Royal Thames Yacht Club Schooner "Cambria," 199 Tons – James Ashbury, Esq., London and Brighton, Owner
Not on view
This nautical print represents the schooner Cambria under full sail moving to the right. Crew members stand on deck, another sailing vessel can be seen in the left distance, and there is a steamship in the right background. As the print's inscription indicates, the British yacht "Cambria" raced the American yacht "Dauntess" across the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland to New York, with "Cambria winning by arriving at the Sandy Hook lightship first in a time of 23 days and five hours and 17 minutes. The "Dauntless" arrived an hour and 43 minutes later.
The New York firm of Currier & Ives (established by Nathaniel Currier, who formed a partnership with James Merritt Ives in 1857), made more than 7,000 lithographs between 1835 and 1907 for distribution across America and Europe. They offered images of almost everything animal, vegetable, or mineral in the United States, and issued landscapes, genre subjects, caricatures, portraits, historical scenes, foreign views and reproductions of art works. One popular sub-category concerned sailboats and racing. The pictures were drawn on lithographic stones, printed in monochrome, then generally hand-colored by women who worked for the firm at home.
