CHAPTER 3 )

At Once Rivalrous and Loyal

 Off-season the Kennedy children lived apart at boarding schools or alternated as a family between Boston and New York City. When apart, their collective longing to return to the sea came through in letters. Three from May 1934 were of a common theme. Joe Jr., studying in London, wrote to eight-year-old Robert, “I’ll be glad to get back to the Cape for the racing. You’ll probably be big enough to act as crew during the races. . . . Work hard in school, Bob, and eat lots of spinach so you’ll be able to hold onto the ropes this summer.” Kick wrote her mother at the Cape, “I hope you have a nice time watching the fleet,” and Joe Sr. wrote Joe Jr. that President Roosevelt’s son and daughter-in-law were to summer across nearby Buzzards Bay and had acquired a Wianno Senior they hoped to race, “so maybe you will have a crew for August.”1

No doubt they enjoyed cities and their boarding school classmates, but stepping out of the car at Hyannis Port, feeling the Cape breeze, breathing air of salt and sea grass, was a liberating moment, a time for losing shirts and hours. They could spend a whole day in bathing suits and worry about few things more complicated than yacht club dances, fitness for a swim race, or the readiness of Victura or Tenovus. Walking alongshore they could watch the piping plovers—a bird still abundant in those years—establishing their bowl-shaped nests of sand on the beaches, having completed their migratory return in April. Sometimes they would see black skimmers flying inches above the water, lower beak longer than upper, scooping up food near the surface. In boarding school they were a slave to the clocks on the wall. Here the clock-like rhythm of nature was all around with comforting, unconfining constancy, ebb current slowly swinging to ebb tide, the winds quickening almost as sure as sunrise to a twenty-five-knot-or-more sou’wester starting every afternoon around one o’clock, the house’s towering flagpole a sundial casting an hour’s hand shadow around the big play place of their great lawn.

The return to the family routines of Hyannis Port was a coming home to an adventurous normal. It’s a measure of how much they loved it that they and the following generation of Kennedys spent their lives returning, buying adjacent properties, trying new boats. The house was full of and surrounded by the incessant noise of brothers and sisters, brisk air, constant nursing of bumps and bruises, and boisterous conversation at dinner, led with calculation by their father to instill understanding of and curiosity about world affairs and politics. There were many sports played, but much time was devoted to sailing, to tinkering with boats to improve performance, to practicing maneuvers, to frequent races. They cruised and raced offshore, at first always within eyeshot of their front porch.

Brothers and sisters grew better at sailing every year. By summer’s end of 1934 Kathleen, fourteen, and Eunice, thirteen, had won trophies, as did Joe Jr. The following year, wrote a chronicler of the lives of the girls, “the young Kennedys led by Eunice, Kathleen and Pat ... plus Rosemary, Jack and Joe Jr., came away with 14 first prizes, 13 seconds and 13 thirds in 76 starts.” Every year July and August calendars were full of racing. Over seven of those prewar years, collectively putting all they had into the races, “the Kennedys took away more prizes than anyone else, carrying away a bounty of loving cups, silver trays, bound books, clocks and desk sets as they left the port at the end of summer.”2

There was also the science of calculated risk to learn; weather could not be reliably predicted in those days, and the wind could be wild. During the Hyannis Port Yacht Club Labor Day races of 1936, Joe Jr. skippered Victura and Eunice Tenovus, “in a strong southwest breeze and rough sea which caused the withdrawal of five of the small yachts.”³ In July 1937, a newspaper reported, “It was a day to dowse topsails at Edgartown Yacht Club regatta today, but the skippers didn’t believe in dowsing anything and held on or dragged canvas during the wild-puffs of wind that reached half-gale force out of the southwest. . . . The fleet of nearly 200 boats sailed a series of races in unusually fast time, while leaving a string of crippled boats in their wake, a string that kept the Coast Guard busy rescuing the crews and towing in the wreckage.” Sailing Victura, Joe took second in his division, a minute behind the winner, who covered the 6.4-mile course in seventy-five minutes.4

Joe and Eunice showed equal measures of determination under sail: “Eunice needed no example: she was as aggressive at the tiller as he. The goal was victory, the style wild: split-second timing at the start, recklessness at the windward buoy, disregard for the risk of a tiny misjudgment. Joe carried full canvas when others reefed; he had a gut sense of the touch of the breeze in light winds and a special feel on the tiller; he was last to head up for safety in a squall and first to ease off again.”⁵

It is likely Jack crewed for his brother in those races in Victura, but surviving sailing records do not reveal as much about Jack. He must have gained plenty of helmsman’s experience though, because he enjoyed such competitive success when he entered college.

