MOSBACHER, Emil, Jr. ("Bus")

(b. 1 April 1922 in Mount Vernon, New York; d. 13 August 1997 in Greenwich, Connecticut), yachtsman who was a winner of One Design championships and the winning skipper in two America's Cup competitions; he was also a businessman and Chief of Protocol for President Richard M. Nixon.

Mosbacher was one of three children of Emil Mosbacher, Sr., a businessman and stockbroker, and Gertrude Schwartz Mosbacher, a homemaker. Mosbacher got his nickname early. When he was a newborn, a hospital nurse pronounced him a "Buster," a term for a good-sized infant. The term was contracted to "Bus," and it stuck. Mosbacher's career as a sailor began at age five when his father, a sailing enthusiast and member of the Knickerbocker Yacht Club, put him into a dinghy. He spent his summers sailing on Long Island Sound, initially in the family's small catboat. When Mosbacher was nine, he was given his own boat, a Star-Class. After a summer of professional coaching from his father's helmsman, Mosbacher won his first race, defeating the only other boat in the race. Over the summers, more races and victories followed. Sailing Stars, he won the Midget championship in 1935 and 1936. He moved up to the Juniors in 1937 and took that national title two years later.

Mosbacher's father was his harshest critic, and several family meals were spoiled because of the rehashing of a race. As Mosbacher remarked in a Time magazine article, "He was most sparing with his compliments." When Mosbacher made a serious mistake, such as taking the wrong tack, he would have dinner with a friend. Mosbacher Sr. was adamant against filing protests. He believed a race should be won on the racecourse, not in a protest meeting, and always stressed the importance of good sportsmanship. When Mosbacher was fifteen, he finished so close to another boat that he could not tell who won. The other skipper acted as if he were the winner, and Mosbacher, showing good sportsmanship, yelled to the other boat, "Nice race." Mosbacher's crew, the singer and actress Ethel Merman, shook her fist at the committee boat and screamed that they were blind if they thought the other boat won. Merman's Broadway-trained voice carried, and Mosbacher had, in fact, won the race.

Mosbacher attended Choate Preparatory School (now called Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, and graduated in 1939 with honors. He enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, majoring in economics. At Dartmouth he sailed with the varsity sailing club, and they won two intercollegiate championships. Mosbacher received his B.A. in 1943. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945, advancing in rank from apprentice seaman to lieutenant. His time spent on a minesweeper in the Pacific was a change in perspective for the Long Island Sound sailor.

Following the war, Mosbacher went to work in the family real estate, oil, and natural gas businesses and continued to sail for recreation. He returned to competitive sailing in 1949, skippering a thirty-three-foot International One Design sloop to victory in the Amorita Cup in Bermuda. The same year he won the British-American Cup at the Isle of Wight, sailing a six-meter. On 24 November 1949 Mosbacher married Patricia Ann Ryan; they had three sons.

Throughout the 1950s Mosbacher sailed his International Class sloop Susan, named after his grandmother, winning the class championship eight years in a row. His competitors were the elite of U.S. racing. Following his 1957 victory in Susan, he competed for the Prince of Wales Trophy, a match racing series, and won. Match racing pits one boat against one other, and the starts are critical. Each skipper looks for the other to make a mistake and then capitalizes on it. As Mosbacher said in a 1967 interview for Time magazine: "The idea is to find your opponent's Achilles' heel—and sink your teeth into it."

Mosbacher's success in racing International-class boats led to an opportunity to be helmsman on Vim, a twelve-meter, for the elimination trials to decide which yacht would defend the America's Cup. The America's Cup is the most prestigious award in sailing and had been successfully defended by U.S. yachts since 1851. Vim was not expected to do well in the elimination trials as she was older and slower than her competitors, but with Mosbacher at the helm, Vim became a serious contender. Mosbacher harassed his opponents into making errors and exhausted everyone with his tacking duels, but lost to Columbia by twelve seconds. In this defeat he won an enormous amount of respect for his aggressiveness and sailing acumen. Columbia easily beat the British challenger.

Impressed by Mosbacher's accomplishment with Vim, the sponsors of the America's Cup, the New York Yacht Club, invited Mosbacher to join and skipper the next contender. For the defense of the America's Cup in 1962 Mosbacher was sailing Weatherly, a boat he beat in the 1958 trials. Under Mosbacher's direction, modifications were made, chiefly in the distribution of weight. Weatherly had been refitted, but was not considered as fast as the Australian challenger Gretel. Although Mosbacher was a superb tactician, he knew that the best tactics do not always mean victory. Crew is critical, and Mosbacher picked his own crew, built around men with whom he had sailed when he campaigned Vim. From 15 September 1962 to 25 September 1962, off the coast of Rhode Island with a huge spectator fleet (including President John F. Kennedy in a destroyer) Mosbacher looked for "Jock" Sturrock, the skipper of the Gretel, to make mistakes. In a close series Mosbacher kept the Cup, winning four out of five races against a faster boat.

After the series concluded, Mosbacher, who had taken six months off from work, went back to running the family's businesses. Mosbacher announced his retirement from America's Cup competition, but changed his mind in 1967 when he had a chance to help design a new yacht Intrepid, described in Time as "the shortest (at sixty-four feet), homeliest, most radical, and most expensive twelve-meter yacht ever built." The competition was held between 12 and 18 September 1967. Sailing against the Australian yacht Dame Pattie, Mosbacher won all four races easily.

In 1969 Mosbacher was appointed as Chief of Protocol (1969 to 1972) during the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. Nixon offered him the opportunity to take time off to defend the America's Cup, but Mosbacher declined. Mosbacher was the chairman of the first Operation Sail, which brought the tall ships to New York Harbor in 1976. He also helped organized two other Operations Sail events in 1986 and 1992. Mosbacher died at his home of cancer, a disease he had been battling for years.

Mosbacher was voted Yachtsman of the Year in 1962 and 1967, chiefly because of his successful defense of the America's Cup. Sailing twelve-meters as if they were dinghies, Mosbacher showed fearlessness as well as his knowledge of how to get the most out of his boat and his crew.

Bob Bavier, America ' s Cup Fever; an Inside Look at 50 Years of America ' s Cup Competition (1980), includes a chapter on Mosbacher as well as background on the America's Cup. Periodical articles include: "Mosbacher: Yachting's Unassuming Magician," New York Times (26 Aug. 1962); "A Buster at the Helm: Emil Mosbacher, Jr.," New York Times (26 Sept. 1962); "The Intrepid Gentleman," Time (18 Aug. 1967); and Noel F. Busch, "The Savvy Skipper of Protocol," Reader ' s Digest 99 (Oct. 1971). An obituary is in the New York Times (14 Aug. 1997).

Marcia B. Dinneen