| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Benjamin Lexcen |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Born | Robert Clyde Miller (1936-03-19)19 March 1936 Boggabri,New South Wales, Australia |
| Died | 1 May 1988(1988-05-01) (aged 52) Manly, New South Wales, Australia |
| Height | 1.83 m (6.0 ft) |
| Sport | |
| Sailing career | |
| Class | Soling |
| Updated on 1 March 2014 | |
Benjamin LexcenAM (bornRobert Clyde Miller, 19 March 1936 – 1 May 1988) was an Australianyachtsman andmarine architect. He is famous for thewinged keel design applied toAustralia II which, in 1983, became the first non-American challenger to win the prestigiousAmerica's Cup in the competition's 132-year history.
Born in the small town ofBoggabri, New South Wales on 19 March 1936. After his parents, Edward William Miller, a labourer, and Ethel Doreen, née Green, abandoned him as a child, he stayed briefly atBoys' Town Engadine before going to his grandfather at Newcastle.[1]
Miller left school at age 14 to pursue alocomotive mechanic'sapprenticeship but soon found his attention turning tosailboats. He designed his first sailboat,The Comet, at age 16 with his friend William Bennett in Hamilton, NSW and began to make a name for himself in local competition. Miller did his sailmaking apprenticeship with Norman Wright in Queensland.[2]
Miller's designs were highly innovative. TheTaipan, his entry in the 1960JJ Giltinan International Trophy,[3] started the modern era of the18ft skiff class. Miller won the competition in 1961[4] with his next entry, theVenom. With friend Craig Whitworth, he founded aboat building,sailmaking, andship chandlery firm, Miller and Whitworth, and designed boats part time.[5]
One of Miller's lasting early design successes was of thesingle-handeddinghy that became theInternational Contender. In 1967, it was selected in multi-boat trials as a potentialOlympic successor to theFinn dinghy. The Contender was awardedInternational status in 1968 and now has fleets in more than twelve countries. Hiskeelboat designs of the early 1970s featured clean, easily driven hulls and a relatively small sail area. He had great success with a series of these designs starting with the innovativeGinkgo, of which smaller derivatives won honours in theSydney to Hobart Yacht Race.[6]
Miller competed in aSoling keelboat at the1972 Munich Olympics representingAustralia insailing withDenis O'Neil andKen Berkeley as fellow crew members.[7]
Miller was commissioned byAlan Bond to buildApollo,[8] an ocean racer. This partnership continued when Bond first challenged for theAmerica's Cup in 1974 with the Miller-designed12-metre class yachtSouthern Cross, named for the southern hemisphereconstellation. Their challenge for the Cup was unsuccessful, but Miller was kept on as the designer for future yachts, which were designed in accordance with the 12-metre class rules used by the competition at the time.
During the first years of his partnership with Bond, Miller left Miller and Whitworth, but the company retained his name. Soon after the 1974 Cup challenge, Miller changed his name to Benjamin Lexcen. Keen to prevent the possibility of there being any confusion surrounding his name and future business interests, he asked a friend who worked forReader's Digest to determine the least common surname within their membership. The result was Lexcen. "Ben" was the name of his dog.
Bond challenged for America's cup in1977 with the 12MAustralia, designed by Lexcen and Johan Valentijn, against media mogulTed Turner, and again in 1980 with a Lexcen-modifiedAustralia againstDennis Conner, losing both times.