~ In their years together on Victura, Joe and Jack found trouble as well as triumph. In a race good sailors intensely focus on the details of sail trim and tactics, little tolerant of idle chat, famously prone to heated language. This was certainly true of those who sailed Victura and the other Wiannos. “If the crew didn’t get physically struck it was an amazing thing. I mean there is almost no Wianno racer there who didn’t witness crew being thrown off or hit,” recalled Robert’s son Chris, describing later Cape experiences that resembled those of his father and uncles.⁶

One Senior sailor, Jean Kiley Wells, recalled an incident in the 1930s: “The Edgartown regattas were, needless to say, the highlights of the sailing seasons. I was always well-chaperoned by one or both parents, but even so it was a fun time. One Saturday afternoon, our Senior, the El Cid, and the Victura, captained by Jack Kennedy, collided. The Race Committee threw out both protests as the stories differed totally. It made no difference as we were both quite unsuccessful that day.”⁷

The reward for all that tension on water is a tradition as inviolable as a skipper’s authority: after-race drinks. There, tensions are lubricated away, friction forgotten, sailing adventures retold, mishaps inducing laughter instead of anger. After racing in the 1935 Edgartown Regatta in the summer before Jack went away to Harvard, the two Kennedy boys instigated a wilder-than-usual party at a local hotel, so boisterous that police were summoned. Joe and Jack were arrested. The role of alcohol in that incident is unrecorded, and Joe Sr. was known to disapprove of overconsumption, not wanting to validate the Irish stereotype. Upon learning of his sons’ incarceration, Joe Sr. thought a night in jail would do them good. The El Cid’s Wells said, “The Wianno sailors at that time had a bad reputation in Edgartown and as I recall, some were on a blacklist in the hotels and lodging.”8

It would not be the last time an Edgartown Regatta ended badly for a son of Joe Kennedy.

~ Joe Sr. made clear his high aspirations for all this children, but it was obvious that his firstborn and namesake was the anointed. The parents spoke of the importance of the younger children learning from the good example of their older brothers and sisters, so they expected model behavior from Joe and, though he sometimes fell short, he liked the role. At a young age, Joe Jr. assumed airs of authority over his siblings. He was beheld with some awe by the younger ones, particularly Ted, seventeen years younger, making his and Joe’s relationship more paternal than fraternal.

Joe Jr. was smart, studious, athletic, handsome, witty, and poised. His teasing was vicious with a large dose of sarcasm, a means of asserting authority that did not necessarily enlarge his popularity. Jack’s later description echoed that of others and was as good as anyone’s:

I have always felt that Joe achieved his greatest success as the oldest brother. Very early in life he acquired a sense of responsibility towards his brothers and sisters, and I do not think that he ever forgot it. Towards me who was nearly his own age, this responsibility consisted in setting a standard that was uniformly high.... I suppose I knew Joe as well as anyone and yet, I sometimes wonder whether I ever really knew him. He had always a slight detachment from things around him—a wall of reserve which few people ever succeeded in penetrating. I do not mean by this that Joe was ponderous and heavy in his attitude. Far from it—I do not know anyone with whom I would rather have spent an evening or played golf or, in fact, done anything. He had a keen wit and saw the humorous side of people and situations quicker than anyone I have ever known.

This was written in 1945 by a veteran back from war. Jack continued, “He would spend long hours throwing a football with Bobby, swimming with Teddy, and teaching the younger girls how to sail. He was always close to Kick and was particularly close to her during some difficult times. I think that if the Kennedy children now or ever amount to anything, it will be due more to Joe’s behavior and his constant example than to any other factor.”9 One wonders now: even more than their father and mother?

Joe Jr. and Jack grew closer over time, but in those younger years Jack found second fiddle a position not to his liking. They were intensely competitive with each other, prone to squabbles. Jack, small of build, was not one to be cowed even if he rarely won a fight. Robert later told an interviewer that “he and [sisters] Pat and Jean would gape from the stairway, or hide, as the two struggled on the living-room floor; the style of the family was to let Jack fight it out on his own.”¹⁰

That was something, given Jack’s frailty then. The origins of his frequent illnesses were a mystery to his parents and doctors. Medical science at the time disallowed a good diagnosis, and his father sought much advice about it. Jack required so much medical attention in 1933 and 1934 that his father said Jack’s physician would be presenting an article on Jack to the American Medical Association, “because it is only one of the few recoveries of a condition bordering on leukemia, and it was the general impression of the doctors that his chances were about five out of one hundred that he ever could have lived.”¹¹ Not until after the war was he diagnosed with Addison’s disease.

