George Steers was a designer of yachts best known for the famous racing yacht America.
Background
George was born in Washington, District of Columbia, United States, on July 20, 1820. He inherited much of his ability from his father, Henry Steer, a successful British shipbuilder, who emigrated to the United States from Devonshire in 1819, added a final "s" to the family name, and became one of the leading naval constructors of his time. His third son, George, one of thirteen children, was born in Washington, District of Columbia, and grew up in his father's shipyard at the foot of East Tenth Street, New York City.
Career
Steers's first larger boat, the twenty-seven-ton sloop, Manhattan, built in his father's yard in 1839, was followed by the fast pilot boat, William G. Hagstaff, the 250-ton schooner St. Mary the First, three steamers for the Great Lakes, and a small ship, Sunny South, which subsequently became a slaver. In his early productions Steers adhered to the accepted "cod's-head-and-mackerel-tail" theory of design, but in 1849 he turned out a schooner, Mary Taylor, in which the forefoot was boldly rounded away, the bows moderately hollowed, with a clean afterbody and well balanced ends.
The almost instantaneous success of the Mary Taylor as a fast pilot boat, and others of similar lines, soon made the New York pilot fleet the talk of the shipping world. Through his intimate acquaintance with the Stevens brothers, John Cox, Robert Livingston, and Edwin Augustus Stevens, Steers was enabled to keep in close touch with the most progressive ideas of the day in steam engineering, marine propulsion, railroading, and other mechanical devices.
They built a number of notable vessels including the steamship, Adriatic, for the Collins line, and the warship, Niagara, which helped to lay the first transatlantic cable. Steers became well known as a builder of pleasure craft such as the schooners Syren, Sybil, Una, Ray, Julia, Cygnet, Cornelia, and Haze--all of which were prominent in yacht races before and even after the Civil War. But his most famous craft was the America.
He received the order for this boat from a syndicate of six members of the New York Yacht Club, John Cox Stevens, Edwin Augustus Stevens, Col. James A. Hamilton, George L. Schuyler, Hamilton Wilkes, and John K. Beekman Finlay, while engaged in the yard of William H. Brown at the foot of East Twelfth St. Steers is credited with both her design and construction.
His clients were sharp business men who held him to his contract to build an unbeatable boat and paid him twenty instead of thirty thousand dollars after the America had been defeated by the sloop Maria, a much larger craft, in her first test of speed.
Unchagrined by the seeming failure, Steers crossed the ocean on the America and sailed her in the memorable race of August 22, 1851, around the Isle of Wight. At one time during her course, no second boat was in sight of the American craft. Although the America revolutionized yacht design on both sides of the Atlantic, Steers seems to have been forgotten in the festivities which followed the winning of the 100 guinea cup of the Royal Yacht Squadron, and it was not until some years later that his great creations received their just due.
His death at the early age of thirty-seven resulted from injuries received in a runaway accident near his home at Great Neck, Long Island.