iron may take their place. Personally, I believe in having the hull as perfect as possible. I would dispense with costly gingerbread-work below deck, having everything cozy and attractive, and would expend the extra money, thus saved, on hull, spars and rigging, yellow-metal fastenings being my first object. Of course, if I were building a "freak" for a couple of seasons' sport, I wouldn't use a fragment of copper in her construction.
It is well to bear in mind that there is absolutely no market for an outclassed racer. For that reason I cannot recommend the expenditure of much money on the construction of a craft whose life in the usual course of events is limited to perhaps three seasons. Double skins and copper fastenings would be absurdly out of place in such craft. But when a man builds a cruiser, there is no reason why she should not be as sound and strong as a judicious expenditure of money can make her.
There is much to be said for and against copper sheathing for the bottom of a racing yacht. For some reason or other it has never been popular in this country. It was first used in 1761, when the British warship Alarm was coppered at Woolwich.
Mr. G. L. Watson is authority for the statement that, as early as 1834, a metal keel was fixed on the Wave, built for Mr. John Cross Buchanan by Messrs. Steele.