Even in college, friends still saw the two as competitors. Harvard classmate Thomas Bilodeau recalled, “The touch football was not a matter of strategy with the Kennedy family. It was a matter of blood and thunder. . . . Both the boys could never be on the same team. Whichever one Joe was on, Jack would always take the opposite team. There was great competitive spirit between the two boys.”¹²

Joe Jr. had a temper too, and sailing brought that out. Jack, Eunice, and the other siblings often crewed for Joe in Victura. Eunice recalled, “he was very good, but he had quite a strong temper and would be cross as a billy goat and would blame somebody else when he didn’t win.”¹³ When Teddy was a young boy he pleaded with Joe Jr. to take him along for his first race.

Teddy managed to acquire a lifelong love of sailing despite that day’s experience with Joe. When Teddy was twelve or thirteen, after Joe was lost in the war, he was asked by Jack to record in writing that first race:

I recall the day the year before he [Joe] went to England. It was in the summer, and I asked Joe if I could race with him. He agreed to this so we started down to the pier, about five minutes before the race. We had our sails up just as the gun went for the start. This was the first race I had ever been in. We were going along very nicely when he suddenly told me to pull in the jib. I had no idea what he was talking about. He repeated the command again in a little louder tone. Meanwhile, we were slowly getting further and further away from the other boats. Joe suddenly leaped up and grabbed the jib. I was a little scared, but suddenly he seized me by the pants and threw me into the cold water.

I was scared to death practically. I then heard a splash, and I felt his hand grip my shirt, and then he lifted me into the boat. We continued the race and came in second. On the way home from the pier he told me to be quiet about what happened that afternoon. One fault Joe had was he just was easily mad in a race, as you have witnessed. But he always meant well and was a very good sailor and swimmer.14

Joe’s long shadow was both a burden and a place to hide. Jack was less disciplined and more carefree, and he lacked his older brother’s paternalistic nature. He showed less sense of purpose, more sense of humor. Joe was always destined for politics, but Jack envisioned an academic career, perhaps as a writer. Joe was organized and diligent about his assignments, whether he liked them or not. Not so Jack, writes Doris Kearns Goodwin. “Jack was unpardonably sloppy at home and lazy at school, interested only in the things that pleased him.”¹⁵

Bilodeau recalled,

There were certain differences between the two boys. Joe was quick. He would not put up in any way with intellectual stupidity; he could not stand people who could not understand problems quickly. He couldn’t put up with mediocrity in any way. On the other hand, although Jack may have had the same feelings, he was a much more flexible person. He seemed to be somewhat more understanding of mediocrity. And it seems to me that he was able with his personality to have won a great many people whom he couldn’t have won if he had been at all quick to flare up at stupidity.16

As summers passed by and the personalities of the younger boys emerged, another biographer saw a developing dynamic:

Joe [Jr.] would often serve as a surrogate parent, filling in as enforcer and role model during the frequent absences of Joe Sr. and Rose. Jack would act as the family’s detached observer, commenting and dissecting the proceedings as much as participating in them. Bobby was the fierce-willed altar boy, fighting for every scrap of ground he could get with a kind of messianic zeal, and Ted was the roll-with-the-punches guy. In short, Joe Jr. was the family’s star, Jack its wit, Bobby its soul, and Ted its laugh. . . . Joe Sr. genuinely expected all four sons to be president. He gloated when they were children that he would outdo the Adams family, which only had two presidents.¹⁷

It would be many years before the contributions of the females of that generation would be fully appreciated.

~ Nonfamily members appeared on the scene through friendships with the children, some becoming lifelong friends, others not blending in or keeping up with the quick pace. Joe Jr. started a habit of bringing friends from boarding school for extended visits, and the others followed Joe’s example by bringing their own friends. The parents approved since it kept their own children closer at hand. Joe Sr. generally ignored the friends of the other children. At the always-lively dinnertime conversations, any friends who tried to chime in discovered their participation unwelcome. Joe Sr. pretended not to hear them.

A common theme of friends’ reminiscences was the trials at sea. Bilodeau, Joe’s heavyset classmate, found that Joe and Jack sometimes competed for him as crew. “When the wind was heavy, both Joe and Jack vied for my affections.... I recall we were coming down to the finish line, and the winds let up and we were on a run. The boat was slowing down with my weight, and Jack turned to me and said, ‘Over the side, boy. We’ve got to relieve ourselves of some weight.’ So right out there in open water, I proceeded to just go over the side, and he ran on to win the race.”18

~ Physical size was useful in high wind, but competitive sailing on a boat like Victura generally did not require size or brute strength, which was good for Jack. It was more strategic and technical. Skill at team building helped, Bilodeau’s experience being a poor example. Sailors needed to know the engineering of the boat and master the infinite influences on its performance—wind speed, gusting and direction, water current, and wave. They needed an instinct for the subtle touch of the tiller in light wind and to be an interpreter of small variances in the sail’s luff. That suited Jack.

