cup” or the “RYS Cup for One Hundred Sovereigns.” Rather irreverently, the syndicate simply called it the “One Hundred Guineas Cup.” In time, the trophy became known as
the America’s Cup in honor of the yacht that claimed it, although yachting insiders are known to refer to it as “the Auld Mug.”

  Several years passed before a challenge to the cup arose. It finally came in 1870 in the form of James Ashbury and his yacht Cambria. Forced to race against the New York Yacht Club’s entire fleet, Ashbury’s foray failed. Another effort—this time against a single champion representing the New Yorkers—failed the following year and engendered so much bad blood that another fourteen years passed before a British challenger tried again.

  In the interim, Alexander Cuthbert, a Canadian boatbuilder, stepped into the gap. Cuthbert’s dreams exceeded his means, however, and he failed so spectacularly in his quest to claim the cup that the New York Yacht Club declined to allow any further challenges from the Canadian Great Lakes.

  The British returned to the scene in 1885 and 1886 with the yachts Genesta and Galatea. Again the British failed, although the Galatea’s challenge earned that yacht a special place in the history books as the first challenger to have a woman on board as one of the contestants. The Scottish made a singular, and unsuccessful, challenge in 1887, followed by further British efforts in 1893 and 1895 by the yachts Valkyrie II and Valkyrie III.

  Sir Thomas Lipton (of Lipton Tea fame) and the Royal Ulster Yacht Club brought the next five challenges in Shamrock through Shamrock V from 1899 to 1930. Lipton was a self-made man, a descendant of Ulster Scots, and a friend of the Prince of Wales, who encouraged Lipton to try to reclaim the cup for Great Britain. Lipton’s persistence, fueled in further part by his desire to publicize his tea company, made it clear that the New York Yacht Club could not take the cup’s continued sojourn in the United States for granted.

  Fortunately, to help it fight off Lipton’s stubborn assaults, the Americans—financed by such legendary financiers as J. P. Morgan and John Rockefeller—could rely on legendary yacht designer Nathanael Greene Herreshoff. Herreshoff, a native of Bristol, Rhode Island, and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a naval architect-engineer of such excellence that he earned the sobriquet “the Wizard of Bristol.” He also lent his name to the so-called Herreshoff period of yacht racing that lasted from 1893 to 1920.

  For the 1903 race, Herreshoff turned his considerable genius to designing a massive yacht. In those days, the America’s Cup competitors were limited to a waterline length of ninety feet. The Wizard of Bristol, however, craftily designed a boat—Reliance— that, while measuring ninety feet in the waterline, possessed overhangs at the bow and stern of such length that the overall waterline length of the yacht increased by some two-thirds when it heeled over. This increase in waterline enabled a corresponding increase in speed as well.

  Reliance was unique in other areas as well. Designed purely as a racing yacht, it was completely unfinished below deck, where winches (a Herreshoff innovation below deck) supplemented the manpower of its sixty-four crewmen. This beauty possessed an enormous area of sail, namely, 16,200 square feet of canvas, which was close to 12 percent more than its Irish competitor. The steel welded mast, with a telescopic topmast, soared 199 feet above the water, almost the height of a twenty-story building. Other innovations were less visible but equally impressive, including a hollow rudder that could be filled or emptied of water depending on the point of sail.

  To handle this behemoth, the New York Yacht Club turned to Charlie Barr, an equally legendary yachtsman who had successfully skippered the Columbia in the 1899 and 1901 matches against the Shamrock and Shamrock II. In the late summer of 1903, in the coastal waters off New York, Barr and Reliance met Shamrock III in head-to-head competition. Herreshoff’s design and Barr’s seamanship dominated the set of races, including a dramatic final match that concluded with Reliance emerging dramatically from a fog bank to claim the victory.

  Faced with his third defeat in four years, Lipton remarked despairingly: “They tell me I have a beautiful boat. I don’t want a beautiful boat. What I want is a boat to lift the Cup—a Reliance. Give me a homely boat, the homeliest boat that was ever designed, if she is as fast as Reliance. ”

  Reliance’s racing days, however, were already over. Immediately after the victory over Shamrock III, the owners laid Reliance up in dry dock. Ten years later, in the wake of rule changes that rendered Reliance competitively obsolete, they scrapped the yacht—an ignoble ending for a noble ship.

  For his part, Lipton tried twice more to claim the America’s Cup, culminating in a final effort in 1930 against the Enterprise. This time, the race was held in the waters off Newport, Rhode Island, which was to become the race’s home for the next fifty-three years. Once again, however, Lipton went down to defeat. He died the following year, disappointed but heralded nevertheless as “the best of the losers” and ultimately successful in his quest to make his tea company an international household name.

