Coronet (yacht) - History

History

The 131-foot (40 m) schooner Coronet was designed by William Townsend and built for Rufus T. Bush by the C. & R. Poillon shipyard in Brooklyn. Bush then put forth a $10,000 challenge against any other yacht for a transatlantic race. The ocean race between the Coronet and the yacht Dauntless in March 1887 made Rufus T. Bush and the victorious Coronet famous—the New York Times devoted its entire first page for March 28, 1887 to the story (as seen at left).

After winning the 3,000-mile race and the $10,000 purse, Rufus T. Bush decided to sell the Coronet and listed the vessel in England for $30,000. Rufus and his son Irving T. Bush then circumnavigated the globe on the Coronet in 1888. The Coronet was the first registered yacht to cross Cape Horn from East to West. After crossing the Pacific Ocean and stopping in Hawaii, the Coronet made port in China, Calcutta, Malta and elsewhere.

The Coronet was sold before Rufus's death in 1890 The vessel then passed through six different owners (Arthur E. Bateman, John D. Wing, Arthur Curtiss James, Fred S. Pearson, John I. Waterbury, and Louis Bossert) by 1905. The Coronet circumnavigated the globe several times and was used for a Japanese-American scientific excursion during an eclipse.

The Kingdom, a religious organization founded by Frank Sandford, purchased the ship in 1905 for $10,000 and took it around the world on prayer missions, including to Palestine. The Kingdom owned the boat until 1995. The International Yacht Restoration School, in Newport, Rhode Island acquired the boat in the 1995 and began restoring of the vessel. IYRS added the Coronet to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. In December 2006, IYRS conveyed title of the boat to the Coronet Restoration Partners in San Francisco to complete the restoration on IYRS's campus in Rhode Island, where restoration works started in 2010.

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