James W. Graham - Victura: The Kennedys, a Sailboat, and the Sea

JAMES W. GRAHAM

THE KENNEDYS,
A SAILBOAT, AND THE SEA

ForeEdge
An imprint of University Press of New England
www.upne.com
2014 James W. Graham
All rights reserved

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Cloth ISBN: 978-1-61168-411-7
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61168-599-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce the following:

David Arnold, Blue-Blooded Racers, Costly, Cherished, and Original to the Cape, Boston Globe, May 23, 2004, 24. Used by permission of David Arnold.

Hart Crane, At Melvilles Tomb, in The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane, ed. Brom Weber, 24 (New York: Library of America/Penguin-Putnam, 2006). Copyright 1933, 1958, and 1966 by Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright 1952 by Brom Weber. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Christopher G. Kennedy, Resolute, a letter to his children, January 26, 2004. Used by permission of Christopher G. Kennedy.

John F. Kennedy to Inga Arvad. Courtesy of Ron McCoy.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Journals 19522000, ed. Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger (New York: Penguin, 2007). Copyright 2007 by the Estate of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Used by permission of The Penguin Press, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

Hank Searls, The Lost Prince: Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy; The Story of the Oldest Brother (New York: World, 1969). Copyright 1969 by Hank Searls. Used by permission of Hank Searls.

Superman Comes to the Supermarket, from The Presidential Papers by Norman Mailer. Copyright 1963 by Norman Mailer, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

Ulysses ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matchd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoyd
Greatly, have sufferd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honourd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro
Gleams that untravelld world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnishd, not to shine in use!
As tho to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toild, and wrought, and thought with me
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheadsyou and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho much is taken, much abides; and tho
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

BOOK I )

CHAPTER 1 )

The day before he died President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, arrived at the Rice Hotel in Houston, Texas, taking a room freshly remodeled for their short stay. They had three and a half hours to rest and dine together before heading out for two evening appearances and the days end. Jack, sitting in a rocking chair, wearing just his shorts, worked on a speech and doodled on a sheet of hotel notepaper.

Later, their public obligations satisfied, they retired to another hotel closer to the next days events. Jacqueline saw Jack, in his pajamas, kneel by his bed to say a prayer. She told a friend a few weeks later, It was just like a little childish mannerism, I suppose, like brushing your teeth or something. But I thought that was so sweet. It used to amuse me so, standing there. She compared his religious rituals to superstition. She wasnt sure he was a true believer, but if it was that way, he wanted to have that on his side.

The next morning, with the president and first lady in Dallas for their motorcades nightmarish turn past the book depository, the Rice Hotel housecleaning staff found the doodle the president had left in his room. It was a simple pencil drawing of a little sailboat, beating through the waves.

Jack Kennedy often drew such sailboats during White House meetings or while on the phone. Sometimes, he put a gaff rig on the mast, like the one on the Victura. Somewhere in their minds, throughout their lives, Jack and his brothers and sisters were always at sea. Sailing influenced how they thought, how they competed, the content of public speeches, how as a family they celebrated happy events or managed grief, how they grew close to one another.

Of the nine children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, the ones most influenced by and enamored with sailing were Jack; his older brother, Joe; and their younger siblings, Ted, Eunice, and Robert. When they were young, sailing was a topic of ongoing earnest discussion, sometimes led by their father.

They would constantly ask one another, What made us lose a race? What gear needed replacing? At what cost? What sailing instructors should we hire? What kind of sails? How do we launch the spinnaker faster? Who can we get to crew? How fast the wind and how high the waves?