Robert Kennedy’s son Christopher, born in 1963, sails the family’s new Victura, which itself is now among the older of the wooden Wianno Seniors. Chris speaks of the almost infinite number of factors to consider, not to mention mastery of sailing terminology:

You can rake the mast forward by pulling out some of the wedges around where the mast goes through the deck and tightening down the forestay and loosening the side stays. . . . You can raise the entire rig, the gaff itself. You can pull the downhaul down. You can pull the peak up. You can lower the peak. You can pull the outhaul out. You can pull the outhaul out on the peak. You can set the luff lines. The leach. It’s just endless, endless. That’s just on the main [sail]. You’ve got the jib. . . . You can set that in a particular location on the forestay, tighten the downhaul. That’s even before you get into just pulling the main in and out.

There are a million ways to continue to make things better and then to react and change. You know, just always improving, improving and keeping at it. And then there are enormous wind shifts out there. So a race can look lost and then the wind will back around the course, and it’ll all of the sudden be favoring the boats that went their own route, favored their own course, didn’t follow the leader.¹⁹

~ A quick student, Jack had day-after-day outings to learn the nuances of the Victura. Perhaps his most memorable race as a young man began with his decision to outfit Victura with a new mahogany tiller. In his late teens he was old enough to saw and plane a piece of wood into a perfect handle to steer the boat, and he was eager to try it out. After all that work and anticipation, he wasn’t going to let weather stop him. The best record of that day is J. Julius Fanta’s 1968 account, one that may have a few factual improvisations but which was at least written close enough in time to make available to Fanta some reasonably reliable secondhand accounts.20

The summer weeks leading up to the day of the race had been one hot windless day after another, a prison of a season for a sailor, and out of Nantucket Sound’s character. With early fall came winds so high they might have warranted a small-craft advisory had the harbor at Hyannis Port been equipped to issue one. Jack’s teen rivals showed up for the scheduled race to find a sign on the harbor bulletin board: “No Race Today.” That also meant no race committee supervision for anyone venturing out. With white caps and rig-straining wind all around, brother Joe Jr. and the other young skippers were of no mind to question authority. They started back down the dock to shore.

“What are you going to do when it blows?” Jack said. “C’mon, let’s have a race of our own.”

Although alpha maleness was now factored in, given the age and temperament of those involved, Joe nonetheless replied, “Are you nuts?”

“We’ve been out in worse weather. What are we, a bunch of sissies?”

This pack of wolves would not so easily cede alpha. Six boats were readied for racing. Jack unbolted his old tiller and replaced it with the new one of fresh-lacquered mahogany. The other was tossed into the cuddy. For each competitor, the first consideration was whether to reef sails, which reduced sail area by lowering the mainsail a few inches and securing it with a line of ties parallel to the sail boom. When winds exceed, say twenty-five knots, depending on the vessel, an over-canvassed boat could tip or “heel” far enough to lose speed and give a good scare. A really good gust risks a knockdown. Wianno Seniors may be hard to capsize, but they make for a wet crew in any good breeze. With waves so big, this was going to be a soaking, a long struggle of pulling in sheets and a wracking of nerves as gusts sent the boat heeling beyond forty-five degrees. It was bold to put out under full sail, but many did. Jack was smart enough to reef.

If a horse race started the way a sailboat race begins, horses would gallop back and forth before the starting line, dodging and weaving until the starting bell, at which point all would push, shove, and crowd across the line at whatever position luck and timing afforded. For Jack, getting an advantaged position at the line meant tacking, or zigzagging, back and forth, easing and pulling the mainsheet to speed or slow the boat so the timing was just right. “Jibing” means turning with the wind behind, causing a sudden big swing of the boom and requiring a quick duck to miss a head knocking. Unplanned jibes could be painful, and the chaos of a race’s start meant a lot was unplanned.

“A hidden danger, though rare, is a jibe by a boat close beside you,” according to Richard Ulian, writing about Wianno Seniors, a boat with a long boom. “His boom sweeps very low across your cockpit. His crew is ready for a jibe. You and your crew may not be; in fact, you may have your backs turned to the danger. I have known people to be knocked out of their boats unconscious this way, with long-term injury resulting.”21

With boats moving at top speed, crowding around the starting line, zigging and zagging in front and aside, the other big worry was collision. Avoiding one meant split-second knowledge of right-of-way. Sometimes a boat suddenly flashed in front of you, blocked from view by your jib sail.

