Background
Charles Barr was born on July 11, 1864, in Scotland at Gourock.
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Charles Barr
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His nautical experience, as was usual in that neighborhood, began early. For a while he was apprenticed to a grocer, and one cold, hard winter he spent on a flounder trawler. What finally made a yachtsman of him was doubtless the success of his brother John, who early became a noted skipper. In 1884 he and John took the forty-foot cutter Clara to the United States and sailed her in a number of races. Charles liked America so well that he decided to stay, and in 1889 became a naturalized citizen. For the rest of his life he was in the employment of wealthy yacht owners. His career, unmatched by any other racing skipper, was a series of almost unbroken successes.
During his first years in America he was in command of the Shona, Minerva, which he brought over from England, Oweene, Wasp, Gloriana, Navahoe, Vigilant, and Colonia. In 1899 he commanded the Columbia in her races with Shamrock I. In 1901 he beat Shamrock II with the Columbia, and in 1903 beat Shamrock III with the Reliance. Sailing the old schooner Shamrock he won the $1, 000 Lipton Cup for Frederick Thompson in a race off Cape May. In 1904 he took Morton F. Plant's Ingomar across the Atlantic and won nineteen out of twenty-two races with her in English and German waters. In 1905, with the three-masted schooner yacht Atlantic, owned by Wilson Marshall, he won the German Emperor's Cup for a race across the ocean. Barr's time to the Lizard, the finishing point, was twelve days, four hours - 3, 013 miles at an average speed of 10. 31 knots. Thereafter he had charge of two seventy-foot yachts: August Belmont's Mineola and Cornelius Vanderbilt's Rainbow. In 1910 he took Alexander Smith Cochran's Westward to Europe and at Cowes and Kiel made a perfect record. In eleven races of the A class the Westward finished first every time. The following winter Barr spent with his wife and family at Southampton, which was Mrs. Barr's native place. He died of heart failure one morning while eating breakfast.
Achievements
Personality
"Wee Charlie, " as he was sometimes called, was five feet three inches tall. He was dark almost to swarthiness, had keen black eyes and bushy brows, and was habitually taciturn. Watchful of wind, water, and every movement of his opponents, he lost no chance to gain an inch.
