Lot 82: James Wallace Black (American, 1825-1896)

The Schooner yacht America, c.1880 albumen print 111/4 x 16 in. (28.5 x 40.6 cm.) NOTES James Wallace Black (1825-1896) operated out of his second floor studio also on Bostons busy Washington Street. This important photo depicts America without sails. Her racking masts suggest that of a "Baltimore clipper." The design promised speed and grace, a promise fulfilled in halcyon days with her historic 1851 win at Cowes. By 1863 she had already spent several years as a pleasure yacht, but was soon to be spirited away to Georgia by a Southern sympathizer and sold to the Confederacy. Falsely carrying the flags of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club she smuggled war supplies. In the face of capture she was scuttled at Jacksonville, Florida, re-floated by Union forces and used in blockade duty chasing Confederates. Thereafter she was used by the US Navy as a training vessel. In 1873 she was sold to General Ben Butler, of Boston. He and his descendants sailed her again as a yacht. Beginning in 1921 she was restored and berthed at Annapolis as a museum. Her end came, sadly, in 1942 when snow crushed the shed under which she was housed.