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Stevens, John Cox (1785-1857) USA

Category: OWNERS

QueenStephensVJohn C. Stevens (September 24, 1785 – June 13, 1857), first commodore of the N.Y.Y.C. was the son of Col. John Stevens, a contemporary of Fulton and Livingston, and like them a pioneer in the application of steam to the propulsion of vessels, he being the inventor County of the steam screw-propeller. He was educated at Columbia College, and married Miss Maria Livingston, a famous New York belle, who presided over his household with distinguished grace.

John C. Stevens had three brothers, James, Robert L. and Edwin A., all three of whom, like him, were deeply interested in invention and the development of steam navigation. With his brother Robert, John C. Stevens started the first day-line of steamers between New York and Albany, in 1817, and throughout his life he was interested in building various kinds of steam craft, from ferry boats for the Hudson to floating batteries, at the Stevens yards in Hoboken.

John Cox Stevens, a prime mover behind the America Syndicate in 1851, founder and first commodore of the New York Yacht Club, commissioned a catamaran in 1820. He named his boat, Double Trouble.

Commodore Stevens was a liberal patron of art, and was less active in amateur field sports, and the turf, than in yachting. He introduced cricket into this country, and had a base-ball diamond on his grounds where any club was free to play. He was also a gentleman farmer, having a fine place in Dutchess County, New York.

On July 30, 1844 aboard the yacht GIMCRACK in New York Harbor, John Cox Stevens was named Commodore of the new yacht club that had been formed moments earlier, the New York Yacht Club. Enough gentlemen were interested in yachting around New York to sustain such a club, and it soon went on to become world famous.

John Cox Stevens was known as a gambler. His most outrageous gamble might have been conjuring the scheme to send the radical schooner America to England to show off American shipbuilding and design prowess, and to challenge Great Britain at its own game. Remember, that was just 37 years after the British had burned The White House during the War of 1812.

Fellow America Syndicate member, George Schuyler, was said to comment that Stevens had posted a wager about the race in the Royal Yacht Squadron “with his usual promptness, and regardless of the pockets of his associates One can deduce that Stevens’ gambles were well-considered. His well established colonial family was stable, comfortable; talented and accomplished. His grandfather had been a Member of Parliament. His father was shipbuilder, businessman, and inventor of steam engines. His brother founded the Stevens Institute of Technology. John Cox Stevens ran the first steam ferry company in the world on the Hudson River, and founded a railroad company in 1811.

He conceived the idea of a syndicate to raise money for the America project. The (original) America’s Cup Deed of Gift that Stevens surely had a hand in writing, is remarkable for its brevity, and its latitude. It calls simply for a competition in yachts, or vessels, between 44 and 90 feet LWL propelled by sails. John Cox Stevens was not only instrumental in giving us The America’s Cup, he helped assure its vitality.

John Cox Stevens and his wife spent a serenely happy married life of thirty years together, but left no children to inherit their fortune. Mrs. Stevens died in 1855, and Commodore Stevens on June 10th, 1857, at the age of 71, of enlargement of the heart, at the homestead of his father, The Castle, in Hoboken, on the banks of the Hudson, opposite the city of New York.

John Cox Stevens was sincerely mourned as a gentleman and sportsman of the highest honor and widest sympathies.

 

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