Iris 12 US 4

Overview

IRIS (US-4) was one of six 12 Metres commissioned through the New York Yacht Club and designed by William Starling Burgess for the 1928 American one-design comparison fleet. Built by Abeking & Rasmussen and completed in only a few months, she shared her hull form with Waiandance, Isolde, Tycoon, Anitra and Onawa, but carried her own deck, interior and rig details. The six were shipped together to Halifax for rigging and then sailed to the United States to avoid heavy import duties.

Design and Construction

IRIS was built to the International Second Rule as a composite 12 Metre, with alternate galvanized steel frames and Honduras mahogany planking. Her principal dimensions placed her alongside the most modern American Twelves of the late 1920s. Rigged as a Bermudan sloop for inshore racing, she was conceived as a pure club-racing yacht: light, responsive and structurally advanced for her time.

Racing and Ownership

Under her first owner, W. A. W. Stewart of Oyster Bay, IRIS joined the new American 12 Metre fleet from 1928 onward. She took part in the class championships against her sisterships; while not as dominant as Tycoon or Onawa, she remained consistently in the frame with a scattering of firsts, seconds and thirds over several seasons.

Through the 1930s and 1940s she passed into private hands as an auxiliary Bermudan sloop, based variously in Long Island Sound and on the Great Lakes. An engine installation and interior modifications reflected her gradual move from frontline racer to spirited cruising yacht.

Fate

By the late 1960s IRIS was in the Great Lakes region and no longer active in class racing. Records and class compilations agree that she was broken up in Michigan in the early 1970s. Her final years included a period of youth and Sea Scout use and storm damage that rendered her uneconomical to rebuild. Unlike Anitra and Onawa, which survived into the modern classic 12 Metre revival, IRIS was lost—her story closing as one of the Burgess-Abeking one-design fleet sacrificed after a long working life.

Legacy

IRIS (US-4) represents a key moment in American 12 Metre development: the Burgess-designed, Abeking-built fleet that set a new standard for one-design comparison and training within the New York Yacht Club. Though her hull is gone, she remains part of that important six-yacht experiment and of the broader Burgess lineage that led directly toward the great Cup defenders of the 1930s and beyond.