First touching the water in 1885, there are few wooden vessels still afloat with a lineage quite like the 40.58-metre Coronet. Built at the shipyard Cornelius & Richard Poillon in Brooklyn, New York the schooner’s history is as varied and vibrant as any sailing yacht ever built, and she is now undergoing a major restoration following her sale to new owners in 2008. Over recent decades, great lengths have been taken to archive the yacht’s history, with Cynthia Goss publishing the Coronet Chronicle in 2005, a deep and well researched historical narrative, and the team behind her current rebuild at Mystic Seaport sharing regular updates on the yacht’s restoration in an online blog. 
Photo: Nathaniel StebbinsLike many yacht’s of her age, over the century Coronet has sparked a passion for classic yachts among many, and there have been an innumerable number of shipwrights and craftsmen who have turned their hand to bringing her back to life. Until only a few months ago, Coronet was undergoing work at the IYRS School of Technology & Trades in Newport, Rhode Island, where she had been based in a state of advanced disrepair since the early 1995. The yacht was purchased by the school as a student project, providing students with invaluable hands-on experience in the restoration and maintenance of historic wooden vessels.
The flagship of the IYRS, Coronet was being restored by the ancestors of many sailors who had actually worked aboard the yacht at some point during her 138 year history, and the rebuild was therefore intrinsically tied to the history of the local people. Unfortunately, very little of the yacht’s early history was known, and there was even speculation about who had originally designed her lines, not aided by the fact that she had been superficially amended over the century-plus that she had been afloat. With very little documentation surviving, researchers tracked down surviving members of the Poillon family, searched newspaper reports and eventually began to piece together the early history of the schooner. 
According to their research, in 1884, Rufus T. Bush, President of Bush & Denslow Manufacturing Company, NY, put forward a request for the design of a new schooner. C&R Poillon was chosen as the builder, not least for its locality to the owner, but also for its history with the construction of famous schooners such as Montauk, Grayling and 1871 AC winner Sappho.
Over the coming months, designers across America put forward models for the yacht, and in February 1885, The New York Times announced that a hull had been chosen, with work shortly due to begin. Bush was already a yacht owner, owning the steam ship Falcon which had been built in Washington in 1880, Bush took a long time in selecting his hull, with the Falcon’s captain Christopher Crosby assisting him. It was the Smith & Terry designers from Greenport who won the competition and a model exists of the original hull at The New York Yacht Club.
During her early years, the Coronet collected many accolades, not least the famous 1887 victory over the schooner Dauntless in the Transatlantic Race which has given her a permanent position in the history books as one of the great American schooners. Her owner Rufus Bush had put forward a $10,000 prize, inviting any yacht owner to take the schooner on in a transatlantic race. The New York Times dedicated an entire first page to the event on March 28th 1887. 
In November 2022, the schooner entered the next stage of her long life, arriving at the Henry B. du Pont Preservation Shipyard at Mystic Seaport Museum. The museum website announced the exciting plans for the restoration of the yacht, which is due to take place over the next three years. The reason for her rehoming after more than 25 years at the IYRS, is that the yacht was recently purchased by Crew, a New York-based company that specialises in historic vessel restoration. What her new owner’s have in store for the schooner is currently unknown, but the transition marks an exciting juncture in the yacht’s story and hopefully will soon result in her return to the water after more than two decades.
This article was originally published in Issue 44 of SuperYacht Times newspaper. To read more stories like this one and to never again miss another issue of the SuperYacht Times newspaper, subscribe here.