By the age of 15 Bert Darrell was already following his family’s sailing and shipbuilding tradition and put together a ship he called I’ll Settle It to compete his older brothers’ vessel Argument. After briefly dabbling in a career as a blacksmith, he took up a lifelong position in a boatyard where he honed his skills as a marine mechanic, metalworker, and carpenter over the next half century. He soon became known as a successful yacht racer as well, winning his first of Bermuda’s King Edward VII Gold Cup races in 1939 with a boat that he had rebuilt after it was wrecked in a 1936 hurricane. World War II delayed his competitive success until 1952, but from that point he won five more King Edward VII Gold Cups (1952-1954, 1956, 1959), a record that was not surpassed until 2004, by which time the race had become a fully international one. His most prominent appearance for his country came at the 1960 Summer Olympics, where he finished 12th among 19 nations in the 5.5 metres, mixed event alongside countrymen Norman and Walter Jones. He was a member of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club until his death in April 1983.
Bermuda