The forgotten tale of the 5ft Scottish fisherman who took on the world, became Kaiser Wilhelm’s nemesis and set the standard for Sir Ben Ainslie in the America’s Cup

It’s a four-kilometre walk along the coast of Barcelona from Ben Ainslie’s America’s Cup base to an apartment overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Within it you will find the descendant of a man who was quite remarkable and has long been forgotten.

People don’t talk much about Charlie Barr anymore. Not at all, really. And for Alasdair Purves, his great-great-grandson, that has been a little disconcerting every time he has stepped out onto his balcony over the past few months.

He’s watched the America’s Cup trials from that same spot on the seafront, so he’s well aware that Ainslie and his INEOS Britannia team are close to making history. In fact, if all goes to plan over the next 10 days, starting Saturday, Ainslie will lead a British team to victory for the first time in the 173-year life of sport’s oldest international trophy.

But he would not be the only skipper from our coasts to achieve this. To date, that is a distinction held only by Barr, a five-foot-tall Scotsman who won the Cup three times in a row in 1899, 1901 and 1903, albeit with the diabolical footnote that each of them was commanding American yachts and against ships flying the Union flag.

While 16 British teams have lost in the final since 1851, and many others failed to get that far, this working-class lad from Gourock did more than any other individual to bring about their defeats.

Their story, from fights and bets with Kaiser Wilhelm II to acts of bravery in the name of romance, is quite fabulous. But it is also a topic that has largely been lost in the breeze.

“I met Ben Ainslie recently,” says Purves, who is 42 and emigrated to Barcelona from the south of England a few years ago to work in the yachting industry. “I told him I have an ancestor who won the America’s Cup three times and after a couple of hints, he smiled and said, ‘Charlie Barr.’

‘He knows his history and I really liked that because Charlie has been largely forgotten beyond a few sailing historians, a bit airbrushed.

“I went to the America’s Cup museum here the other day and was looking at a summary history of the Cup. It included Grant Dalton, a sailing legend who manages the New Zealand team that will take on Ainslie.

‘They’ve won the last two, so he’s in the movie saying no one has won this three times in a row and I rolled my eyes. I wish more people knew exactly what happened before.

As Ainslie prepares to take his team into the water, boosted by £250m funding from Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Barr serves as a fascinating snapshot in time.

Born in 1864, he did not come from a privileged family. “His mother died when he was four years old and his father didn’t want him to go to sea, so he put him to work in a fruit shop,” says Purves. ‘Finally, he followed one of his brothers fishing and there’s a great story I discovered recently while looking at a microfiche from a long-defunct newspaper in Rhode Island.

‘It happened off the coast of Scotland when he was about 14 years old. The ship was caught in a terrible storm and filled with water as the wind carried it further and further out to sea. The older boys were collapsing from exhaustion and finally this skinny kid grabbed the helm and steered the boat through these crashing waves. He was credited with saving the entire crew and that was a pivotal moment in his early life.

“After that, the local crews wanted him on board. In 1884, his half-brother got a job delivering a yacht across the Atlantic to New York for a Scottish businessman, who made bets with other wealthy gentlemen there that his boat would wipe the floor with anyone. Instead of Charlie coming back, he stayed to run for him and they all won. They then invited him back the following year and that year they also won all the races.

“The interesting thing was when he competed with a boat designed by Nathaneal Herreshoff. To give you an idea of ​​Herreshoff, he was the Leonardo da Vinci of yacht design and would become one of the greatest of all time. But suddenly this excellent Scottish captain beat one of his yachts in a race, in a boat he really shouldn’t have won, before disappearing again to devote himself to another season of fishing.’

Such was Barr’s reputation at this stage that the dominant New York Yacht Club and Wall Street giant John Pierpont Morgan named him their preferred skipper and put Barr on a Herreshoff boat to run their 1899 campaign.

By then, the NYYC had claimed victory in each of the 10 editions that preceded it, having closed the Auld Mug with an iron fist since it was initially contested on the Isle of Wight against Queen Victoria in 1851. Of those victories , the British yachts had been the losers in seven, with programs backed by an earl, a knight of the kingdom, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and a railway magnate such as James Lloyd Ashbury, who would become a Conservative MP.

The next Briton in that 1899 race was Sir Thomas Lipton, who had emerged from a tenement building in Glasgow and was making his fortune in the tea trade. Pitting his yacht Shamrock against Barr’s Columbia, Lipton was defeated 3-0.

In the final of the following two editions, in 1901 and 1903, Lipton would face the same man again and on both occasions a 3-0 result was repeated.

“In the last one, Charlie was racing a radically new boat called Reliance,” says Purves. “This was Herreshoff’s masterpiece, but it was so powerful and had so much sail area that it really had to be kept on a knife’s edge. Herreshoff is quoted as saying that Charlie Barr was the only man who could sail it safely and he delivered.

“At that time he was considered the best captain in the world. I find it wonderful to think that this man from the west of Scotland was in America and was celebrated by the richest men in America. People like JP Morgan, William Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt paid him well to lead their teams.

While Lipton’s efforts to end Great Britain’s losing streak extended to two more final defeats, he would eventually be regarded as the only man to ever make big money from an America’s Cup campaign: his tea sales skyrocketed in the US, such was the attention his refusal to give up attracted.

As for Barr, his approach changed course, and thus an unusual rivalry flourished with William II, the ruler of Prussia. The Kaiser was obsessed with sailing and had suffered periodic defeats to Barr, which set the stage for a confrontation when Wilhelm proposed a race across the Atlantic in 1905.

“The Kaiser was a flamboyant, quite bombastic type of villain,” Purves says. «He presented his best yacht, the Hamburg, and crewed it with the best sailors of the German navy. Although he wasn’t going to race himself, he really wanted to beat Charlie and show that Germany dominated the waves.

‘Charlie had been hired by Wilson Marshall to captain his yacht, the Atlantic, and ends up in a bet with Kaiser Bill. The Kaiser told him, “If you win, you can take whatever you want from my ship,” and Charlie chose the insignia on the back, the Kaiser’s flag of this big eagle.

‘The background to this is that Charlie’s wife was very ill with tuberculosis. I have retraced her steps through libraries and family histories and she had been given two weeks to live. He didn’t want to run, but his sponsor wouldn’t take no for an answer and offered to provide him with the best treatment money could buy.

“Charlie agreed to do it and there is a great scene that unfolds halfway through when they are hit by a terrible storm. The Atlantic lounge has flooded and Mr. Marshall, the owner, has lost his temper and orders Charlie to slow down and play it safe. Charlie’s response was apparently to say, “You hired me to win this race” and then you locked him in the saloon! Then he won and took the Kaiser’s flag.

The record Barr set for that voyage from Sandy Hook to Cornwall (12 days and four hours) remained unbeaten for 75 years, but Barr’s legacy appears to have faded faster.

Time will tell if Ainslie will be able to emulate their Copa América achievement in the next fortnight, or if their collaboration with Ratcliffe will follow the pattern of so many other teams in these parts. Unfortunately, they have already set a high mark by fielding a first British finalist since 1964.

“I hope he and INEOS win,” says Purves. “The idea of ​​Ben drinking champagne from the same trophy as Charlie is really nice.”

It could also breathe new life into a forgotten champion.