  The coveted cup remained in the United States until 1983, when a yacht whose innovations rivaled those of Herreshoff’s arrived in the form of the Australia II. The Australians captured the cup that year, bringing a renewed sense of international vigor to the competition. Subsequent competitions—and, unfortunately, a variety of acrimonious legal challenges—saw the cup rotate through the hands of U.S. and New Zealand racers.

  In 2000, when it came time for Rhode Island to select a design for its state quarter, the cup was held by the New Zealanders. That fact failed to deter 57 percent of the 34,566 voters in a statewide poll from honoring the role that Reliance, Herreshoff, and Rhode Island played in the America’s Cup history. After a statewide vote, a majority selected the image designed by Daniel Carr (the designer of New York’s quarter). Carr’s design bested competitors such as a design depicting the arrival of colonial forefather and religious dissident Roger Williams from the less congenial Massachusetts Bay Colony.

  Released on May 21, 2001, the U.S. Mint eventually minted over 870 million of Rhode Island’s state quarters—an impressive haul for the smallest state in the Union. And although the America’s Cup currently resides in Switzerland, Rhode Islanders and yachtsmen alike can take solace in the fact that the U.S. Mint estimates that the average life of a Rhode Island state quarter will be thirty years—in other words, plenty of time to return the America’s Cup home to America.

  14

  VERMONT

  Freedom, Unity, and Maple Syrup

  When the U.S. Mint tasked Vermont with selecting a design for the fourteenth state quarter, Governor Howard Dean and the Vermont Arts Council embarked upon an eighteen-month quest to choose the design that most ably represented the Green Mountain State. The council narrowed the proposed designs to three, giving the governor the final vote in choosing the winner.

  “Last summer, as I traveled around talking to Vermonters,” Dean said, “the maple sugaring scene [featuring two maple trees, a view of Vermont’s Camel’s Hump Mountain, and the inscription “Freedom and Unity”] was everyone’s favorite design throughout the state. I’m happy and proud that it was chosen so clearly by the people of Vermont because it reflects our rural heritage and highlights our beautiful landscape. I’m sure this coin, like our state, will be valued by everyone for a long time.”

  If anyone in Vermont disagreed with Governor Dean’s assessment, it certainly wasn’t Rick Marsh, the president of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association.

  “I was very happy to see a sugaring scene incorporated into the design of Vermont’s new state quarter,” Marsh said. “In many ways the Vermont maple industry depicts what our state is all about, a tradition known for being pure and natural. This scene represents our state very well; it shows how we take pride in preserving a beautiful working landscape with the maple industry in the forefront and the high mountains in the background.”

  Today, Vermont’s maple syrup production is valued at approximately $13 to 14 million annually. In 2006, it produced 460,000 gallons, making it the national leader in maple syrup production well ahead of Maine, New York, and Ohio, the other leading syrup-producing state
s.

  Although Vermont is the leading producer of maple syrup in the United States, the top honor in terms of productivity in North America today belongs to the Canadian province of Quebec. With fierce cross-border competition, it is not surprising that, for years, Vermont’s sugar makers have relied on Marsh’s organization. Founded in 1893 to “safeguard the tradition of maple sugaring while maintaining the highest standards possible in the production of pure maple products,” the association ranks as one of the oldest known agricultural organizations in the nation.

  And when one speaks of the maple syrup industry in Vermont, to call it “tradition” is not merely a cliché. Whether at a state-of-the-art high-tech facility or a historic wooden “sugarhouse,” each of the state’s approximately 2,500 “sugar makers” share a historic process tied inescapably to Vermont’s forest of sugar maple trees (Acer saccharum).

  That historic process, known as “sugaring” in the local parlance, takes place during Vermont’s “sugaring season.” The season lasts from four to six weeks, sometimes starting as early as February in southern Vermont and lasting into late April in northern Vermont. Timing to catch the first run of the season is important because, in the spring, maple sap contains a small quantity of the sugar sucrose (ranging from 1 to 4 percent)—the basic building block of what will become maple syrup.

  But first, a sugar maker must obtain the maple tree’s sap. To do that, sugar makers drill one or more holes, called “tap holes,” into the trunk of a maple tree. The holes are less than two inches deep, barely 5/16 of an inch in diameter, and drilled sparingly into the precious maple trees. Sugar makers know that a maple tree ten to eighteen inches in diameter takes forty years to reach that size; accordingly, they will only put one tap hole in such a tree. Larger trees warrant two or three tap holes. The entire collection of the sugar maker’s trees, whether 100 or 40,000, is known as the “sugarbush.”