The schooner Westward in the Solent, 1930

Westward, 323 tons, was a large racing schooner built by Nat Herreshoff at Rhode Island in 1910. Bought soon afterwards, at the Kaiser's instigation, by a syndicate of German businessmen who renamed her Hamburg, she was sold back into American ownership after the Great War and resumed her original name. In 1924 she was bought by T.B.F. Davis and thereafter became Britannia's regular challenger at Cowes. Over the years, Davis and King George V developed a fierce though friendly rivalry and Westward became so beloved by her owner that he, like the King, stipulated that his boat was to be sunk after his death.