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Said Gar Wood, at a luncheon given for Don next day: "We did not know that we had gone over the line more than five seconds ahead of the gun until we were signalled with a red flag at the judges stand. . . ." But when confronted by interviewers, Wood began to weep. He said: "We wanted to get over first. . . . I've been racing for years and we've done the best we could to carry the American flag on our boats in a sportsmanlike way. . . ." He said he had been misquoted, misunderstood, misjudged.
Other reports conflicted with Gar Wood's second-day statements. Chairman Eddie Edenburn of the race committee said: "I was at Gar Wood's boat well before the race. . . . Gar was incensed. ... He told me he was going to cross the line before the gun. . . . There was no time [to warn Don]. . . ." Spectators said Wood, shouting to watchers on the bank, had described his start as "an old Yankee trick."
Observers unfamiliar with motorboating etiquet wondered whether, even if Wood had tricked Don into a false start, he had broken boating etiquet. Observers familiar with motorboating ethics were not so perplexed. They called the trick unsporting.
The day after Miss England's mishap the Detroit race officials reconsidered their intention of cancelling the third heat. George Wood ran Miss America VIII slowly over three laps of the 30-mile course. But the name of Gar Wood's 13-year-old son, Garfield Arthur Wood Jr., in whose name Miss America VIII was entered, was not engraved on the tall, gold Harmsworth Cup. Whether or not it will be is up to the Yachtsmen's Association of America which will meet to ponder the problem soon. The crew of a tugboat salvaged Miss England II. Her stern was cracked apart, her deck ripped off but her Rolls-Royce motors were practically undamaged. Her designer, Fred Cooper, declared she could be patched up and. with bigger motors, be made capable of 150 m. p. h. She was taken unrepaired to Toronto and placed, an equivocal exhibit of international sport, on view at the Canadian National Exhibition.
*Owned by Lord Wakefield, Kaye Don's backer. Miss England II was originally built for Major Sir Henry Seagrave who was thrown out and killed when his boat hit a submerged log on Lake Windermere, England, in June 1930.