A wordy warfare over these types raged for several years, gaining strength with the building of the first true English cutter, the _Muriel_, in New York in 1878, and bearing good fruit a year later in the launching of the _Mischief_, an American center-board sloop, but modified in accordance with the new theories. The plumb stem, the straight sheer, and higher free-board, with quite a shapely though short overhang, suggested the hull of the cutter, and though quite wide—nearly twenty feet on sixty-one feet water-line—she drew nearly six feet. Even with her sloop rig she was a marked departure from the older boats of her class, especially as she was built of iron in place of wood, and consequently carried her ballast, all lead, at a very low point. One of the results of this controversy was the sending to this country, from Scotland, of a little ten-ton racing cutter, the _Madge_, purely to show what capabilities lay in “a deep, narrow, lead-keeled craft with the typical cutter rig.” The only American able to beat her was the _Shadow_, a famous Herreshoff sloop of unusual depth, and she did it but once. Nevertheless, the controversy was not decided in the United States, and the Britishers thought it worth while to try to give us another lesson. In 1884 they launched two big cutters, _Irex_ and _Genesta_, and in 1885 a third, _Galatea_; and Sir Richard Sutton, owner of _Genesta_, and Lieutenant William Henn, R. N., owner of _Galatea_, challenged for the America Cup. Then the question arose: What should be done to meet them? The British cutters differed from those previously met, in that they were built for racing, not for general use—were “racing machines” instead of cruising-yachts. To meet this, a scientific designer of marine vessels, Mr. A. Cary Smith of New York, was called upon to produce a moderately deep, center-board, iron sloop-yacht on the lines of the _Mischief_, but much larger, and he produced the _Priscilla_. But while she was building there was quietly begun another yacht, the _Puritan_, owned and built in Boston from designs by an almost unheard-of architect, Mr. Edward Burgess, who previously to this performance had been renowned only as a student of insects! “The stout oak keel of the new _Puritan_ was laid upon a lead keel of twenty-seven tons, carried down into a deep projecting keel; the plumb stem, the sheer, and the long counter suggested the British cutter rather than the American sloop; the draft of eight feet six inches was greatly in excess of all of the old center-board boats, and the rig was essentially that of the cutter rather than of the sloop.” A struggle decided that she was better than the _Priscilla_, and in the cup races in September she proved herself better than the famous English cutter _Genesta_. [Illustration: THE CUTTER “MURIEL,” SHOWING THE ENGLISH DEEP-DRAFT TYPE OF BUILD AND RIG.]