King George V, like his father before him, remained loyal to their yacht Britannia for all of his racing life, and the famous boat was scuttled in 1936 under the terms of the King,s will after his death earlier that year.
The tea magnate Sir Thomas Lipton however built himself a series of nine yachts, all named Shamrock and each an improvement upon its predecessor. Shamrock (I), a cutter displacing 135 tons, was designed by the great William Fife Jnr. and built by Thorneycroft's of Millwall in 1899. Launched on 24 June, Lipton used her to mount his first challenge for the America's Cup but, outclassed by the defending Columbia, Shamrock (I) returned without the coveted prize. Lipton however remained undeterred and was to make four more unsuccessful challenges with four other Shamrocks as the years went by. In fact Lipton used Shamrock (I) to pace Shamrock (II) when the latter was running her trials and Fife himself always maintained that his first creation was the faster of the two.
White Heather (II), 179 tons and 95½ feet long overall, was another of Fife's '23 metre' creations and dated from 1907. Built for Myles Kennedy and then owned by Sir Charles Allom after the Great War, she was an extremely successful yacht throughout her career. In her very first season she won twenty-four prizes - twenty-three of them for first place - and she maintained this position as one of the fastest yachts to compete at Cowes for many years, thoroughly earning her place amongst the 'greats' of that golden age.