Long history of the "jug with no bottom"

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Billionaires come out to play – and Cowes drowns under a sea of super-rich visitors

A spokesman for the jubilee describes the America's Cup as "a jug with no bottom, a barrel into which passionate millionaires have been steadily pouring away fortunes." It was ever thus, ever since the grandees of the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes decided, in 1851, to further the cause of national self-congratulation with a yacht race.

An invitation was sent out to all-comers to compete in a race round the Isle of Wight. Across the Atlantic, the newly founded New York Yacht Club greeted the news with great enthusiasm. The yacht America was commissioned by a syndicate that included the club's founder, John Cox Stevens.

She was launched on 3 May 1851, left for Le Havre on 21 June, where she was painted black, and arrived in Cowes on 1 August.She won the race easily and took the cup home. There it was renamed the America's Cup and a legal deed of gift, to cause trouble to this day, was drawn up, inviting challenges in perpetuity.

Of the 16 mounted before the start of the Second World War, the most famous in Britain are the five headed by Sir Thomas Lipton and the two by Sir Tom Sopwith. Lipton's fifth challenge was in the J-class Shamrock V, which is racing this week in Cowes, and the two by Sopwith in Endeavour. Yesterday Endeavour won the opening race of the Jubilee Regatta.

In 1962 Australia joined the fray and in 1983, after the NYYC had held the cup for 132 years, Alan Bond took the cup to Fremantle at his fourth attempt.

The Australians were beaten at their first defence, by the man who had lost it, Dennis Connor. A new class of yacht was designed for their second defence in 1992. They beat the Italian challengers. New Zealand similarly demolished another Italian challenge in 2000, this time led by the Prada Italian fashion house boss, Patrizio Bertelli.