Bennett had taken over The Herald in 1867 on his father's retirement and founded the new mass-market Evening Telegram. The new commodore immediately established three challenge cups for yacht races.
*** charm Chain,,,On Aug. 4, 1871, The New York Times published an article that praised the cup, saying, ''It far surpasses anything of the kind ever produced in this country and fully equals the most elaborate models of plate ornamentation in the Old World.''
By the time Whitehouse took on the Ocean Challenge Cup, he was well ensconced at Tiffany. During the Civil War, he designed elaborate presentation swords and si *** er medals for heroes and regiments. He had already tackled maritime subjects, including an amazing presentation box he designed and engraved to commemorate the completion of the laying of the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic in 1858. The mayor of New York presented the gold box to Cyrus W. Field, the founder of the cable company, during a Cable Jubilee at the Crystal Palace, in what is now Bryant Park. The box showed the two schooners that laid the cable.
''The Great Depression put a stop to that kind of race and that kind of trophy,'' Mr. Loring said. ''It would have been politically incorrect at that time to focus on such a race.''
How do you motivate America's Type-A millionaires? Make them vie for si *** er sporting trophies from Tiffany & Company.
One of these, the Ocean Challenge Cup, is illustrated in Mr. Loring's new book, ''Magnificent Tiffany Si *** er'' (Harry N. Abrams, $60). Mr. Loring is in a position to appreciate the design and workmanship of such pieces, since Tiffany continues to design and make trophies for the National Basketball Association, the World Series, the Super Bowl and other events and groups. The Ocean Challenge Cup was for the winners of a round-trip yacht race between the Sandy Hook Lightship off New York Harbor and the Brenton Reef Lightship off Newport, R.I.
''They were no different from feudal lords,'' said John Loring, the design director of Tiffany. ''My team came out of my corner and yours came out of yours, and each tried to knock the others off their horses. These extraordinary 19th-century Americans were trying to provide public entertainment and build up sports in this country. Their trophies were great monuments to themse *** es and their money.''
In 1872, J. Malcolm Forbes, the scion of a rich and prominent Boston family (no relation to the publisher Malcolm Forbes), won the first Ocean Challenge in his schooner, the Rambler. The races were held intermittently between New York and Newport through 1934.
Before the Depression, Bennett commissioned several more yachting trophies from Tiffany for other races. The company displayed 13 of them at the 1876 Centennial exhibition in Philadelphia.
It is an amazing confection, with handles in the form of curvaceous prows of ancient Viking ships. On the top stands Christopher Columbus, pointing down to a golden globe, a not-so-subtle symbol of American pride. A large rondel on the front depicts sailors amid broken ship rigging. It is a scene from ''The Wreck of the Hesperus,'' the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The bottom of the cup is anchored to its wooden base by four si *** er dolphins. Plaques with winners' names are attached to the base, linked by a si *** er chain in the shape of anchors.
Many of these wildly lavish trophies, known as challenge cups and passed down from winner to winner, inspired some of the most magnificent work by Tiffany's si *** ersmiths in the late 19th century. Most were commissioned by tycoons to encourage their friends to compete in various sporting and racing events.
The Ocean Challenge Cup was designed by James Horton Whitehouse, an English si *** ersmith who immigrated to the United States in 1855 when he was 22. Tiffany hired Whitehouse in 1858, perhaps in response to a move by a competitor, the Gorham si *** er company, which had just hired the chief designer of the Birmingham School of Design in England.
In 1866, for example, James Gordon Bennett Jr., the 25-year-old managing editor of The New York Herald, won the first trans-Atlantic yacht race. It was grueling: six crewmen on a competing yacht died in a fierce storm. Widely admired for his courage, the editor-skipper was elected commodore of the New York Yacht Club in 1871.
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