Britain's Best

The men stayed politely apart by themselves. Their working day stretched from 7:30 in the morning until 5:30 at night. With such determination, the ten-man British crew at Newport last week groomed Sceptre to challenge the U.S.'s Columbia for the 107-year-old America's Cup.

Like Columbia, Sceptre was financed by a syndicate, eleven members of the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes. She was also designed for heavy weather. In trial runs, Sceptre looked her best when fighting to windward in a running sea. Free to move fast and safely in her yawning cockpit, her crewmen could put their stabilizing weight where it was needed. But some British experts were grumbling that Scottish Designer David Boyd, 55, had made Sceptre too rugged. With a foot less waterline length (45 ft. v. 44 ft.), Sceptre's displacement is 68,000 Ibs. compared to 56,800 for Columbia. While Columbia's bow knifes through waves at the waterline, Sceptre bashes them with her barrel chest. Even British Helmsman Graham Mann guardedly admitted: "If she has a bias, it's toward the heavy side."

Just as rugged as Sceptre is her crew of ten regulars and seven alternates, hand-picked from among Britain's best sailors after spring tryouts. Skipper Stan Bishop, 56, a professional yacht captain and a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy during World War II, won his job by disconcertingly outsailing Sceptre in trials off Cowes, at the wheel of a pacer yacht, Evaine. Glamour boy is husky Helmsman Mann, 34, a blond bachelor lieutenant commander, whose nose is gloriously bent from a schooldays boxing match. A friend of the Duke of Edinburgh, Mann was once sailing master for the royal family, finished third in the 1956 Olympics 5.5-meter-class competition.

Says Helmsman Mann: "I think the boats are about even." If Sceptre becomes the first British boat to beat the U.S. since America first won the cup in 1851, he is prepared. As extra cargo, Sceptre's crew brought along a special box just big enough to hold the America's Cup.

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