Meanwhile, Jack was trying to settle into a muscle-memory comfort zone of intuitive response to gust and wave. When he could he glanced to check proper sail shape for the wind and double-checked lines so they were secure and untangled. His boat skipped unintentionally across the starting line before the start, so he called “hard-a-lee” to his crewmates and brought it back.

A quick turn, a gust, a wave and CRACK! Suddenly Jack was holding his new tiller handle, snapped off from the rudder head. He had no control. Rudderless boats turn naturally into the wind and stop. Victura’s momentum vanished, sail luffing wildly, boom jerking back and forth, as competitors streamed across the start and left Jack behind. “Thought you wanted to race!” said one passerby. Another noted the irony of Jack’s bravado on the dock. As boat motion made the nub of the rudder head jerk clockwise, then counterclockwise, Jack unbolted what was left of his precious worthless tiller and tried to reinstall the old one. If only the rudder head would stop turning back and forth just long enough so he could reattach it! The loud popping flap-rattle of a luffing sail freshened his anger, but he stayed in control. Few sailors carry spare tillers, but at least he had that bit of luck. Agonizing moments passed until he tightened the bolt.

The rudder responded, and he trimmed his sails to cross the starting line. The luffing stopped, and he heard the satisfying silence of smooth sail trim and a steady beat forward. The other boats were all beating in parallel, half a leg of the course ahead. Pushing through, over and under white-capped swells, Jack struggled with the weather helm, where fighting a sailboat’s tendency to turn into the wind causes the rudder to rob the boat of forward momentum. It was something between a roller coaster and bull ride. The crew stretched as far over the starboard gunwale as possible, straining their abdomens and leaning their weight to windward, upper bodies hanging out over the waves, to keep the hull as flat on the water as possible, because flatter is faster. Jack was carving as straight a line as he could, trying to keep the telltales on his sails horizontal, and he was gaining. The vibration of wind and shroud made the boat’s hull emit a baritone hum like a great bass instrument.

He had not caught up with the other trailing boat until after rounding the first buoy. He was making progress though. Knocking past his first opponent, Jack took fifth position. Even in the best wind, sailboats like Wianno Seniors may not move with much more speed than a human can run, but when the weather is extreme, beads of water stinging, wind scraping skin with salt, waves exploding over the bow, sails dripping water, you feel like a race car driver. As you slowly edge past your opponent, both of you pummeled by weather, you’re close enough to see helplessness in their eyes. That satisfied Jack.

Jack passed one, then another, muscles tiring from the pull of the tiller against the current. He pulled even with the boat behind the leader. The leader was, of course, his brother Joe, the best sailor in the group. The weather was worsening. As his bow inched up into second place, a sudden gust, the hardest one yet, hit both second-place boats. Jack heard yelling and in the corner of his eye saw crew from the other boat falling into the water, the boat’s hull nearly on its side. At the same instant, another CRACK! Jack’s tiller was still firm on the rudder. The noise was from overhead. His mind flashed: how’s my mast? He leaned back and studied the rigging above. The gaff, which held the top of the mainsail aloft, was in two pieces. The sharp splinters of the now-loose pole dangled by the top of his mainsail, the shackle on the gaff’s end broken too. The sail was folded down on itself. The four-sided mainsail was now held fast by only the three remaining corners, creating a smaller sail area. Those lines and sailcloth that still functioned were straining where they weren’t designed to strain.

The other boat’s crew was rescued by a race committee boat whose crew had decided to stick around just in case. Good thing. Jack had to choose between the risk of further damaging Victura’s mainsail or dropping out of the race. The wind was blowing stronger still. So much could go wrong. As Jack weighed options, he saw he was keeping up with Joe and maybe even gaining. The now intense wind might actually give Jack an advantage. With smaller sail area exposed, he might heel less and thus gain boat speed. Joe was fighting his own boat to keep its hull at less than forty-five degrees, water rushing along his gunwale and into his cockpit. Victura was just behind, the finish line just far enough away to give Jack time to close the gap.

Jack was not going to miss this opportunity. His snapped gaff rigging dangling inelegantly above, his hull flatter on the water than Joe’s, he slowly made his way forward. There were moments when Jack gained on Joe, then Joe gained the lead back. They tried different tactics. At the finish line, ahead by just half a length, was Jack. Even a competitor like Joe took pride in his brother.22