After the1980 challenge, Lexcen realised they would need a superior boat to win against the defenders' 100+ years of America's Cup experience. His next design, for theAustralia II, featured a host of advanced design innovations, including a revolutionary winged keel engineered to lower drag, increase stability, and make the boat more maneuverable. The design reduced tip vortex, a turbulence caused by the pressure differential between thelow-pressure windward and high-pressure leeward sides of conventional keels. The new keel was controversial; Cup competitors protested, questioning whether its design, alleged to have been based on engineering and testing by a Dutch tank testing facility, disqualified the vessel from Cup competition based on rules requiring each competing boat have a single country of origin.[9]
Australia II's winged keel and hull design featured the shortest waterline length ever measured on a 12-metre. To yachtsmen accustomed to seeing racing yachts out of the water, Australia II is striking. Its conventional long, slim topsides flare down to a short waterline hinting at the dramatic, minimal, slippery underwater hull shape which was fast to turn as well as easily driven and quick to accelerate. Ben often remarked that Australia II is a whole boat, not just a keel. TheNew York Yacht Club, holders of the Cup, formally protested both that Australia II was not a legal 12 metre boat, and that the design itself was not of Australian origin. The ruling arrived at on the boat confirmed thatAustralia II complied with both the12-metre class and theAmerica's Cup rules. The questions on her design origin were not formally answered at the time,[citation needed] but the controversy re-emerged in 2009 (seeLater claims of Dutch Design for details). Claims that Peter van Oossanen was the designer of theAustralia II's keel rather than Ben have been strongly rejected byJohn Bertrand and by John Longley, an important member of theAustralia II team using documentary evidence.[10]
The1983 America's Cup saw Lexcen'sAustralia II, withJohn Bertrand at the helm, take on the NYYC skipperDennis Conner and the defender yacht,Liberty. The Australians were sure they had a fast boat. Australia II had dominated the challenger eliminations just as Liberty had dominated the closer defender trials, honing her tuning and performance. But mechanical failures on Australia II and skillful sailing by the defenders causedAustralia II to fall behind, losing the first two races.Australia II stormed back to take three of the next four. Dennis Conner had creatively registered three different configurations (sail area, spar length and ballast) for Liberty and he successfully called for lay days to choose advantageous weather to suit his most competitive versions of the boat. This was the first time in history that the series depended on the result of the last race, and the pressure of defending the Cup was now firmly on Liberty. In the deciding race on 26 September, Conner prepared Liberty in her very competitive light weather configuration with big sail area and low weight. Australia II won the start and held an early lead but was overtaken by Liberty which built up a substantial margin. At the start of the penultimate leg (a square run) the breeze was very light and Liberty was vulnerable. Liberty chose a starboard tack leg and declined to cover Australia II which allowed them to run deeper and faster assisted by breeze and windshifts allowing Australia II to overtake the Americans by the leeward mark. Liberty then engaged Australia II in a spectacular tacking duel with nearly 50 tacks and a number of faked "dummy" tacks trying to break the Australians' cover. Australia II held on until both boats reached the starboard layline in amongst the spectator fleet and tacked several boat lengths ahead of Liberty and sailed to the finish to take the race. Australia II became the first challenger to wrest the Cup from the United States since its inception in 1870. Lexcen was made a Member of theOrder of Australia for his contributions to the winning design.
Lexcen was commissioned by Bond once again in 1986 to design a defender for the1987 America's Cup. He designedAustralia III andAustralia IV for Bond's two boat defense program.Australia IV was ultimately defeated by theIain Murray designed and skipperedKookaburra III in theDefender Trials. Steve Ward (builder of all four "Australias") maintains that Lexcen's design was not at fault but thatAustralia IV was uncompetitive due to last minute design modifications ordered by the upper echelons of Bond Corporation.Australia IV was originally designed to be longer on the waterline with less sail area similar to Conner's winning design. Australia competed in the Cup without a Lexcen designed boat for the first time in ten years.Kookaburra III lost in the finals to Dennis Conner and his American challenger,Stars & Stripes 87, 4 races to nil.[11]
Lexcen died suddenly inManly, New South Wales on 1 May 1988, of aheart attack at 52 years of age. He is buried at Frenchs Forest Cemetery located inDavidson, New South Wales.[12]
In 1989, theToyota Lexcen was released byToyota Australia in Ben Lexcen's honour. The car was arebadgedHolden VN Commodore and was built in Australia under theButton Plan. Production lasted until 1997.
In 1988 theUniversity of New South Wales named its newly created sports scholarships the Ben Lexcen Sports Scholarships. These scholarships were the first sports scholarships to be offered by an Australian university.[13]
In 2006, Lexcen was posthumously inducted into theAmerica's Cup Hall of Fame.
In the 1986 miniseriesThe Challenge, Lexcen was portrayed byJohn Clayton.[14] In the 2016 television seriesHouse of Bond, he was played by Paul Gleeson.[15]
In 2022, Netflix releasedUntold:The Race of the Century, a film about the Australian team's win in the 1983 race, including footage of Lexcen.[16]
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