[CarltonHendricks]

I’m not a big postcard guy but this one of the Cactus II yacht caught my eye…I like ones like this that are advertising… The company that issued the postcard and made the yacht was the Williams-Whittelsey Company, of Long Island City, N.Y…There’s a Wikipedia page about them that is a little sparse….but to have a Wikipedia page they must have been somebody…Anyway…the boat was so sleek and cool looking…I bit…









One of the principles of Williams-Whittelsey Company was H. Newton Whittelsey…I think he designed this yacht…he had a long career in marine architecture…I found references to the yacht being owned by C.E. Proctor…my first inkling was he was probably the Proctor in Proctor and Gamble…however…I couldn’t connect him…so kept plugging away…and found a C.E. Proctor of the Proctor Furniture Company of Knoxville Tennessee…









Great looking boat…One thing about yachts and ships is there are usually surviving records of them…If I went looking I could probably tell you the whole life story from who and where it was built…to all the succeeding owners…to where it was sunk or scrapped…but it’s just a little postcard…

Wealthy…middle-class..or poor….when men and their toys get together they often get competitive…and yacht owners were right in there…seems they often couldn’t just enjoy cruising…they inherently wanted to race each other…I’m still learning the ropes on all this boating stuff but I think, other than the America's Cup which was for the big dogs...the major yacht race for average rich guys was from New York to the Bermuda Islands…can be a pretty grueling race…and I think once a yacht did that race it took on the moniker of “a Bermuda Racer” from then on…like a status…

I never found any reference to Cactus II as a Bermuda racer…but in the flurry of cursory researching I think I saw a reference to Cactus II in some races…the races were called regattas…sometimes “water carnivals”…typically put on by a yacht club...and there were many...